Ways to Increase Website Traffic #SEOcafe

On of the key challenges for a digital marketer or a website owner is getting stable and inexhaustible flow of traffic to his or her website. So we decided to devote our #SEOcafe Twitter chat to traffic generation and discover some practical tips and cases of growing a website audience.

Let’s find out how you can gain traction in short period, choose the right channels and define the best strategies for converting visitors to customers with our chat participants and special guest, Ana Hoffman, blogger, SEO consultant and founder of  TrafficGenerationCafe.com.

What are some effective, low-cost ways to gain traffic in the short term?

A new company with a shoe-string budget will often want to see traffic results as fast as possible. Let’s find out the main activities that will work for this.

• Launch a PPC campaign

Paid advertising is an effective way to drive traffic to your website quickly, and it’s a good opportunity for newly built websites. However, after your PPC campaign is finished, you’ll probably see your traffic flow start to shallow. So, It would be mistake to rely on a PPC campaign as your primary source of traffic.

• Post unique and engaging content on your website

Create in-depth and well-written content that will naturally attract visitors to your website. This good old rule has always worked. Devote some time to crafting evergreen content that will drive people to your website for a long time, and also hit on hot industry topics.

• Build relationships with influencers

Content creation itself is only half the battle: to get impressive results, you’ll also need to devote time to content promotion. Build relationships with thought leaders and influencers in your industry and make them talk about your posts. For sure, creating strong, mutually beneficial relationships takes time, but the results are totally worth it.

• Be active on relevant social media platforms and in niche communities

• Try guest blogging

Publishing guest posts is a good way to get backlinks, especially if the blogs you’re posting on allow dofollow links. Even if you don’t get any links, it’s still a way to reach a new, wider audience and establish yourself as an expert.

What is more effective: focusing on a couple of specific traffic channels or on a broad range of them?

As you can see, there are numerous channels available that can drive organic traffic. But is it more effective to utilize as many channels as you can at the same time, or to focus your efforts on one? Our #SEOcafe chat participants had different opinions on this issue:

Here is a strategy suggested by Ana:

First, pick one traffic generation strategy that you think might work best for your niche. Go to Alexa.com and type in your competitor’s URL in the search box. Then scroll down to “Upstream Sites.” Here you’ll see websites that people visited right before this website. For example, the results for TrafficGenerationCafe.com look like this:

We can see that a considerable portion of traffic comes from Google (though focusing on organic search is a long-term goal). The second-best source of traffic channel is Facebook, so you should probably try it out as your first strategy.

Ana says: “Learn everything you can about generating traffic from Facebook. Spend at least 30 days on it. Make it work for your business, or at least have a good idea of why it’s not a good match for your business. After that, you can move on to the next strategy, give that one at least 30 days, and so on.”

How can you retain visitors and convert traffic?

Suppose you’ve gained enough traffic flowing to your website, but your goal is obviously not accomplished. It is not enough to make people just visit your website, you need them to bring value to your company. How can you convert your visitors to customers?

A strategy that always wins: provide quality and valuable product. Let your product speak for itself!

Make sure that people who get to your website through organic search land on the exact page that contains the information they need.

The next thing that you can do: make your calls to action powerful and irresistible. Here you can read an article about the key elements of a compelling CTA.

Ana Hoffman has shared an example of two options for converting customers:

Let’s say a person comes to your website searching for a solution to moths in her closet. She looked up “how to get rid of moths in closet” on Google, then ended up on your site. She’s looking for one thing only – the solution to her moth problem. SOLVE it! Then you have a choice:

1. You can, right away, offer a product that will help her with moths in her closet (i.e., convert her to a customer).
2. You can tell her: “And here are ways to solve seven other common closet problems: mustiness, dust and so on. Enter your email address here and I’ll immediately send them your way.”

Email list building is a great way to stay in touch with your potential customer - sometimes the only way. Continue solving your target audience’s pains via emails, build expertise, then sell them on your solution via email. You really do have to test what works best – selling them a solution or creating a list to sell them a solution.

How can a company qualify untargeted traffic?

Unfortunately, not every person that visits your website is ready to convert. Moreover, some of your visitors are not even your potential audience. So how can you determine if untargeted traffic is coming to your website?

“One way to know you are getting a lot of untargeted traffic is if your site has a high bounce rate,” says Ana. If people that come to your website do not find what they need, they are likely to leave it very quickly, resulting in a high bounce rate, which can affect your SEO efforts.

Let’s discover what drives untargeted traffic to your website and what you can do to qualify it.

First of all, your business’ value proposition might be wrong. You can use Google Analytics to check which sources are bringing you untargeted traffic and change the way you market your business on that platform.

Another possibility: you might be ranking for keywords you didn’t intend to rank for, which is called “accidental ranking.” Ana Hoffman has experienced this before: “For example, I once ranked for the lyrics of a famous song simply because I used those lyrics in a blog post title. Once I realized where that flood of traffic was coming from, I rephrased the title of my post, and my analytics went back to normal. However, there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of such accidental rankings – provided they are close enough to your niche.” You can find a good example of handling accidental traffic in the post “How to Turn Accidental Search Engine Traffic Into Loyal Readership.”

Clearly, there is no single winning strategy for gaining an inexhaustible, qualified flow of traffic, so the only way to find what best fits your business is to test and experiment. During our chat, Ana shared which strategy proved best for her:

If you want to get more detailed info about traffic generation with SlideShare turn to post "Slideshare Traffic Case Study." And this website will help you learn everything about LinkedIn.

What tips and strategies have proven best for your website in terms of increasing traffic? Let us know in the comments.