There are 227,636,000 internet users in the USA and 1.73 billion internet users worldwide. With the large scale adoption of broadband and mobile web, the internet is becoming a dominant place for marketing and promoting a business–quickly eroding print ads and TV.
There are a lot of ways to promote a website. The point of this article is to outline a few, but this will by no means be an exhaustive list. However, this article will outline some very helpful tools, techniques and factors for building web traffic and promoting a business online. We would like to outline both paid and non-paid options for traffic building, as well as list some tools and apps for each.
Content
As Google has famously put it: “content is king.” Perhaps one of the most important factors in building strong traffic is content. You need to provide a reason for visitors to come and stay. Try to provide genuine value to readers–make them want to come back. A lot of SEO companies try to focus on promoting websites by focusing on what search engine robots are looking for. Although understanding ranking factors is very helpful to both PPC marketing and natural search engine results, it is content that will make or break a web campaign. Do not under estimate valuable content.
For example, when you write, try to think of yourself as a reader–do not just focus on the end result. Think about providing something useful. If you are writing just for the web, try to not use run on sentences for instance… as most people just scan the web for useful content… Readers will focus on content after scanning and making an initial decision about whether it is useful to them.
Tips for improving content
- Make it readable: Help fight scan by making content more legible and easy to read. Don’t use run-on sentences or huge paragraphs of text. It will scare away readers.
- Create an intro statement or captivating lead: try to grab readers early in your work.
- Structure your content so it makes sense and does not feel like an endless sea of jargon.
- Write for humans not robots… don’t just focus on trying to get high search results… make your content useful, interesting or fun.
- Be specific: It can be very helpful when presenting an idea to use examples or make the idea tangible for a reader.
- Find a voice: On some websites, it can be very helpful to be yourself–be personal and write TO the readers… let your personality come out. Granted, not all sites, need a big personality, but in some cases readers will love you for it.
Understand what your website is about
This simple statement can easily be overlooked, but overlooked to the detriment of the website owner. Try to think about the core purpose of your website: whether it be to promote your business, give info about your services or build a relationship with your users. Fulfill this purpose. Don’t just try to drive traffic without refining the focus of your site and questioning whether your users will immediately understand the purpose of your site or page.
Repeat visitors
Of course content will drive repeat visitors to your site. There are other very valuable techniques for building a repeat visitor base.
- Content Depth: Your website should have enough content to warrant a single visit. It is funny cause this site could use some more content… but this is in progress… we promise.
- Fresh and new content offerings: Publish new pages and offer new content. Visitors will come back to see what is new.
- Design and resources: Beyond just content, your site needs to be attractive. Design can be crucial. If you have a terrible design, visitors won’t bother taking a look. A site with great design, can attract visitors even if the site has bad content. The visitors won’t stay or return if the content is awful though. Also, offering resources on your website can power user interest and generate user based referrals, which is an ideal for of promotion.
Free Tools To Drive Traffic To Your Website
- Forums or message boards have helped a lot of tech companies promote their websites and services. For example, if you find a forum where users are asking questions, offer an answer. Help them out. Your response will be read and by adding a signature or clue to your website, you can drive free traffic. One forum you could start with is eConnect by Entreprenuer Magazine:
- Blogs and Blog conversations are a great way to meet new bloggers and build a solid reputation. This can do a lot for your website. It can help build links and provide you more visibility. Don’t spam your comments to other blogs… really try to build a conversation about useful or real topics.
- Newsletters can build controllable and long term traffic. Often a sign-up box on your website and offer a quality newsletter. Provide a few links in your newsletter to your website that expand upon topics that you introduce in your newsletter.
- Surveys can help if you are unsure about what topics interest your readers. Simply ask them to offer suggestions or vote on articles, topics or stories. This will make them advocates for your content and help you personalize your site around your readers.
- Social media and social networking tools can be huge for small business marketing as it evens out the playing field between big businesses and small companies. Facebook, Twitter, Digg and the huge selection of great and funs applications and social networks can drive lots of targeted and interested traffic to your website.
- Link building: Although some types of link building can be frowned upon by Google and in some cases even hurt your status within Google and other search engines. Building links from related content websites is vital to build your website’s strength and prominence within search engines. Try using a blog to link to good articles from niche blogs or small business blogs. Web design companies especially need to take an active role to market their services since competitors are equally versed in the benefits of online marketing. Your generosity coupled with a sincere interest in having a dialogue on specific topics can be rewarded by incoming links. Also, the discussion of great content (above) feeds into link building as you make your website more useful to visitors. Also, it doesn’t hurt to simply write to a website from their contact form and request a reference link if they find your page interesting and useful. There are a ton of options here, but as I mentioned this article won’t be exhaustive.
Social Networking Websites And Mobile Apps To Use For Driving Traffic
- MySpace
- Digg
- Mixx.com
- StumbleUpon
- Delicious
- Readit
- Google Buzz
- Link Ninja
- And on..and on…and on.
I highly recommend that you follow the rules stated above for quality content and do not spam within social networks. Social network user can be quite sophisticated and do not reward spam content. Being useful or interesting or helpful can go a long way.
Paid Traffic Building
There are a number of forms of paid traffic options for businesses out there. Google has built it’s empire off of small, streamlined text ads that run along side it’s free services that focus around search. Many content producing websites offer a broad range of advertising options for businesses, which can be priced based on impressions, ad rotation timing or cost per click. Even the New York Times has offered a small business ad channel called Self service advertising that costs 50 dollars minimum per day with a total budget minimum of 250 dollars.
Always remember to measure, measure and adjust using web analytics! If you wish to go with a free analytics tool, you could always try Google Analytics which provides site traffic monitoring services that provides enterprise level service. Adjust your ads, content, design and site layout over time as you measure visitor response using an analytics program. This will help you perform better in the long run and build better quality traffic and gain maximum exposure online.