10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Small Business Website
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Running a small business website is challenging. You must have a good design, create engaging content, optimize and maintain it, and more.
But the most important aspect of your website’s success is driving traffic. It can be difficult, especially if you don’t have the budget to run large marketing campaigns.
And it’s natural to expect a good return on investment from your website. After all, you have spent resources to establish it to make your business more successful.
Thankfully, the web is a vast land of possibilities. If you know how to navigate it, create and find opportunities, and leverage available resources, you can drive organic traffic to your website.
Over the past fifteen years, our team has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses build and optimize their small business websites. We’ve keynoted numerous conferences and webinars on optimization and frequently write and talk about optimization and conversion strategies on our blog and at conferences. This guide shares the actionable insights, tips, best practices, and expertise we’ve developed after helping over one hundred thousand brands.
How to optimize your small business website:
1. Create quality content
Offer more than just your products or services – invest in creating high-quality content that adds value to people’s lives. Engaging content helps you rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing.
You don’t want to be just any other small business looking to make a sale. You need to give people another reason to keep returning to your website.
One way is to offer resources that can educate, such as:
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Webinars
- Case studies
- Quality images and engaging videos
- Whitepaper and more
Providing engaging content also allows you to show off your expertise on subjects belonging to your niche. This can help you build credibility and foster long-term relationships with your audience.
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2. Write guest posts
Becoming a guest blogger is an effective way to drive more traffic and build brand awareness for your small business website.
The web is constantly evolving, and fresh content is always appreciated. And writing guest posts allows you to reach a new audience and potentially increase your website traffic.
Search online for websites that are looking for guest postings. For example, use keywords such as:
- + ”guest blog”/“guest post”
- + “write for us”
- + “submit an article”/”submit a guest post”
- + “contribute to our blog”
- + “become a guest blogger”
- + “guest blogging guidelines” and more
Remember only to create high-quality content to enjoy the fruits of your guest blogs. Your guest blogs should be the hook that drives people toward you. Make sure to follow the guidelines set by the site, pitch and write articles using a conversational, keep it simple and easy to understand, and do your research properly.
3. Use specific phrases as keywords
Gone are the days when single-word keywords rank best on search engines. Long-tail keywords can help you rank better on Google, Bing, etc.
Search engines now focus more on key phrases people use to search for something online. So, using specific phrases as keywords only makes sense to help your small business website rank better.
For example, when writing a blog post, make sure to include phrases related to your main keyword, such as “How social media marketing works,” “TikTok marketing tips and tricks,” and “Food packaging design trends.” For products, include the main keyword and a short description of the product, such as “vintage Prada shoes,” “Vans skater shoes”, and “Wedding flower arrangements.”
4. Run a pay-per-click campaign
Running a pay-per-click campaign (PPC) lets you advertise your website as a top user search result. This can lead people to click on your website and drive more traffic.
A PPC advertisement is one effective way to reach your target audience since it specifically targets keywords that help are related to the content you put out on your website.
And since people mostly use Google to search online, you can use the Google Adwords tool to run your PPC campaigns. Other options include Bing Ads Editor, SpyFu, and PPC Entourage.
It can be pricey to run a PPC campaign, so it’s important to set an appropriate budget and only use PPC for strong keywords useful to your small business.
5. Leverage online reviews
People tend to trust the opinions and reviews of others, so take advantage of online reviews and show them on your website, especially your Google My Business page reviews.
Customers tend to stay away from businesses that have zero reviews. No reviews lessen the trustworthiness of your website. Hence, it’s vital to encourage your customers to leave reviews about your business.
Don’t forget to engage with your reviewers. If customers leave complaints or state issues, make sure to address those right away. Doing so can help show people that you care about them and are eager to hear them out.
For example, consumer and business review websites such as Yellowpages and Foursquare are third-party tools that allow customers to leave reviews easily. The opinions left on these sites are valuable to other customers. Take advantage of customer reviews left on these sites and harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing to elevate your business.
6. Utilize affiliate marketing
In business, partnerships are necessary to thrive. Embrace affiliate marketing and work with other people to help promote your small business.
Take advantage of other businesses in your niche and make them affiliates. Affiliate marketing allows you to foster partnerships with other businesses or individuals to help promote your business in exchange for a fee.
Search for websites or individuals with an established audience you can leverage. Make it a goal to communicate with them to build a partnership and state how much they will be paid as an affiliate. And experiment with several affiliate programs, such as Amazon affiliate, to pick one that balances cost and return on investment.
You can use affiliate marketing tools like ShareASale, SEMRush, and Ahrefs to help manage your affiliate marketing strategy. For example, Ahrefs allows you to search a website’s domain rating (DR). This helps you know if a website is worthy of partnering with.
As other partnership opportunities might arise, nurture your relationship with your affiliates.
7. Promote on social media
In today’s world, business and social media go together. Social media is essential to your business’s success as this is the space that allows you to showcase other sides of your small business.
Most of your customers are already on social media. So, you must go to social media and connect with them. Don’t forget to link your website to all your social media profiles to lead customers to your business easily.
Share announcements, holiday greetings, memes, and other relatable posts to appear more relatable to people. You can also post photos of your team members on Instagram to show the people behind the business or go to TikTok and join trends to increase social visibility.
You can also post positive business feedback or reviews of customers online. This can help you establish social proof essential to your business’s success.
8. Practice email marketing
There’s a reason why email marketing is never going away – it’s effective. Email marketing is one of the most cost-efficient marketing methods that help you get the best results.
Budget can be tight for a small business, especially if you need to implement strategies to help drive traffic, and these can be costly.
Email marketing is a good strategy to increase website traffic as you can freely promote new products or services, store promotions, and other deals useful to your customers. But be careful not to bombard your recipients with too many messages, as this can be spammy. Sending out weekly emails will do just fine.
You can also leverage email marketing to provide education. For example, blog promotions help provide useful resources to people. This shows your willingness to make a sale or drive traffic and that you want to add more value to your customers’ lives.
If you plan to ace your email marketing, having a list of real, valid email addresses is super important. This ensures your messages reach the right people and you don’t waste resources. By keeping your database updated with valid emails, your email marketing becomes more effective, driving more traffic and boosting customer engagement.
9. Make your website mobile-friendly
People love to spend time on their smartphones all day. So, it’s only natural to optimize your website to be mobile-friendly.
Non-mobile-friendly websites get higher bounce rates and lose traffic. Make it easy for people to browse and look around your website. Ensure that your small business website is consistent with its functions and designs when accessed on a mobile phone or on any other device.
For example, Shutterfly is known for its easy-to-navigate, minimalistic, simple, mobile-friendly web design. Customers can easily scroll and find the company’s products and other services on the homepage alone.
Ensure to display main functionalities such as product categories, sale announcements, customer service assistance, etc., that help ease the user experience on your website.
10. Learn from online small business communities
As a small business owner, learning never stops. You must keep pushing to study and research various ways to improve your business, including tips and tricks to improve your website.
And what better way to learn than from other business owners themselves?
Go to small business communities such as Small Business Forum, BizWarriors, and Business Advice Forum, or join Facebook small business groups. Look up the latest small business trends, take tips and advice, and engage with other business owners.
Additionally, small business communities serve as a great networking space to help promote your small business, develop beneficial partnerships, and educate yourself. So, you must take advantage of every opportunity to grow as a business owner and individual.
There are many ways to increase website traffic to your small business if you continue researching, adapting, and leveraging opportunities.
Driving website traffic is only one key step to thriving as a business. The meaning of success can vary for different people. But we can’t deny that to succeed, you need people to keep coming back to your business. And you can start taking the first active step to achieve this by beginning to optimize your small business website.
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