How to promote your website and drive visitors to your site

You’ve done a lot of hard work and your website’s finished. It looks spectacular. But no-one’s seen it…. How do you go about finding your audience? You need to keep on top of it if you want to increase website traffic and raise the profile of your site up the ranking lists.

Remember that your website has two audiences, people and search engines. You must ensure your site is attractive to both. If the search engines don’t like you then your website will rank low and it will rarely be found in searches. You must pay attention to all SEO tips and helpful tools. There are too many to list and it’s an ever-changing arena. The most important thing to remember is that there are no real shortcuts. Search engine algorithms are forever being refined to identify cheats and to reward informative and comprehensive content. Your second audience is the real audience, people. Your website must deliver what they want and be attractive – there’s plenty more sites on the web so you don’t get long to impress.

So make sure:

1. The content contained within the site is robust and informative
2. There is a clear call-to-action for visitors to take – for example call, enquire, download, email us, add to basket etc.
3. There’s a provision – and procedure – in place to follow up all enquiries and calls

Once the above criteria have been satisfied, attention must focus on driving relevant people to the website.

There are a number of ways to do this and the great news is that all the initiatives are measurable, which is becoming increasingly important in the current climate when every marketing penny is scrutinised.

Content, content & content

By far the most important way of attracting traffic to a website is up-to-date, relevant and interesting content. Your content will attract visitors. And improve your rankings in the search engines. Adding new content regularly is vital to show that the site is not dormant.

Tell people

Make sure your website address is incorporated within all marketing communications, particularly if you want to provide more information to support an advert or campaign, or filter leads and enquiries. Reference the website in all marketing literature, including advertising campaigns, flyers, leaflets, emails (include the site address in your signature), customer correspondence, business cards, compliment slips and so on.

Electronic newsletters

Offering a regular electronic newsletter from the website is a good way to:

1. Provide regular updates to both new prospects and existing customers
2. Obtain direct enquiries for new products and services

However, a commitment must be made to:

1. Maintain email lists, removing incorrect addresses and unsubscribers
2. Provide regular, useful information targeted to the customer base
3. Ensure emails have clear relevant calls to action. There is no point in emailing someone to have them visit a site just to capture their email address again, for example
4. Provide relevant information to generate good quality leads, as with all communications
5. Communicate to both new and existing customers – existing customers may not be aware of other products/services you provide

Email updates can be a very cost effective way of communicating to customers on a regular and meaningful basis. It’s important to stay ahead of your customers even when you are not selling them something.

News items and keywords

Unfortunately people don’t always search for the actual products we would like them to. Therefore, determine how to attract appropriate leads by recognising the terms that people are currently searching for and include these search terms in all news items, from blogs and press releases to product updates.

Articles, blog posts and news items are a good source of content, so attract both target customers and search engines with related information that can then link to product areas. However, if you commit to providing a news section or blog you MUST commit to maintaining it regularly. Nothing will turn someone off quicker than an out of date site. News could include copies of marketing material already used, or the company’s stance and commentary on industry developments.

Inbound links 

Quality inbound links to the site are a good way to improve your rankings in the search engines. Irrelevant, low quality links are seen as spammy and can have a negative impact on the search rankings. So ensure you build inbound links from appropriate sites such as industry websites or directories.

Google Adwords   

With pay-per-click ads, it’s essential to have a clear view of your target visitor – and have the right content on your site to turn those click-throughs into leads. Otherwise it’s like paying for Yellow Pages advertising but not answering the phone calls the ad generates.

Organic search 

By increasing inbound links and including targeted long tail keywords in your copy you can improve the chances of your site appearing in the organic listings on the search engine results page. The target is always to get into the top 10 so you appear on the first page. Depending on the popularity of your key words this can be quite a challenge.

Sites appearing at the top of natural search have been determined ‘most appropriate and relevant’ for your search based on their actual content and information. So make sure your site is one of these.

These are just a few simple, cost effective ways to drive traffic to your website as well as a few things to be aware of in the changing digital marketing landscape.

Find out more about driving traffic to your site.