If you run an Ipswich website, you know traffic is fundamental. After all, you run your website with a purpose in mind. However, you can’t do whatever you’ve set out to do unless you can get people to check out what you can offer them.
As such, you should look up ways to drive traffic to your website if you aren’t seeing the numbers you want.
Check out these six recommendations on how to increase traffic to your website:
Consider how you look for new products and services. Generally speaking, we enter a relevant-sounding phrase into a search engine. Then, we look through the first few results before choosing the one that seems the most compatible with our needs and preferences.
Some of us might be more thorough when looking through the results. Even so, the lower the result, the less chance people will click on it.
This means you want to raise your website’s search result rankings as much as possible. You can do so by practicing search engine optimization (SEO), which means fine-tuning your website to make it as appealing to search algorithms as possible.
Some people choose to do so by targeting the factors that search algorithms look for. Essentially, you want to make your website as pleasing for your intended users as possible because that makes them happy with the search engine that pointed them to you.
Some people have been known to game algorithms, but this has two issues. One, gaming algorithms don’t necessarily make for a pleasing website, meaning you can snag a lead without converting it into whatever it is you’re trying to do.
Two, search engines dislike this, which is why they come down hard on such practices whenever they detect them.
Either way, you want to start by figuring out what keywords you should target. Chances are good you can make some guesses by yourself.
Luckily, you don’t need to because there are numerous tools to handle this part of the process. For instance, Google Analytics can give you a wealth of information on the search phrases people have used to reach you and your competitors’ websites. Naturally, you should target these search phrases.
People use different devices to access the Internet. That means you can’t just design your website for a single device. If you do that, you risk losing everyone who uses other devices because most people won’t put up with that much annoyance without good reason.
Of course, you can’t design a version of your website for every device out there. That would take an absurd amount of effort, particularly since everything’s constantly changing.
Instead, you want to practice responsive web design, which means a website that can automatically adjust itself for a better user experience regardless of the device’s specifications. Failing to do so means losing out on huge swathes of potential visitors.
Your website needs to offer something useful if you want people to visit. For proof, consider the numerous websites that exist to sell the products and services of the businesses that maintain them.
That said, usefulness doesn’t necessarily mean practical usefulness. Being entertaining or otherwise enjoyable is just as good as being practically useful for driving traffic.
If you’re playing the long game, you should know that content is one of the best ways to build your brand. But be careful of the Panda penalty when creating content.
You start by posting useful content on your website. Then, you follow up on that by posting useful content on your website consistently.
The first part gets people to click on your website. Meanwhile, the second part is what convinces them you’re an expert who can be trusted when it comes to your chosen specialization.
Something like posting useful content on a regular schedule might not seem like much.
Even so, it can do wonders for your credibility when you stick to it for months or even years. You want that credibility because you want to build a positive relationship with your visitors so you can reel them back again and again.
Moreover, becoming trusted is how you can convince them to do whatever it is you want them to do in the first place.
Backlinks are a huge marketing boon. They boost your website’s search result rankings, which are always important. Better still, backlinks enable you to borrow someone else’s credibility.
However, Toxic backlinks can damage your reputation.
After all, if someone links to your website, they’re making it known to their visitors. Not every one of those individuals will click on the backlink, but a portion will.
Be warned that you can’t just get backlinks from anymore. Search engines know some people will try to game them by paying for backlinks.
If you get backlinks from low-quality, low-reputation websites, you can expect your website’s search result rankings to sink.
A website doesn’t have to be the only component of your online presence. It’s common for people who run websites to set up social media accounts to complement whatever they’re trying to do with their websites.
This makes sense because social media can serve several marketing goals. For example, they can catch people’s interest before pointing them towards websites for more in-depth information.
Similarly, they can encourage people to develop a sense of community, which makes it much easier for them to continue visiting a website again and again.
Capable social media usage can synergize with a website to perform beyond the sum of these two parts.
You could also consider using Facebook marketing as a tool to bring traffic to your website.
On a related note, you should remember that online and offline marketing can complement one another. For instance, you can use offline marketing methods to convince people to check out your website.
This is particularly useful because the overwhelming majority of the population carries a phone. Thanks to that, they can check out your website in an instant if your offline marketing campaigns convince them that they want to do so.
Besides this, offline marketing methods are also potentially useful for targeting segments of the population you can’t easily reach using your online marketing methods.
That may or may not be worth it, depending on exactly what you’re trying to do with your website.