Are you running an online business and struggling to attract customers? Or perhaps, are you looking for ways to take your existing traffic up a notch? Look no further because we have got the answer to all your dilemmas right here! As an online entrepreneur, it’s crucial to understand that survival of your business depends on one thing: TRAFFIC. Yes, you read that right! Without enough visitors coming in, there won’t be any sales happening out. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss why traffic is essential for your online business’s success and how you can boost it up like a pro! So gear up and let’s get started.
The survival of your online business depends on traffic.
In the absence of traffic, no one will find your business, let alone give you money. That’s why it’s important to use multiple strategies to attract new visitors and keep old ones engaged and more likely to come back.
We’ll go through five of the best ways to increase your traffic, who’s doing it well, and how you can implement them starting right now.
Create new content and optimize existing content
Since marketers rated content marketing the most important technique for driving sales in 2017, it has become one of today’s most popular marketing tools.
Content marketing, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “marketing that involves the creation of online content that does not promote a brand but stimulates interest in it.”
Content marketing differs from advertising – you’re not promoting your brand, you’re providing value to your audience.
90% of companies used content marketing as part of their overall strategy in 2016.
Social media content, case studies, blogs, reviews, and newsletters are among the most popular forms of content marketing. While it is challenging to compete with Facebook posts, blog articles, and content published every second, providing valuable content will increase your traffic.
A review is a great form of content that you can consistently update, is authentic, and gives potential customers insight into what they can expect.
You can also increase the number of pages on your website that can rank for some of your most important keywords. You can maintain your website’s ranking and continue attracting new visitors by adding new category pages, new blog posts, new visuals, infographics, or videos.
Using tools like SEMRush to track keyword terms and optimize your content, you can improve old content and help those pages rank better by updating it regularly. Remember, Google prefers fresh content to old content.
Keep an eye on your old content as well. Ranking high will always bring you more organic traffic.
Is anyone doing it right?
Using great content and beautiful imagery, Etsy’s blog caters to their target audience. They discuss the latest trends in handcrafting, gift ideas, and news.
Tips from Trustpilot
In order for a piece of content to be valuable, it should have some of the following traits:
- A surprise
- An emotional experience
- Awe-inspiring
- Educative
- It’s relevant
- Practicable
- A unique experience
- Authentic
- A trustworthy company
To drive traffic to your website, consider social advertising
Compared to Google Ads, social advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms is still relatively cheap, and you can target specific keywords and demographics for each platform.
Is social media advertising really worth it?
Paid search ads offer keyword targeting as high as $25 per click for highly competitive keywords. Facebook ads cost on average 27.35 cents per click in 2016.
With social media, you can target the exact customer you’re trying to reach, as opposed to PPC.
Additionally, social media advertising allows you to work within a longer time frame. With an average amount of time spent on Facebook a day of 40 minutes, users are more interested in browsing, reading, clicking, liking, and connecting. By doing so, you can connect with your audience more effectively.
What’s the best way to do it?
What makes this Bustle Facebook ad so effective?
First and foremost, it’s visually striking. Many brands will use a standard Amazon Prime logo, but Bustle’s uses neon lights.
Using “brilliant” in the title is a strong word to describe products, sparking curiosity and making people click while also being consistent with the neon sign image.
There is a very clear CTA (call to action) in the ad. It mentions brilliant and odd products that everyone loves, and can be delivered within two business days.
Is there anything not to love about this?
Tips from Trustpilot
You can target users based on:
- The location
- The age of
- The languages
- Status of the relationship
- Level of education
- Study area
- Attendance at schools
- Recruiters
- Titles of jobs
- Earnings
- Behaviors related to purchases
- Type of mobile device, and much more…
- Increase traffic to your website by speeding it up
Do you think the speed of your website doesn’t matter?
Take a second look.
When considering conversions that directly affect revenue, a 1-second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views and 7% fewer conversions.
Study results from Akamai found that 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds.
Search engines reward websites with higher rankings when they are able to crawl websites faster, and find more relevant content on them.
You need a fast website for better search visibility, better user experience, and ultimately, more revenue.
What’s the best way to do it?
A website speed test conducted by Apple scored 89/100. Apple optimized their image-heavy and feature-rich website to deliver a beautiful user experience without sacrificing revenue. It’s a great example of how an eCommerce site can make you feel like you’re having a fun experience.
Calculate your website’s score using free tools like Pingdom or GTmetrix.
- Here are some tips from Trustpilot
- Here are 10 tips to speed up your website:
- Reduce HTTP requests as much as possible
- Reduce the response time of the server
- Compression should be enabled
- Browser caching should be used
- Resources should be minimized
- Make sure images are optimized for size, format, and Src attribute
- Deliver CSS in an optimized manner
- Content at the top of the page should be prioritized
- Plugins should be reduced
- Redirects should be reduced
4. Optimize your website for mobile and voice searches
What does Google’s Mobile-first index mean for your business’s website this year?
Your ranking position is likely to suffer if your site isn’t mobile-friendly.
It is no longer possible to ignore mobile users when Google says that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing. In the section above, we discussed how important it is to have fast-loading pages, and Google has made it easier to do both.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a new online publishing format similar to HTML, was developed by Google to help speed up web page load times for mobile users.
With AMP, web pages and ads load instantly, giving users a smoother experience on desktops and mobile devices and improving SEO performance.
What’s the best way to do it?
While Buzzfeed’s AMP site still has image-heavy pages that rely on large text and titles, its layout is much more minimal and categories are hidden within other pages, reducing load time and optimizing user experience.
Tips from Trustpilot
Here’s a quick guide to help you choose the right configuration for your website.
Google recommends responsive design over all three configurations:
The simplest and most recommended form of optimization is responsive web design. It uses the same HTML on the same URL and adapts to the device.
When accessed from a mobile device, dynamic serving serves different HTML content based on the URL.
You must keep two separate URLs: one for mobile and one for desktop.
You should inform Google and other search engines once you have implemented one of the configurations so that they can properly rank your site.
Today, people searching for information online are more likely to use voice search and plain language compared to several years ago due to the popularity of virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the audience at Google I/O 2016 that 20% of mobile search queries are voice searches.
This number is only expected to grow as voice recognition software advances. Your SEO should be optimized for voice searches, and you should research conversational queries that may be relevant to your site.
You are losing out on the chance to reach potential customers if you haven’t updated your search strategy for voice search.
Tips from Trustpilot
Businesses can make their content voice search-friendly by following these steps:
The way we talk is different than the way we type. The phrases and keywords we use while speaking to digital assistants are different than those we use when typing in a search engine.
Your frequently asked questions pages are the perfect place to include long-tail keywords. A clear answer to a frequently asked question will have a higher chance of appearing in Google Answers.
It is important to keep your contact information, opening hours, location, and content up to date. Voice search is three times more likely to be local. You are much more likely to appear in the first set of results if someone searches for “Where can I find a coffee shop in London?” If you’re optimised for local SEO, you’re more likely to appear.
As our fifth and final section, we asked HawkSEM, a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles, to share their best tips for ensuring your website’s traffic doesn’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
Don’t forget quality while focusing on quantity
In order to turn qualified leads into conversions, you need a high volume of traffic on your site. However, you also need to get the right kind of traffic.
A mix of paid and organic efforts is often the best way to get “qualified” traffic for your company once you define it.
Paid search, display, and retargeting ads that are more specific will be more likely to attract people who are interested in the products and services you offer. That means your ads and landing pages should:
Your ads should match your landing pages, and both should match what your audience is searching for
You should be clear about who you are targeting (i.e. “first-time homebuyers in San Diego” instead of “homebuyers”).
When possible, use audience segmentation options
It’s smart to focus on lifetime value (LTV) instead of solely on cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per click (CPC), or click-through rate (CTR). LTV is about the big picture effect that one sale has on your business over time with the customer. When you pinpoint what’s bringing in the best quality leads for the long-term, then you can reroute more of your budget if needed — from particular keywords, devices, and times to campaigns, audience segments, and hundreds of other variables. This becomes easier when you compile all your cross-channel ad data into your CRM platform so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
Organic traffic efforts that lead to conversion rate optimization (CRO) still have plenty of options at your disposal when it comes to attracting the right traffic. Creating quality content is one of the best ways to attract the right traffic. Create a library of comprehensive, educational content that provides solutions to your audience’s problems and pain points.
The option is much more beneficial than “keyword stuffing,” which not only appears inauthentic, but also can be penalized by Google. With Google’s recent BERT algorithm update, the search engine can now better understand context when it comes to wording and phrases, so sticking to natural language is also a must.
“Before you write your ads or blogs, you should truly put yourself in the shoes of your target audience,” says HawkSEM CEO Sam Yadegar. “Ask yourself: How is what I’m writing about improving their lives?” Along with this, he adds that researching and doing a thorough analysis of your target personas can help inform the way you communicate with them.
It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to attract your first customer or your 10,000th, generating more traffic to your online store is vital to growing your business. These 5 proven tactics should help you drive more traffic over time.
You can download a free copy of our newest whitepaper below to learn more about how Trustpilot can impact your advertising.
