Drive More Traffic to Your Site

Benjamin Henry Website design flatlay

1) RECIPROCAL LINKS

Reciprocal links are links that you set up on a reciprocal basis with a third-party site, which ideally should be related to yours but not in direct competition. You may already have a dedicated ‘Useful Links’ or ‘About Us’ page which is ideal territory for these types of links. Sharing links can help get new visitors to your site who otherwise may not have found you. If you are worried about visitors leaving your site then this can be avoided by creating links that open your 3rd party links in a new browser window, leaving your site open in the background.

Reciprocal links can be obtained from a number of places so be creative with your thoughts. A good place to start is to contact your suppliers, customers, friends, family and colleagues to see if you can get some link exchanges going. Then look further afield to other websites. Avoid anyone who offers paid link schemes as these are viewed very negatively by Google and your ranking could suffer if you are seen to be part of it.

Link hand drawn icon

2) SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION)

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of fine-tuning your website content to make it more visible to the search engines with the objective being to improve your ranking for chosen keywords and key phrases in the search results. Techniques include optimising titles, headers, image alt text and filenames for web pages and images. SEO can be a bit minefield and requires certain technical knowledge to identify and implement changes so it is best left to an expert.

Good SEO should be carried out over time to try and test different combos of improvements. The benefits can be exceptional as the share of website traffic on results pages is substantial with 1st position getting 40% of clicks. A good strategy will be focused on a few main keywords backed up by a selection of less saturated keywords, known as the ‘long tail’. For more details on SEO services, why not get in touch.

Google App on phone

3) PPC (PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING)

PPC or Pay Per Click advertising is by far the best way to increase visitor numbers with instant results. If you look at the search results page for search engines like Google and Yahoo you will see groups of sponsored listings, usually 3 at the top and several down the right-hand side of the page. These sponsored listings are adverts which companies use and only pay when someone clicks on their ad.

The major benefit is that your visitors are highly targeted because you only advertise on search pages where the keywords are related to your business. Google is the major provider and uses their Google Adwords software to manage it. It’s easy to get started and you can be up and running in minutes. Overspending is also not a problem as you can set yourself a budget which won’t be exceeded.

Hand clicking on a mouse

4) SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Since industry experts announced that social media was being used more often than email, companies have been looking towards them as a marketing tool. Social media websites include Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to name a few. They are social networks which enable users to quickly and easily share photos, comments and other content. As social media is such a new area and growing so fast there are no guidelines as to what you should or shouldn’t be doing with your company. However, it is definitely worth setting up a profile and getting involved in a community. Meet new people, share content about you, your industry and your company and products, then see what happens.

Social media apps on an iphone

5) DIRECTORIES & BUSINESS LISTINGS

Directories and business listings have been around for a long time and the general rule of thumb is that they won’t generate a huge amount of new traffic. However, there are a few major directories which are worth a listing as the content and links they create to your site are also useful for improving rankings as part of an SEO strategy.

Major directories include: Google Local Business Centre, Thomson Local, Yell.com, HotfrogUK – all of whom provide free listings. The only downside is that increasing your exposure on these directories may also increase the number of sales calls you get from other companies. Overall, it is definitely still worth submitting your details.

Google and Google my business logo

6) YOUTUBE

YouTube is a major player in user-generated video content on the web. Youtube has over 122 million active users daily, and over 1 billion hours of content is watched across the world every day. and this is set to continue increasing. The numbers speak for themselves so if you have an intro video for your company or if you are able to produce interesting video clips relating to your business then YouTube should be one of your main priorities. The price of video production has decreased rapidly over the past few years and it is now a very affordable option for marketing your website.

Youtube home screen on a computer

7) BLOGS AND ARTICLES

Contributing to well-known blogs in your industry can be a great way to build your profile and drive additional visitors to your site. A good tip is to start by targeting blogs which appear high up for your chosen keywords.

Where the results of writing in blogs can be slow, the effects of writing a good article and submitting it to large news sites can result in a number of inbound links to your site popping up in a variety of places within a short space of time.

Photo taken from above of a man blogging on his laptop

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