6 Simple Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

As of March 2012, there were 644 million active websites. That’s more than half a billion - in other words, a lot. In this sea of content, images, videos, and social media, it’s easy, as someone with a struggling website, to feel overwhelmed. That said, there is no greater tool your business or brand can have than a website that both promotes your product or service while adding value to your readers’ experience. By generating awesome content and engaging traffic tools to expand your reach, you can boost website traffic while simultaneously establishing yourself as a trustworthy member of the digital community.

Here are 6 quick, creative, DIY ways to improve your website traffic.

1. Optimize your content for search engines

To increase the visibility of your website and boost traffic, incorporate content-rich search words that will earn your site more play in popular search engines. Since much website traffic comes from search engines like Google - especially when a user is discovering your site for the first time - you want to make sure you’re employing simple on-page SEO techniques, like consistently stellar website performance, keyword-rich text and titles, frequent content updates, etc. When incorporated organically, these are great ways to increase your presence in search results and bring more traffic to your site.

2. Improve your social media presence

Your social media outlets should function as an extension of your website. Maintain fun and active Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts that don’t only promote your content, but serve to build up your personality and profile. Become active in social communities that are relevant to your content. In addition, make sure your content is easily shareable by implementing social plugins on your website (Like, +1, and Tweet buttons) in order to increase your site’s visibility on social networks.

3. Get grabby

When sharing your content on social media or in link trades, think about creating titles for your posts and pages that will be more interesting to readers. Check out sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed - they are experts at titles that are creative, honest, and engaging without being sensationalist. We’ve researched and collected some best practices on title length and word choices to determine what kinds of titles generate the most clicks. Think about ways you can implement these best practices to make the content you’re sharing more clickable.

4. Paid traffic

In order to generate high traffic, many websites rely on the pay per click (PPC) model, a form of internet advertising in which the advertiser pays for clicks on their ads, only paying for actual traffic driven to their website. Depending on your budget and industry, this might be a good option for you. If you do want to take your site to this level of visibility, paid content discovery platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook’s PPC platform, and Outbrain Amplify can radically extend your website’s reach and increase your traffic. These content discovery platforms can help extend your reach and bring you a whole new audience that otherwise might not have been looking for you.

5. Find your community

One of the best ways to increase website traffic is to become a hub for your industry. By connecting with other writers, bloggers, and thought-leaders in your field, and forming a virtual community, you will be positioning yourself as a trusted go-to. One way to form real and lasting connections is by prioritizing giving back - ie. employing the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality. Participate in link trades with other related site owners. And don’t only wait for others to notice you: drive traffic to other websites you respect and trust, and be sure to participate in conversations in forums or on social media to establish yourself and your site as a dynamic community member.

6. Provide real value

While all the above techniques may help you to gain new readers, you also need to think about keeping the ones you have - and how to inspire those readers to tell their friends and share your content. Create useful, unique, and timely content that your readers will organically want to share with their friends, and that will inspire those who are site owners or bloggers to link to your content. These links are a great organic way to improve your SEO. Use videos and images when appropriate to provide a more dynamic reader experience. Proof your content for grammar and spelling, and reveal your unique voice, point of view, and expertise. Word-of-mouth is still one of the most trusted ways to boost website traffic, and to generate this level of engagement, your website needs to focus on providing real value - both entertainment and educational - to your audience.

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3 Improved Ways to Reach the Modern Target Audience

In one of my previous marketing class, I had to draft up an individual profile that would be representative of a certain brand's target audience. I had to include the age-range of this consumer, where he lives, what he likes to do, what his profession is, and include a picture of what this consumer would look like.

This detailed description can provide your inbound marketing team with a clear vision of its target customers. In the practice of traditional marketing, this target audience was commonly reached by deciding what TV shows they watched to determine where to place TV advertisement, figuring out what kind of music they listened to determine which radio stations to focus radio commercials, and knowing what they enjoyed reading so print ads were published in the right newspapers or magazines. 

But haven’t you heard? These techniques are outbound, ineffective, and immeasurable! People are recording their favorite TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials, jamming to their favorite music on ad-free iPods, and reading content online. It’s crazy town—but as a marketer, you have to be a part of it.

So let’s take a look at these 3 distinct differences between how marketers used to reach their target audiences, and how they must reach them today.

1. Find Them Online

Then: Conventional efforts to reach your audience included knowing where these consumers resided so that you could reach them geographically. That way, you knew if you should be paying for a suburban newspaper ad or an urban newspaper ad. 

Now: Marketers must find where these people are online. Perhaps your audience flocks more toFacebook than Twitter, or maybe they are more concentrated in an industry-specific social network. As a marketer, the time and effort you spend on these networks should reflect that. Be present and participate where your audience is participating. Use analytics to guide you: take advantage of Facebook Insights, use Twitter analytics like Bit.ly, and implement other tracking tools to monitor traffic and leads from these sites to determine what is effective and how you should be allocating your time.

2. Be Part of the Conversation

Then: When you talk about customer service before the internet and social media, people would wait in long lines, sit on the phone for hours, or fill out complaint forms. You would then give them a muddled response or sometimes just blow them off because hey, it’s only one person, right?

Now: Wrong. Anything negative about your company is now easily transmittable through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social networks. Businesses must not only monitor their brand and be prepared to respond at any moment to these complaints and clear the virtual air, but also be engaging with prospects and customers online in general. Join groups and discussions on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other online sites where people are discussing a topic relating to your product or service. Use Google Alerts and social media monitoring software to monitor conversations about your brand. Participating in these dialogues by sharing your opinion and providing answers to questions will show your audience that you care.

3. Change the Way You Communicate

Then: The marketing world used to solely be a one-way communication-based industry. As a campaign was executed, some PR or media relations specialist would take the story your brand described and pitch it to traditional media outlets in your target market. The hope would be that it would get picked up and covered in the media so your target audience could see what you were all about. What people thought, or how many people even the read story, was left to circulation numbers—which isn’t the best method of measuring your reach. Let's face it: not everyone who purchased that magazine or watched that broadcast necessarily paid attention to that particular story.

Now: Communication is now two-way and asymmetrical. Brands are engaging with prospects and customers through social media and telling their stories through business blogging. Getting media attention is still important, though many articles and broadcasts are now posted online. This allows marketers to clearly analyze and better understand what their audience's reactions are with online marketing analytics that report on comments, traffic, inbound links, leads, etc.

Use Google's Keyword Tool (or if you’re a HubSpot customer, our Keyword Grader tool) to conduct keyword research and unveil what your target audience is searching for in relation to your product or service. Then, talk about it. Create blog posts that contain content your target audience wants, and don’t feel the need to limit it to just text. If your audience hates to read but sits on YouTube all day, then you should have a series of videos for them to watch that answers their questions and keeps them engaged. If your audience has an even shorter attention span, perhaps a quick infographic or cartoon that catches their eye is what you should be producing.

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Get Free Targeted Traffic To Your Site

I mentioned in my last post that my traffic is all organic, and highly targeted... and that my traffic continues to climb at a steady rate.

If you missed that post see 2012 Advertising Rates which shares my 2011 traffic stats.

Would you like to get that same kind of free targeted traffic to your site?

I'm sure you would! So follow along - I'm going to outline exactly what I do, what Idon't do, and how you can duplicate my results for yourself. 

If you looked at my stats, then you can tell my site obviously wasn't affected by theGoogle Panda update. Click that link and read that article (again, if you already have) as it gives you a basic blueprint for post-panda site success.

How To Achieve Massive Traffic Growth

First, let's talk about what I didn't do last year to get well over half a million unique visitors (666,014) to this blog alone - not including any of my other properties.

I did not do any major article marketing, outsourcing or link building.

I also did zero PPC campaigns or paid advertising.

Those are all good marketing strategies to consider, especially when your site or blog is newer and you're just starting out. I'm simply pointing out that I did not actively engage in any of those things during 2011 myself...

How I DID Get So Much FREE Targeted Traffic

It's important to note that as of March 2012, I have been blogging for 6 full years on this domain. Prior to that it was on blogger, so I've been blogging consistently for almost 8 years now.

This affects traffic in two ways: 1) the search engines consider you an authority on your topic and/or your domain gets well established in the major search engines, and 2) you build up a readership, a mailing list and a loyal following over time.

Success is not going to happen overnight, no matter what those big red headlines promised you. Be ready to invest in your online business long-term.

Here are the specific things I did to increase my traffic dramatically:

• Blog Consistently
• Proper Web Page Optimization for every page/post
• Some Guest Blogging - when I had time 
• Creating Solid Content That Gets Shared
• Engaging With My Readers
• Active on Social Media Channels
• Add Social Media Share Buttons so readers can share content

Is It Really That Simple? Yes.

I know you probably expected a detailed blueprint giving you a million things to add to your task list. It's really not that complicated. The key to getting free targeted traffic to your site is really as simple as this:

Write great content. Address your market's needs & wants (via keywords & responses). ENGAGE with them. Make it easy for your readers to share your content (for you!). And be consistent until your readership is solid and your site/blog is well established in the search engines.

That pretty much sums it up...

These are the same marketing strategies I am using on my two newer blogs (my video blog and my low carb blog) to get free targeted traffic, including the strategies I listed earlier that I didn't actively do for ClickNewz last year.

I hope that proves inspiring and helpful. 

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How to Get Targeted Traffic to Your Website

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   Publish articles around your keywords on as many sites as possible. There are quite a few article sites that have articles you can use or edit for your needs. Then there are article submitters that will place your article on a bunch of sites at once for you.
   Ad
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   Consider starting a 'webzine'. There are also webzines,(online-magazines), that specialize in articles, and have large memberships that will possibly read your article and hopefully follow a link to your site that you place with the article. Using this method causes links to your site from the sites you've put it on and results in more traffic.
   • Be wary of content farms. Google search is not nice to them.
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   Another great way to get traffic is to join the social sites. They are popping up at an ever-increasing rate. By socializing with others on the net through these sites, everything you join or participate in gives you more people to see your site. And, if you're selling stuff from your site, you'll want to go to the places (interest groups) on the social site where people are interested in what you're selling.
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   Distribute an E-book all over the Internet with your links in it. These can be made quite easily with software you can get by searching on Google or by checking at the bottom of this article for a link. These can also be put on social sites and webzines for them. Again, wherever you put them causes a link back to your site.
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   Set up a blog. These are a very good method for getting traffic to your site and they are free. You can start one at one of many free blog sites. Then you set up a feed for content and then go to other blogs with the same topics or fields of interests and read and comment on their articles. As well a lot allow you to post your article which gives you more traffic.
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   Have a Press Release. There are sites that will send a news type story about your new product or info on your site to a lot of other sites. Some of these are pay sites though, so you have to watch out.
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   Use Google. Google Adwords is the most popular method for traffic. Since they are the top search engine right now it make sense to advertise there if you can afford it. You bid on keywords to get your site at the top of the search when your keyword comes up. There is more involved but it's all laid out at Google. There are a lot of other sites that use this advertising strategy called pay per click or PPC.
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   Submit your site to search engines. Another popular way of getting traffic is with a search engine submitter, where a site will send your link to many search engines at once for a price. The more search engines you want to be on, the higher the price. There are a few free programs you can use but they usually don't submit to too many at once.
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   Buy leads from a lead selling site. These are supposed to be email addresses of people that have signed up to receive offers. You just have to watch that they have good fresh "double opting" leads of people who requested more information about your particular field or you could be marked as a spammer. Some of these sites will email them for you with your own email or you can buy separate leads and use a separate email site for the mailing. There are email programs you can use but then you have a problem that Internet providers usually only allow up to 500 emails per day, and if you're doing it every day they might (rightfully) accuse you of spamming and shut down your connection.
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