Being able to get web traffic is the first step in the online sales process.
There is a lot of web traffic out there for you to get. Obviously you’re looking for relevant traffic. You want your target customer to visit your site, read the content on your site, subscribe and reach out for your services.
The Internet is a very democratic place. In the real world it can be difficult for a small business to compete, but online it’s pretty wide open to anyone that offers the best products and services.
Branding is still important, though, and the big guys definitely have the edge. And that branding can be a source of web traffic from search and social.
But there are still things your small business can do to get web traffic to generate sales.
Here are 10 ways to get the web traffic you need to grow your small business.
1. Blogging
At Ghost Blog Writers we’ve found the best way to develop long-term web traffic is with a business blog. Here are three case studies to prove it:
There are plenty of articles on GBW that discuss starting a business blog. Here are some to get you started:
Blogging breeds organic SEO traffic. You can see the results in the example above. There is some keyword search management involved. You also want to make sure that all your website content is up to par.
2. Social Media Sites
Your blog will develop traffic from three major sources:
- Search
- Social Media
- Direct Referral
Social media is becoming an important web traffic source for businesses.
There are three steps to developing traffic from social media (blogging is part of this process):
- Find Where Your Customers Are On Social Media
- Create Catchy, Viral Social Media Calls To Action
- Manage The Social Media Program
3. Disagree With Industry Leaders
There are pundits for just about ever industry out there.
Search around a little for content in your industry. You’ll probably find a handful of top sources of information. The opportunity for you is that you’ll have experience that goes against what these leaders are saying.
I like this example from Derek Halpern. He went against the online pundits (Content Is King) and said that Design Is King. He not only said this he had proof with research findings that stated that design really mattered for website traffic and success.
Derek got notice for his heretic stance, but he also got a ton of designers on his side and his profile (and web traffic) increased.
4. YouTube Videos
I’ve mentioned a few times that I have a friend that generated traffic and leads for his small business via YouTube. I’m looking into this source as well and will have upcoming GBW video series on a few different subjects.
A few years back Google made a big change in the search rankings to heavily favor YouTube videos.
YouTube itself has also become a huge search engine where people go for all types of content. With great content on YouTube you can generate traffic to your videos and to your brand. When people are interested in learning more about you they’ll come to your website.
5. Guest Content
There are various different ways you can provide guest content on other sites. Guest blogging in particular became a flash in the pan. I could see what was happening and that some people were abusing guest blogging for SEO purposes. Google of course has squashed it because it was a way to alter the rankings in ways that gave non-relevant sites higher rankings. It also put a bunch of junk content on the web.
A while back I wrote about how guest blogging was not about SEO and was actually about web traffic. This position went against what others in the SEO were saying.
If you remove the SEO focus from providing guest content to other sites and audiences you put your focus back on creating great content.
The pay off for you is referral traffic to your site. In order for that to happen your content needs to be great. Gust blogging is one way to do it, but you can also do interviews, provide quotes and offers snippets and tips to publishers for their articles.
6. Service Partnerships
To generate traffic you need to build your audience and that requires tapping into audiences that already exist.
A service partnership is when you combine your service with another to form a package deal and offer to an audience.
Heatmapping service, Crazy Egg, did this by partnering with web hosts. Clients of the web host got a free trial of Crazy Egg when they signed up for hosting. Great tie-in that grew the business and traffic for Crazy Egg.
7. Audience Partnerships
Audience partnerships are another way you can partner with businesses to increase your traffic. This would involve a relationship where you can co-promote each other’s business.
The key to this – if your audience is smaller – is to offer to do more of the work. Find the areas where others have difficult time keeping up like email marketing. Offer another business your help with creating their emails each week or multiple times per week.
In return, ask if you can promote a blog post, study or guide that you’ve created.
You tap into their audience and they can tap into yours because you’ll also want to put something of theirs in your email program.
8. Agree With Your Target Customer
Earlier we talked about how Derek Halpern agreed with designers that Design Is King. The part we discussed was disagreeing with experts, but simply agreeing with your customer is a way to find common ground.
Support what they do and you can find that they’ll naturally be drawn to your content and to your brand.
Common points of view are important to the way humans interact. When we share interests we congregate and connect.
9. Public Relations
We briefly mentioned interviews as guest content. Creating a full on PR strategy is way to increase your traffic.
For PR, you’re looking for publications that need great content to give to their audience. You need to focus on what’s good for those audiences and for the publication. Leave yourself out of it. Share your tips and knowledge.
If you have something to say that’s useful – educational, entertaining, enlightening – you’ll find that people will publish it and quote you leading you to get web traffic.
10. Guest Content (On Your Site)
Finally, you can take on guest content on your site. There are sites built around this strategy – Problogger and Copyblogger. These sites and now businesses have taken guest content for years as a way to generate massive amounts of content.
The key to this is you can’t take on junk content. If you do your entire brand is ruined in the eyes of online users and giants like Google.
Guest posts is only one way to bring on guest content. You can also create forums and build a community on your site where others contribute content. It takes a long time to develop, but if you invest the time it can lead to great rewards in the long-run.
Conclusion
Being able to get web traffic is the first step in the online sales process.
Small businesses have just as much opportunity to generate web traffic as the big companies.
The best way to do that is by foregoing the paid methods for getting traffic and focusing on the ten methods above. With each strategy you’re building assets that will generate traffic for the long-term even if you stop pursuing the avenues.
Image: Flickr