10 Proven Strategies To Increase Traffic To Your Website
In today’s busy world, having an online presence is a valuable asset. However, attracting new, unique visitors to your website can be challenging especially with so many competing sites to choose from. Therefore, you must be unique–somehow stand out from the rest. There are several ways to spice up your content and encourage new visitors, while still maintaining past ones to keep visiting. The following are ten powerful strategies that you can use to increase your traffic.
1. Content is King
Imagine if your website was “favoured” by the big three mammoths, Google, Yahoo and Bing? Now imagine other webmasters linking to your articles from their websites, newsletters or social networks without asking them? To achieve these goals, you must supply your website with high-quality, relevant and useful content on a weekly basis that your target audience will simply eat up!
Here’s a big tip: Re-purpose your content so that it can be accessible from multiple platforms. The following are several techniques you can use:
* Superior Copy– From experience, I can honestly say that one high-quality article can attract more traffic than twenty poorly, written articles any day of the week! Been there….done that! So it definitely pays to have good copywriting skills. However, you can always outsource this task to professional writers at iWriter.com, Elance.com or Fiverr.com.
* Convert your article into a Powerpoint presentation – Turn each main point of your article into separate slides. Once you have created your presentation, you can submit it to sites such as Slideshare.net, Authorstream.com, Slideburner.com and Slideboom.com.
* Convert your article into a video– Utilizing the article slides that you created above, you can now use these and create an entertaining video! Simply go to Animoto.com, paste your slides into their proper order and add some music from the Animoto music library. After creating your video, you can now submit it to video sites such as YouTube.com, Google Video, and Metacafe.
* Convert your article into a tutorial – Using your same article, transform it into a step-by-step “how to” tutorial and submit it to sites like eHow.com and Tutorialized.com.
2. Hold The Presses
Press releases are the perfect source for high page rank, one-way backlinks and massive traffic! In addition, if you optimize your press release correctly, you can easily achieve #1 rankings for your chosen keywords on Google News, Yahoo and Bing. This technique alone can bring your website server-blasting, targeted traffic in record time!
One of the most important steps for a successful press release is choosing the right keywords for your particular topic. The best way to find your keywords is by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You will be using these keywords in your headline, first paragraph and last paragraph.
There are a number of good press release services that you can use such as PRlog and PRWeb. But if you want maximum exposure for your hard work then I highly recommend Webwire.com. Simply click the “Register” link within the “Customer Login” box and you are ready to rock and roll!
3. Prioritize Your Website
Remember, that the window of a store is the most important part. Design is incredibly important for visitors. A website that is unorganized and has no clear direction will be a disaster for attracting new users as well as frustrating current visitors. View the website in layers or in a hierarchy. Create a structure, something that is simple to understand and navigate. Make and publish a sitemap, which will help maximize your website for searches and Google.
4. Find Out What Your Audience Wants
Successful businesses are ones that connect with their audiences. Find ways to get feedback and find out exactly what your viewers want! You can do this by implementing polls and surveys that can be completed quickly and efficiently. These types of formats show your readers that their opinion counts and you actually care! You can use this information to create a valuable product.
Now, if you are looking for a more passive way to find out what your visitors prefer, measure the response rate to one type of content and compare it to others. Usually, visitors are fairly vocal about their preferences, so this can often be an extremely easy task. Also, don’t stop with just one survey. Continually, feed and learn from your audience. The perfect website to accomplish this feat is SurveyMonkey.com.
5. Features and Contests
Having a weekly feature such as a weekly recap, a summary, or a contest that your audience will find interesting is extremely important. While this will vary depending on your website, it’s a great way to keep people coming back. Consider having a contest as well. Running a contest dramatically increases website traffic and can be used to build brand awareness.
6. Mix it Up
Generating relevant and “audience attracting” content for a website can be challenging, especially if you are the only person responsible for the content. Look for other contributors who will give your website a different spin. For example, well-known bloggers often ask related niche webmasters and friends to write guest posts or contribute some other multimedia. You can create an inviting guest blogging page that will draw in a lot of potential partners who would love to contribute content to your site.
7. Transform Your Website Into A Podcast
This is a great idea not being utilized by your competitors. You can easily turn all of your blog pages’ RSS feeds into a podcast by using a free service at Odiogo.com. Now, if you don’t have a blog, don’t worry. If you have a website or ecommerce store, you can use the free service at ReadTheWords.com. You can convert your PDFs, Word files, reports and content into a podcast in approximately two minutes.
8. Create and Submit A QR Code
Okay, you may be wondering what is a QR code and how will this benefit my website. Good questions! QR (short for Quick Response) is a barcode consisting of small dark squares such as the photo to your left. This code contains the content about your website and can be scanned and read by any smartphone. This is a HUGE marketing strategy for any website owner because the latest statistics have proven that over 50% of internet access originates from a smart device.
Don’t be left behind! Get your QR code now!
To create your free code, go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com. Simply enter your website’s URL and click “Generate”. You can now download your unique QR code and place it on Facebook and your website just as I did at the bottom of this page.
The second step is to submit your QR code for traffic generation. Go to http://wtfqrcodes.com/submit, click “browse” and go to the location on your computer where you stored your code. Next, write a short blurb about your website in the caption field. This is a perfect place to create a one-way link back to your website within the caption field. Accept their terms of submission, enter your name, and email and click “Submit”. That’s it…you’re done!
9. The Power of Offline Print
This may seem like an old-fashion, unusual way to increase internet traffic, but honestly, this method has worked for both online and offline businesses for many years. Playing off of human curiosity, you can create car stickers, business cards, calendars, flyers, post on college bulletin boards and place ads in your target audience’s magazines’ websites.
You can go to Fiverr.com or Craigslist and find people willing to pass out flyers within their community for you.
In addition, you can create your own stickers advertising your website at StickerJunkie.com and then ask your family and friends to place them on their cars, display windows or public places where flyers are usually posted. Think outside the box and you will soon find an unlimited number of places to advertise. It’s a ridiculous easy offline strategy that works nine times out of ten.
10. Submit Your Article To The Top 5 Article Directories
You may have read that a number of the article directories have lost a little of their “juice” and page rank after the latest Google’s Penguin update. But believe me…these sources are still powerful entities! This is one of the simplest methods of how one of your articles can go viral!
The way it works is after you submit an article about a topic in your particular niche, hundreds of other webmasters or interested readers may paste your link or content on their site for their readers. The great thing about this is your name and website URL link are embodied within the contents so anyone reading the article can click on the link and reach your site. It’s an amazing free way to advertise especially for a well-written and interesting article.
The top 5 directories are:
* sites.google.com
* Tumblr.com
* Github.com
* Livejournal.com
* Technorati.com
These ten tips cover a wide variety of ways to generate traffic to your website. Depending on the topic of your website, some may be more helpful than others, but these strategies can easily be modified for almost any situation.
One final tip is to always be looking for new ideas and opportunities such as high-traffic classified ads sites. Profitable websites are constantly reinventing themselves, and therefore, by using the tips outlined here in your inner creativity, you will always be ahead of the crowd. Follow this advice and enjoy a large increase in visitors.