How To Increase Web Traffic
To Your Small Business Website
Written 2011-01-29
Suggestions To Increase Web Traffic
When creating a small business website, business owners often invest in professional web design. And that's wise. After all, a professional appearance is important to establish credibility online. But how can you increase web traffic to your professionally designed small business website? This article offers some ideas.
Purchase Banner Ads
Many sites in your industry will offer advertising space for a fee. As a small business owner, you may wish to purchase advertising space to display a custom designed banner that links to your website. You probably will want to work with your web design firm or another graphic designer to create eye-catching and compelling banner ads.
Purchase Pay Per Click Ads
Your competitors may already be buying ads from a pay-per-click provider to promote their sites. This can be an excellent way to increase web traffic if you are selective about which keywords you will purchase. It is important to set a budget for pay-per-click campaigns so you don't spend more than you can afford each month. Pay-per-click, or PPC, ads can place your site in front of your target audience immediately. Google Adwords is a popular PPC program.
Savvy marketers often use PPC to compare keyword effectiveness. Tracking the traffic each keyword generates can help determine which keywords work best. Rather than measuring web traffic, it is preferable to measure how much business each keyword purchase generates. When a visitor takes a desired action, such as completing a request for information, a conversion has occured. Monitoring which keywords generate the highest conversion rate, and factoring the cost per click, together can provide precise data to maximize return on investment or ROI.
Email Blasts
If your company maintains a database of opt-in email addresses, periodic emails can drive traffic to your company website. Care must be taken not to abuse this method of promoting your website.
Social Media
Strategic use of social media sites can be an effective method to drive traffic to your website. Many public relations firms specialize in helping small businesses establish and maintain a presence on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Organic Search Engine Optimization
Organic search engine optimization can increase web traffic by drawing attention to your site in natural search results. Unlike most of the methods above, organic search engine optimization, or SEO, can provide a more enduring flow of traffic to your website. Once you have optimized your site effectively for your list of target keywords, your site can sometimes remain high in the search results pages without requiring much additional effort or expense, provided the keywords you are targeting are not highly competitive. The more competitive your keywords are, the more effort may be required to maintain top results.
Blogging
If you or someone on your staff enjoys writing regularly, blogging can improve web traffic to your website. Ideally, your blog entries will interest your target audience, attracting increased traffic as well as links to your content. Links to your blog also can improve your organic search engine results.
