Check out five low-cost ways to boost your traffic and visibility on the Web.
One of the most perplexing problems when it comes to starting a business: no matter the industry is: how do you get people to visit your new site? Even when you have trendy graphics and great content, you suddenly enter a vast megaverse of competing sites. Fight the temptation to start outright paying for the clicks via Web ads. There are low-cost ways to increase views on any site for any business.
The latest techniques to draw attention to a new company site are relatively simple, but time consuming. Making sure your site is listed at a top position on Google and other search engines takes dedication BUT it really can be done.
1. Focus on keywords, title tags, and headers.
Most of the grunt work for increasing pageviews falls on your development team and the formatting of pages. You have to do the hard work of searching for keywords in your industry (using tools like the Google Keyword Planner). Each page has a URL, title tag, and header tags (like H1). These should all include the keywords.
Get specific by making the keywords three to four words long, Once you have your keywords, make sure you have one great page for each keyword.
Creating one specific landing page on your site for each keyword. So, for example, a party supply company might create a page each for balloons, wrapping paper, posters, etc. You want the landing page to load quickly, be graphically appealing, and allow the user to quickly find what they are looking for.
2. Create vanity linkbait.
This one is slightly controversial, depending on your industry. But I’ve also seen firsthand how this can work. The basic idea is to create pages that are targeted at specific influencers and high-profile experts. Here’s an example: Let’s say your start-up wants to create content around the topic of business plans. One approach would be to create a page with a top 10 list of famous business plans, using strategic keywords and tags. Then, you’d start a social network campaign where you let the influencers at those companies know about the link. Sneaky but VERY effective.
The key, is to keep repeating this over and over again to increase traffic. But don’t forget: the content has to be interesting as well.
Related: 5 Tricks From the Social Media Playbook That Will Make Your Website Stand Out
3. Focus on YouTube as much as Google.
YouTube can be a goldmine–it’s essentially the second biggest “search engine” in the world next to parent company Google. Every company should have at least one YouTube Channel, filled to the brim with SEO terms and links.
YouTube is the most versatile tool in your marketing arsenal, It is easier to rank on YouTube than on Google, and YouTube videos tend to be more socially shared as well.
The result? Google will parse the YouTube content and the crosslinks will drive more traffic to your site.
4. Do way more blogging, Bog, Blog, Blog BLOG!
One of the secrets to increasing pageviews is to have more incoming links, which Google uses to help rank your site. When you write posts on other sites and you link back to your company site, it pumps life into your SEO, social media activity has a similar effect–links on Twitter and Facebook help people find the site but they also create linkbacks that improve search engine ranking.
5. Don’t forget about email marketing.
Maybe you already know how to use MailChimp and have an active email marketing campaign. Still, it’s easy to forget how valuable an email campaign is for increasing pageviews. Emails that reach your customers directly and keep providing points of interest will tempt users back to the site. For example, LinkedIn does this very well with their targeted emails about who has recently looked at your profile, or top newsmakers you may wish to follow. Often your customers need just a quick prompt to return. But always remember to offer some real value.
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