How I Triple (or More) Traffic to my Clients’ Websites

You’ve launched a great new website. Those customers who know your brand love using it, but you’re barely putting a dent in getting new traffic to your site. All your traffic seems to be from the same places it always was, and after the initial excitement wore off the site it returned to its normal levels.

Steady traffic growth is attainable for ANY business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you know your audience, and you understand what they need and how your website will start to fill this gap for them, your traffic can double, triple, or even more.

Quit tearing your hair out trying to figure out how to grow traffic on your website. Do you want more website traffic to fill up your lead funnel? It’s as simple as doing these 3 things.

#3 Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimizationn (SEO or “organic search”) has been around as long as there have been search engines. It may be old hat, but it’s a cornerstone of inbound marketing and it works.

The premise is simple. Search engines get traffic to their sites, and they in turn serve as a directory to get visitors to the content they believe is relevant to them. When you as a site owner manage where and how frequent you put certain terms, you’re more likely to show up for them in a search.

Search engines are motivated to deliver the best possible results. The more traffic they get, the more ad dollars they can potentially generate, and they want to push the best, most consumable and relevant organic content to their front page for this exact reason.

Why it increases traffic

Search is intention-based: the user is always looking for something when they perform a search. It could be information, a product/service, or something else entirely. Knowing what your audience is searching for, you can plan your website content around organic search and open up what will be (for most businesses) your broadest possible source of traffic.

Two key points when it comes to SEO (data from searchenginejournal.com):

• 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search
• SEO has 20x more traffic opportunity than paid search

The moral? Don’t ignore the traffic potential of ongoing SEO. Plan SEO into your website design process.

If SEO is so great, why isn’t it #1?

SEO is #1 in terms of sheer traffic volume, but it’s important to think of SEO as quantity over quality. Ongoing SEO as part of your content marketing strategy has the best shot of bringing you traffic in general, but isn’t always the kind of traffic that’s a serious prospect for your business.

It’s not always easy to influence a search engine to rank a consistent page where you would like traffic to enter, and because the algorithm is secret, there are many variables both known and unknown that go into a final ranking. Furthermore, while your SEO should always use researched keywords, to target those terms people are actually searching for rather than guessing, it’s still untargeted in terms of geography, demographics, and other factors.

Still, with the engagement and sheer numbers of traffic that SEO can bring your website, SEO as key to your content strategy is my #3 recommended way to increase traffic on your site.

#2 AdWords/Paid click traffic

Wait, so what I’m saying is, you invested time and money in building out a great website, and now I am suggesting you put time and money into directing traffic to it?

Yes, I absolutely am.

AdWords, used properly, can boost your traffic significantly. And not just any traffic, you’re paying for highly targeted ad traffic that can be directed to specific resources or points within your website. It can create more immediate points of engagement, designed to get a visitor into the middle or bottom of your marketing funnel more quickly, because you already know certain things about them.

Even better, since many interactions don’t happen on a first visit, why not use AdWords to create an ad that follows your prospective customer all over the web? Those ads boost ad response up to 400 percent (data from cmo.com).

So why shouldn’t I put all my effort into AdWords vs other methods?

Bottom line, AdWords is a great way to get highly qualified traffic to view your site – if you set up the content strategy on the other side of the click. Where I’ve seen the biggest failures are paid clicks that go to a site’s home page or unrelated content page, and do nothing to either add value or direct this new traffic to key points of lead generation.

If you aren’t sure what you’re doing with AdWords, it can grow into a large expense without a return in new leads and business. Still, the quality vs quantity equation makes AdWords my firmly #2 recommended way to increase your website traffic.

#1 Blog(+Email Marketing/Social Media)

If you’re not blogging, start now. Figure out what your customer cares about, how that relates to your business and industry, and just start writing. Write answers to common questions, or how-to guides for best results with your product. This is the #1 best way to improve your website’s traffic and grow it over time.

Blogging has insane benefits to your business and overall marketing strategy. It creates fresh, new content for your customers to engage with. It demonstrates your business’s expertise and audience understanding in ways website content just can’t. It provides an ongoing value to customers and prospects considering doing business with you. It gives you a way to advertise your benefits without outwardly advertising your benefits.

Beyond all that, used alongside a social media and email marketing strategy, blogging can bring tremendous boosts to your website’s traffic in both quantity and quality. Fresh content gives people a reason to tune in and listen, and to become more receptive to your actual marketing messages. Most clients for whom we implement a blogging strategy see the biggest gains over the long-term in website traffic, engagement, and positive perception of the brand.

So what’s the downside?

It’s likely you already know the downside: making the time and sticking with it. Creating consumable, engaging content takes you or your marketing team away from other efforts. Creating regular articles requires routine and discipline, and the ability to think frequently about what your customers will enjoy.

Building an email list and social media presence can take time, too – especially if you’re starting from scratch. But the gains, week after week, that we and our clients have seen when implementing a blogging strategy makes it entirely worth the effort for your marketing team.

Just start taking mental notes in your conversations with customers. Use your blog to answer the top questions that prospects ask your sales team. Give readers guides around common problems that might lead them to work with you in the first place. Provide answers to common objections that come up in the sales process, and use the blog as a tool when working to close those deals. Soon it will become your #1 traffic source, and you’ll wonder how your business went without it.

Get Growing!

Keep the marketing momentum going. Use these 3 tactics right now to see a massive boost in both the quantity and quality of your website traffic. These strategies, used together, are the best ways to see a doubling, tripling, or greater increase in site traffic to my clients’ websites. And before you know it, your site will be a massive online hub for engagement and lead generation.

Are you ready to get started on your traffic strategy? Are there questions you still have about SEO, AdWords, and Blogging? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks very much for reading. I hope you enjoyed the article, and all the best to your success!