How to get more visitors to your website?

"BUILD IT, AN THEY WILL COME"

A popular line that was made famous by Kevin Costner in the 1989 movie A Field Of Dreams - A TOTAL FALLACY.

So you have spent countless hours and some serious cash building your new website just the way you always wanted but now the lack of activity has got you despondent. You are not alone!

There is no magic solution, but with some hard work and effort, this can change. We firstly needed to get a better understanding of how the internet & Search Engines work. There are a couple of options to start increasing traffic to your website, paid and free.

I will discuss a few of the options below.

Social Media
Start by creating accounts on all social media platforms and linking them to your website. Create dedicated business pages for each platform and start posting content related to your business or products regularly.

Optimized Content
Ensure that you continuously update the content on the website. Search engines will crawl the website for new content and rank it based on the quality and freshness.Ensure that the title and content indicate the purpose of your post and that it is relevant.

Back Links
Post your content on multiple platforms and link them back to the website. Start engaging in forums and other platforms related to your services or products. List your business on local online directories.

Paid Adverts
Start an advertising campaign on Google Adwords if you want quick results. Ensure that you research the relevant keywords that you would like to rank on Google. An excellent tool to use is the Google Keyword Planner which is available on the Google Adwords platform.

Brand Awareness
Consider handing out flyers or advertising in local publications. Ensure your website is on all your stationery, business cards etc. Visit local businesses to introduce your services and attend meet-ups related to your business.

Word Of Mouth
Create a buzz. Get people talking about your business. Run promotions and market it on social media. Collect review from customers that have used your services and add these to your website.

Monitor Website Traffic
Setup Google Analytics and monitor traffic sources. By knowing where your traffic is coming from, you can manage your marketing efforts more efficiently.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the most critical part of ensuring you increase traffic to the website. Meta tags, internal links, image compression and site speed all affect the performance of the website in search engines. I will elaborate on each of these in a future post.

There is a lot more that we can implement to improve traffic, but this is a start. By implementing all of the above, I am sure that you will see an increase in visits to your website.