How do we get more visitors to go to our website?
This is a question we get all the time from our customers (and pretty much anyone we talk to!).
The first part of this relates to search engine optimization (SEO), which involves identifying keywords and keyword phrases along with the actual search volume for keywords that are appropriate for your particular business (or organization). Besides this important exercise, there are a wide variety of sources for website traffic beyond Google. This is what we want to focus on in this article.
In the image below you will see that potential website visitors can come from links found in a wide variety of sources. These include (but are not limited to):
Links in emails
Links in podcasts
Links in articles published on the Internet
Links in videos
Links in social media
Links in digital advertisements
Links from your own website or other websites
Let’s run through these to highlight the essentials:
Links in emails
This may be obvious when we think of mass email newsletters we get everyday from pretty much any company we have ever met with, bought something from or asked for a quote/proposal. These include emails sent from platforms like Constant Contact, MailChimp, Salesforce and others.
Less obvious might be links in an individual email in Outlook/Gmail that you get from a customer, client, vendor or new contact. For example, this link might be inserted somewhere within a longer explanation in the email.
However, this link might be found in an email signature block. Every employee should have a signature block included at bottom of all their emails so it’s easy to contact your business.
Links in podcasts
Podcasts are a relatively new form of media and have become widely listened to on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and Pandora. Links in podcasts might be shared verbally during the show or in the description or transcript.
With the widespread popularity of podcasts as a media outlet, these can be very useful to the marketing of any business or organization.
Links in articles published on the Internet
Writing articles and publishing them on websites (and including links back to your website) is a great way to get more visitors to your website. Lots of organizations are open to sharing useful content from their members or that provide some educational value to their audience.
Links in videos
Everyone watches videos these days whether for entertainment, news, education and because sometimes it’s just easier to watch a quick video rather than read several paragraphs or pages of text content.
Take advantage of the popularity of videos by embedding links to your website (or specific landing pages) in a video or in a post accompanying a video.
Links in social media
Grab people’s attention on social media with an eye-popping image, photo or graphic and then add a link back to your website to drive visitors to specific information, useful resources or tools or special offers.
Links in digital advertisements
Whether we like advertising or not, we see them often, and they work. Digital advertising has the advantage of hyper targeting a unique audience right when they are looking for something in particular. This is the perfect time to guide people to a special offer or valuable resource to meet their needs or desires.
With the different types of digital ads available (search, display, video, retargeting, text, etc.), digital advertising has become a truly cost-effective component of virtually every organization’s marketing campaigns.
Links from your own website or other websites
Links are the magic sauce of digital marketing so why not use links from one page to another on your own website to get visitors to content they should see?
Don’t forget that you can also take advantage of website visitors from other websites. This could be a link from a professional association to your website perhaps in a blog article you write or an interview you give. How about from your local chamber of commerce? The university you attended or other organization you support?
You can also get links from similar but non-competing websites. Perhaps you are an electrician, and you work often with a particular contractor, how about asking them to add a link to your website (perhaps in exchange for a link from your website to theirs)?
As you can see, there are many ways to increase visitors to your website. This should be viewed as an ongoing, continual process and will pay off with increased visibility, better brand recognition and more new and repeat customers.
If you have any questions or would like help with your marketing, please reach out for a free marketing consultation. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.