You need to get website traffic. There’s no point in building a website if nobody finds it.

A website is the price of admission to your business. Arguably as important as—if not more important than—your business cards. Without a website, your business doesn’t exist. What’s more, if you have a shoddy website, prospects may think, let’s face it, you do shoddy work.

To be valued, you must have a website that showcases your brand. But what can look like a fantastic “Ferrari of a website” on the screen may hold a measly 4-cylinder engine under the hood. What’s under the hood matters.

Here are 10 tips to help you get visitors to your website.

1.      Apply Best Practices to Get Found.

Ever Google a business name? Of course, you have. Ever put in a less specific query, such as “fine dining restaurants in Chicago”? You probably have typed something similar to find a business on Google or another search engine. These are key words searches. Keyword phrases matter. This is just one of the tips in my blog, “Search Engine Optimization: 15 Tips.” All of these tips matter for getting found.

2.      Avoid “Under the Hood” Errors.

To continue the Ferrari analogy, these are errors that you can’t see on the page. They can include a variety of SEO mistakes—factors that are ignored by many well-intentioned web builders who understand code—but who don’t know marketing or how to get found on search engines.

3.      Write Good Content Well.

You’ll need interesting and well-written content to encourage traffic to your site. This involves more than good grammar and spelling—although that is key. It involves a well-thought out strategy as outlined in a our blogs about content marketing strategy and how to write content for the web.

4.      Focus Content on Your Persona.

Another tip is to focus your site content on an imaginary audience. This key audience is called a persona. A persona is a fictitious character that represents a major target audience. For example, a blog may be written for “Owner Owen,” a 45-year-old small business owner with a bachelor’s degree, a wife, three kids, and 10 employees. “Owen” draws an annual salary of $90,000 and wants to grow his business 10% this year. Owen is not real. You get the idea. By focusing content that is intended for your persona, you’ll be able to hit the mark for your broader target.

5.      Keep Your Content Fresh.

Give prospects and customers a reason to go to your site. Update content regularly and educate your customers and prospects. (A blog is a great way to keep content fresh and interesting.)

6.      Post Social Links to Your Website.

Promote your website through page links on social media. With an enticing post, some readers will click through to your site, increasing your traffic. While social media likely does not directly enhance your SEO (ability to get found on Google), it can enhance your number of site visits, which indirectly may impact your page rank (how close you are to the top of  the search engine return).

7.      Place a Live Link (and Compelling Message) in Your Email Signature.

Entice customers and prospects to your website by including a live link in your email signature. Call out your website by encouraging email readers to “Read our blog” or “Check out our website.” Make the text prominent with one of your brand colors, and be as compelling and specific as possible. Change it up, so recipients don’t become fatigued or immune to your efforts.

8.      Drive Email Campaigns to Your Website.

Have a call-to-action button on your email campaigns that redirect to a page on your website.

9.      Place Your URL on ALL Your Brand Identity Materials.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but make sure that your business cards, letterhead, proposals, and other identity materials include your web address, or U-R-L. (Not Earl.)

10. Place Your URL on ALL Your Promotional Materials.

Take inventory of all your promotional materials. Banners at trade shows, PDF and print catalogs, brochures, videos, and postcards.

Do you have your web address on all these materials? If you have a PDF online, you may think you don’t need to include the URL. But people still print out PDFs from their computers. Without a URL in the footer, the web address can quickly become a mystery.

Television commercial, radio show, podcast? Be sure to share your URL more than once and be clear about any unusual spellings, hyphens or dots.

Your website is some of your most valuable real estate. Follow these 10 tips to increase your success and enhance your revenue.
If you build it, they won’t come. You need to also apply these best practices to generate traffic to your site.

Do you have a website? Does your website need a facelift? A look under the hood?

 

 

Nancy Burgess

Nancy Burgess is the owner of Nancy Burgess Strategic Marketing, a marketing consulting firm and online agency. In that role, she integrates her corporate success as a digital marketer along with her marketing agency experience in marketing communications and branding to help businesses prosper. Nancy's specialties are search engine optimization (SEO) and content creation. She graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, holds a master's degree, and also multiple marketing certificates from DePaul University's graduate school. She is a frequent presenter on SEO strategies and has worked in digital marketing since the late 1990s. As someone who can strategize AND execute, Nancy offers digital and traditional marketing services to SMBs. Agency value without agency fees. Along with SEO and content strategies, Nancy's agency offers website design, marketing automation, integrated marketing strategies, and branding to her clients.