Regardless of the type of business, it's now necessary for companies to maintain a website. A business site acts as an online storefront that provides visitors with information about your products/services, facilitate interaction with your brand, perhaps register an account to receive timely notices, or make a direct purchase. If you're a new business in the market or just don't want to spend all that effort playing catch up with the ever-changing SEO, then this article's for you! Instead of focusing on optimising content for search engines and waiting to be indexed on the net, leverage other platforms to get your brand out there.
Utilise a diverse range of methods and optimise multiple traffic sources to your website to maximise brand exposure. Below, we list 6 effective ways to increase traffic to your website.
1. Have a Rich Online Presence
To drive prospects to your website, you must first make your brand visible online. Being present on a platform with a strong domain authority helps your brand get noticed online. Pay attention to social media and review platforms to remain relevant and engage your audience.
Seedly as an Example
We've garnered a strong following of curious finance novices and expert finance contributors and have a strong domain authority, consistently ranking on the front page of search results for finance-related keywords in Singapore.
We host Product Pages on our website that showcase a product/service's information and links to their website, customer reviews, prospect discussions, community comments and marketing materials. About 90% of these Product Pages rank top 10 on Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when users search for specific product reviews (e.g. Circles.Life Reviews).
If you own a financial product/service, it would be wise to make full use of the resources available to you at Seedly -- Claim your Product Page and activate the Clickout Buttons to enable acquisitions!
It goes without saying that you should be available on common social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, but also keep a lookout for platforms that speak to your targeted audience. Ensure that your content or listings are updated and include your website links so users can conveniently reach you.
2. Be a Thought Leader
Strengthen your branding and reach new audiences. Being a thought leader means to be known for your expertise within a specific space. When you're recognised as a specialist of your subject, you'll naturally command authority and attention from your target audience.
Contribute your opinions by guest blogging or offering webinars/tutorials on niche sites, or simply writing a couple of pieces on medium or personal LinkedIn. You'll increase your traffic source (i.e. get referral traffic) and obtain more backlinks, which positively affect your website's ranking. Be mindful of the reader demographics on the niche sites you're writing for, and remember to add a couple of links to your website where applicable. The standard recommendations are to add social buttons in your author's biography and at least one in your post but never over-promote your business or risk losing your credibility.
Being a thought leader shouldn't and isn't just a one-way lecture. You should also embrace dialogues with your audience. Being an active member of a community is another free and helpful way for you to kickstart a conversation with your target audience. There are multiple communities on sites like Facebook, Reddit, Hardware Zone and more. If you're looking for a personal finance community, then Seedly's an unmatched platform for you.
Leave breadcrumbs of your brand on communities by regularly contributing to discussions. Participate in discussions with a Verified Business Profile, comment on your product/service reviews, or start a discussion altogether.
Focus on a couple of quality platforms instead of merely taking a quick dip in various groups. By being involved in communities, you build greater brand awareness and forge a stronger relationship with the community members. Be authentic and courteous; don't dump template responses but bring valuable insights to the table and only leave your website links where relevant. The rule of thumb is always to give more than you take.
3. Run Online Advertising
Here's an obvious one. In the current climate, the majority of your audiences are online. Reach your prospects where they are with online advertising like social media, display, search and retargeting ads. Some product or content discovery platforms also promote native advertisements in the form of sponsored posts that blend well with the web page's style and flow.
If you're interested in advertising on Seedly, check out our advertising solutions here.
Although it's seemingly a lot cheaper and easier to whip out cash for online advertisements that only cost a couple of cents per click or thousand impressions, marketers need to be wary of burning money on vanity metrics. Set a clear objective, identify your target audience, and build an advertisement around both.
A Clear Objective
What do you really hope to achieve? Merely traffic to your website for brand awareness or something more like account creation?
Your Target Audience
Be specific about your intended audience. Instead of "young Singaporeans", consider "Singaporeans aged 25-34 who are first-time investors". You can target your audience precisely from various elements like location and age to even income and purchase behaviour. Know what your audience's pain points are. The concerns of a novice Singaporean investor aged 25 are vastly different from that of an expert investor aged 55. Speak to your audience and meet them where they are.
Advertisement
Promote something that your target audience wants and create an advertisement with clear messaging and call-to-action like "create an account", "visit our website", or "click to watch this video". Ensure that the advertisement and landing page have consistent content and style.
In this example, users who click on FSMOne Fundsupermart's Advertisement are directed to a registration landing page as publicised.
4. Employ Content Marketing
According to HubSpot Research, 70% of marketers actively invested in content marketing in 2019, with about 60% of marketers claiming that content marketing is "very important" or "extremely important" to their overall strategy.
Now, you may optimise your content for SEO but that isn't my main point here. By content marketing, I mean that you should create valuable resources for your audience to evoke interest in your product/service. Advertising them on social media or leaving resource links on relevant discussion threads can complement well with the other tactics listed in this post. Popular forms of content marketing range from blog posts and case studies to social media posts and reviews. To create value for your prospects, your content must address their concerns and provide solutions. If you're unsure what resource to provide, you can get started by browsing your competitor's resources to gain some inspiration or search online for popular topics. Follow these tips to direct traffic to your landing page with meaningful content:
Conduct keyword research and answer pressing questions in new content
Add visual elements like images and videos to make the content more engaging (for some inspiration, check out this blog post with 11 types of visual content you can use)
Make your content more readable by using shorter paragraphs, bullet points, and conversational language
Update old content to keep them fresh and relevant or merge similar articles to build longer-form posts (remember to set up 301 redirects when you combine pieces)
Repost old content on your social media platforms, so they reach a wider audience
Repurpose past content like creating blog posts from videos, posting bite-sized quotes on your company's Instagram or Twitter from webinars, creating infographics from interviews
5. Set Up Email Marketing
Email marketing may seem a little old-school, but it's what we've primarily used to successfully reach many of our business partners and lead them to our landing page for conversions! Distribute promotions, product/service updates, educational resources, and event invites via newsletters.
After making yourself known online, emails are a great way to retarget and engage already primed and interested prospects. When you send newsletters, you're able to personalise your messaging to speak directly with your audience. Some great ways to build a quality subscriber list are offering gated content, an exciting promotion, enabling opt-in forms, or conducting a referral program. Here are some best practices for email marketing:
Write a captivating subject line so that readers open your email
Ensure that your main message is written in text, as some recipients block images from their inbox
Have a clear call-to-action and ensure that links to your website are active
Never spam emails
Use an email marketing software to automate distribution and personalisation
Regularly clean your subscriber list or risk damaging your sender reputation
6. Optimise Your Website
If your intention is to drive traffic to your website, then it goes without saying that your page must be designed to welcome and interest visitors. Don’t be intimidated by the technical jargon or fear that you don’t have the necessary expertise to deal with website optimisation. Let’s walk through some simple methods you can adopt as a marketer:
With almost 55% of global website traffic coming from mobile devices in Q1 of 2021, optimise your website for mobile by enabling responsive web design, using a dynamic serving setup or just creating a dedicated mobile site
Prioritise your main messaging at the top of the page so it immediately catches your audience’s attention
Implement a seamless user journey on your website with a coherent style and language
Optimise images on your website by compressing them
Reduce redirects by limiting to 10 plugins on your website
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) if you’ve got the cash to spare
According to Pingdom, users bounce off a website if the page load time increases from 2 to 5 seconds, so remember to speed up website loading times. With a fast-loading site, search engines can also crawl the page faster to find relevant content.
It's vital to increase traffic to your website and thus, boost engagement and conversions. A key point is to increase qualified visitors. Increasing traffic means nothing if engagements and conversions are stagnant or, worse, falling. After this post, you should now be familiar with more ways to attract site visitors. Use a combination of these strategies to maximise traffic for the longer term. If you manage financial or utilities products/services and require some help connecting prospects to your website, drop us a message, and we’ll share our solutions.