Your website is the go-to place for information that you want your potential customers to find out about your business. From the products and services you offer to customer reviews about you, these are the things which separate you from the competition and win your customers over. However, people need to be able to find this information online first, which is why you should do everything you can to drive visitors to your website.
In this blog post, I’m going to share with you 20 ways that will help you achieve this.
1. On-page SEO
Search Engine Optimisation encompasses a range of different techniques and methodologies used primarily to drive traffic to your website. On-page SEO revolves around content on your website, and how you ensure this is optimised to target your chosen keywords.
Publishing quality, regular content and optimising heading tags, page titles, meta descriptions and images correctly will help increase rankings for your target keywords, which should improve your exposure online and result in more visits to your website.
2. Pay Per Click / AdWords
Pay Per Click advertising is an alternative to organic SEO, with the most commonly used method being Google AdWords. It allows you to appear more clearly on search engines with little work required for your choice of keywords. Budgets are set and advertisers will pay every time a user clicks on an ad, or sees the ad, depending on the setup of the PPC campaign.
If you want to drive traffic through PPC, you need to optimise your ads to stand out from the rest, but be aware that there are some unwritten rules in the world of Pay Per Click on how to write your ads. You should avoid things like:
- CAPITALISING YOUR WHOLE AD
- Overusing punctuation!!!!!!
- Capitalising Every Word In Your Ad Unnecessarily
Keep your text ads well written, enticing, with good call to actions, and you should be driving targeted traffic directly to your website.
3. Banner Advertising
The term ‘banner advertising’ was born in 1994, when the first web magazine Hotwired, needed a way to pay their writers. There were examples of similar things used before ’94, but the term ‘banner advertising’ dates back to the Hotwired team.
So, 1994 was a long time ago, but don’t let this put you off – banner advertising is still a commonly used advertising method, used by some of the world’s biggest companies.
Banner ads are a great way to drive traffic to your website. Place them strategically on sites that your target audience are likely to visit, and make sure the content on the ad is relevant and interesting to your viewers. Complete this with a great look and feel and you’ll be driving traffic straight back to your site.
4. Retargeted Marketing
Have you ever been browsing online shopping sites for a particular product, then go to Facebook and see adverts for the same type of product? This is not by coincidence, this is retargeted marketing. It isn’t just Facebook that offers this, it can be done through AdWords, and through individual companies that offer this as a service.
It’s set up using cookies which can tell when a user has been on your website and what they have been looking at, and then uses this information to feed ads to them that include relevant content that they have shown previous interest in. This is, therefore, a very targeted method of advertising and in turn produces a high return on ad spend.
So, by setting up retargeting cookies and producing good quality ads for users, you are likely to drive targeted traffic back to your website.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing involves a broad range of internet users, that can help drive traffic to your website, and similarly to banners ads, is a long-standing method. Affiliates often used to consist of deal sites and voucher sites, such as Wowcher and Groupon, but nowadays bloggers are stepping into the spotlight of affiliate schemes.
If you have a product that you want to get out into an affiliate scheme, bloggers are a great way of doing this. They often give honest reviews to a real audience, and a good review of your product from an influential blogger will be bound to drive their users to your site.
6. Guest Blogging
Many large, content based sites offer a guest blogging section, in which you can write content for their blog, have it checked by their admins, and if it is suitable and high-level content, they may choose to upload it. This is beneficial for both parties, as content is king, so these blogs get good quality content for free, and the guest poster often gets their work seen by more users than they could on their own site.
Some examples of guest bloggers in the digital industry include:
So, create some good quality content, find blogs that attract a lot of traffic and have a good domain authority, and start guest posting. The blogs that accept posts will often link to your website with an author bio too, which will send people to your site.
7. Email Marketing
The first ever email was sent in 1971, so we’ve had plenty of time to learn about them. In 1978 the first mass email was thought to have been sent by Gary Thuerk, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s that email marketing was being used more commonly.
Although this all happened a long time ago, email marketing is still a hugely popular method of marketing used by most companies, in the form of newsletters and more.
Tools such as MailChimp are out there to help you with your email marketing campaigns, which allow you to manage your lists of subscribers, send out email campaigns and view analytics and performance of your campaigns. If you can effectively advertise your business in your email marketing campaigns, using great and useful content within aesthetically pleasing adverts, then you have a great chance of driving customers to your website through these emails.
We also offer a great email newsletter creation tool called MailZappa.
8. Social Media
We all know the importance of social media to any business with an online presence, as the world is becoming more and more attracted to social media and the endless possibilities within.
You can use social media to drive traffic to your website through posting links directly to your site from your social media channels, with relevant content attached that is enticing and makes the reader want to click your link.
Ways to do this are:
- Post your new blog article with a small snippet and a link directly to the blog
- Post a new product/service that you offer on your website, linking to the page
Your social media followers will see these types of updates and be interested to find out more, leading to good quality traffic being drawn to your site.
9. Competitions and giveaways
We have all seen (and probably taken part in) competitions and giveaways online, often seen on social media, such as “Share this post for a chance to win free tickets!”.
This is a great marketing technique to bring more exposure to your business and build up your following. It is also likely to bring your viewers attention to your products, so even if they do not win the competition, there is a high chance that some of the people that have joined the competition will navigate their way to your website to see you’re the products or services you are offering.
However, on Facebook, they are now running an algorithm that will demote posts that ask for likes, shares etc. As they are trying to phase out what they consider “engagement bait”. You can read more about this here. So, running competitions may be better away from Facebook, on other social media sites, or away from social media all together.
10. Build a reputation known for excellence
This holds similar features to the previous point, however, in this point, you will be driving users directly to your site through admiration for your products/services and a direct want for what you have to offer.
This again is a point that relates to running your businesses as well as possible, through great customer service and great products, you will build a name for yourself and your brand. By doing this, people will go directly to your website looking for your products and services and this is the most targeted traffic as they are looking for you specifically.
11. Referrals
There is no solid way of gaining referrals from your previous customers, other than doing what you should always be doing, which is providing the best products and services, coupled with fantastic customer service.
Simply running your business as well as you can and treating your customers well can lead to them telling friends and family about the things you offer, this is great as it is a good review from somebody they trust. However, this is essentially just doing your best and hoping that your customers will refer your business, there is no certainty.
12. Directories
With this method of driving traffic, you should err on the side of caution, as doing this excessively can damage your websites SEO. Listing your website on directories is a simple process, and often just requires your company details, but can be improved with images and shop opening times for example. Uploading to high quality and trusted directories will be beneficial to your website in terms of SEO and driving targeted traffic as these users will be searching for your products/services.
There are several high-quality directories such as:
However, getting listings on lots of low quality, spammy directories is likely to damage your SEO, so be careful when you are choosing the directories to use, check their domain authority to be sure they’re a trusted site.
13. Marketplaces
Marketplaces are similar to directories, but offer a different service to businesses, and are not available to as many businesses.
Marketplaces are things such as Hotels.com which is, of course, an industry-specific example, but the point still stands across other marketplaces.
Generally, these marketplaces will attract customers that are looking for good deals on particular things, hotels for example. They may even book their first experience with your business directly through this marketplace, which does not drive traffic to your website. However, after using your services/products they will be likely to return to your business again, but this time it is more likely to be directly through your own website, and it will be very targeted traffic, with a high chance of conversions.
14. Review Sites
Review sites are a service that you can put your website on and give your customers and users an opportunity to rate and review your services.
Examples of these are Feefo and TrustPilot.
This helps drive traffic to your website because there tends to be a link to your website on the review sites. Also, because users will see your company and its reviews, and providing that you have been given good reviews by your previous customers, you have a great chance to drive targeted and hopefully already impressed users to your website. Which means there’s a good chance of making more conversions. So, you just need to keep your customers happy and make sure they’re reviewing you well and you’ll be receiving great traffic.
15. Comparison Sites
A great way to drive traffic to your website is to get included on comparison sites, there are many different types of comparison sites, such as hotel comparisons, insurance comparisons and general products.
And everyone’s favourite TV advert, Go Compare.
With sites like Which? you can search for the type of product you want, and they will send back a wide range from many different companies, with prices and reviews etc. This will drive very targeted traffic to your site if users choose your product, as they are actively searching for the product you are selling. So, just keep your product/service competitive and make users want to choose it, and you will have great traffic and a good conversion rate through comparison sites.
16. Awards
Attending awards is a great thing for all aspects of a business, gaining great exposure and getting a chance to get one over on your competitors, which is always nice. It’s also a great chance to drive traffic to your website for several reasons.
Firstly, before the awards, there will often be pages on the website for the contenders of the awards with details about them and sometimes a link back to the company website. This is the first opportunity for people who are interested in the awards to see your page, and possibly come to your site.
Also, after attending the awards (and hopefully winning some) you will have gained great exposure for your business, and people will want to find out more about you. And where do you go when you want to find out about a business? Their website.
Award sites such as Awwwards are also a great way to share your web design projects with other users, which will draw great traffic to your website if they are impressed with your work.
17. Exhibitions & Networking
Exhibitions and networking events are a great offline way to drive traffic to your website, through exposing your brand to other businesses and potential customers. This is done very well at these types of events as the majority of people that are attending are there for the businesses.
18. Press Release
Using press releases is another offline method that can lead to gained traffic to your website. Normally, your business will have to do something to warrant a press release, for example, some charity work in the local area.
By gaining exposure through press releases you are liable to gather traffic from people that have read these press articles and are interested in finding out more about your business.
19. Direct mail marketing
Direct mail marketing existed a long while before the internet was created, specifically, the term “direct marketing” was defined in 1967 by Lester Wunderman. However, direct marketing and the internet have evolved a long way since Wunderman, and the two can work very well in harmony together.
You can use direct mail marketing to drive traffic to your website by giving them information on the leaflets/flyers, regarding products or services or what you are offering. However, obviously you cannot buy directly from a flyer, therefore the receiver will have to visit your website if they are interested, which is a very well targeted potential customer, that gauges a clear interest in using your products or services.
20.Establish a fan base
This method ties in with social media in some senses, as often when businesses build a fan base, they tend to be social media follower/subscribers. However, it tends to bring traffic to your website in a different way.
As normal use of social media is to entice users into coming to your website for products/services. Whereas, when it comes to having an online fanbase, they will come to your website out of choice, as they are fans, not just followers.
These fanbases can also exist in forums and dedicated websites etc, but they all certainly will bring traffic to your website, if you can build a good group of fans.
So, there you have 20 ways to drive traffic to your website. Having tried, tested and succeeded with many of these methods here at Next Pixel, we’re confident that you too can produce successful marketing campaigns using these methods. Read more here on how we can help transform your online strategy.
