Jonathan Fields, Project Manager
So, you have a new website– congrats! Now that your business is online, it is important to think of your website as an extension of your brick-and-mortar business. On its own, it won’t do anything for you, you need to get people in the door to see what you have to offer!
Keeping some common best practices in mind, let’s make a game plan to drive traffic to your site.
Getting people to visit your new site is different in the fact that you need to think like your customers and implement strategies that will align with how they would search for you. This is a strategy that you will need to fine-tune as you go, but here are 6 key areas to get you started.
- Offline – It may be counterintuitive to start offline, but you have so much interaction with your prospects already, it is critical to begin adding your new website to that conversation. Adding your website link to things like your email signature and print advertisements is already real estate that you’re using now that can help get the word out. Also, if you regularly attend networking or community events, putting out the push to get more information on your website is another great strategy.
- Social Media – In today’s marketplace, there are not many successful businesses that don’t have a social media strategy. Even small businesses that have not published a website yet tend to at least have a presence on Facebook or Instagram. These are great places to not only meet your potential customers and engage in conversations with them but also serve as platforms to redirect them to your website for exclusive content. What content, you ask? Well, let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit….
- Blogging – I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating: blogging regularly is one of the best ways to naturally improve the ranking of your website on search engines. If a potential customer is looking for answers to a question that you address in your blogs, this may be a good introduction for them to the rest of your site and services. But, just like the other areas I’m going to cover, it’s only beneficial if you set up a consistent posting schedule (once a month is a good place to start) and use this content across your other communications like email and social media. This brings us to….
- FAQ Questions – This may not be as obvious of an opportunity, but remember, you’re putting yourself in the mindset of your potential customer and what they would most likely be researching online–what questions are they typing into the Google search engine?. No matter the industry you’re in, there are questions that your service team finds themselves constantly answering. This means two things: it means it’s commonly misunderstood, and they are looking to you to be an expert that can answer it. So, why not use this opportunity to address it when someone is trying to find you on the web? Creating an FAQ area on your website to address this content and adding to it as needed creates what’s called evergreen content; which is to say, there’s no end to its usefulness. In addition to sharing this page across your channels, there are other opportunities to share your knowledge for both the blog and FAQs……
- Backlinks – Referrals are important for every business, whether you’re talking word-of-mouth or business-to-business. Backlinks are the equivalent to this. Simply put, backlinks are hyperlinks to a specific page on your website from another website and are important for any SEO (search engine optimization) plan. That being said, this doesn’t mean that links on just any website are helpful. Just like in life, if the source of the backlink appears to be spam or outdated information, it can hurt your search engine ranking, so be sure to stay tuned in on how your website is being referenced.
- Advertising – All of the previously mentioned areas are important, but doing some paid advertising could be a great kickstart to drawing in the digital foot traffic. Options like social media and pay-per-click advertising can help pull people into your website with targeted ads that are based on keywords, search habits, and demographic information. The good news is that this type of targeted advertising is very effective if you play the game right. Finally, creating an ad that directs traffic to the different content that I mentioned above will help with the potential customer’s first experience with you.
These 5 tips are just the tip of the iceberg. Much like finding new methods to help people find their way in your physical doors, there are many strategies to try when it comes to your digital doors.
If you have more questions about advertising your website and the different methods available to you, let’s schedule a time to talk through your specific needs and we can come up with a plan together. Let’s talk!