8 Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

drive traffic

How do you drive traffic to your website?

61% of expert marketers think improving their SEO and growing their organic presence is the key. They’re making it their top marketing priority in 2018.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe not.

It all depends on their individual strategies.

What does yours look like? Have you already mastered your SEO? What do your current inbound marketing tactics look like? What about outbound?

Do they match your branding strategy?

The ever-changing digital landscape brings new trends each year. Learn the reasons behind the trends. Know your own marketing plan inside and out.

Then you can figure out how to incorporate the new fads into your campaign.

The following examples will get you started. Read on to discover eight new tricks to tuck away in your traffic-driving toolbox.

Drive Traffic with Mobile First

Google rolled out its “Mobile First Index” last year. With it, Google looks first at the mobile version of your site and largely ignores the desktop version.

That’s right. If your site isn’t designed for mobile devices, Google dramatically lowers your rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Lower rank equals fewer visitors.

If you want more visitors, boost your rank in SERPs.

Google created a free tool to check your site’s mobile optimization. Use the Mobile-Friendly Test to discover how your site holds up to their new standards. The tool also gives you specific recommendations, so you can make your site mobile friendly.

Be sure to test your search engine optimization while you’re at it. You can find free SEO audit tools everywhere on the internet. Use every tool at your disposal to figure out how to improve your website.

Connect with Influencers

Within every niche (and sub-niche) you’ll find a group of authorities. They’re the individuals (and websites) everyone looks to for advice on that niche.

Of those, few acts as political powerhouses. They have the ability to raise a meager nobody into the spotlight if they so choose.

As such, they’re bombarded with requests from the nameless hordes looking for attention.

Guess what.

It’s time for you to become one of the nameless hordes. So how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you get the influencer to notice you?

You give them something they want.

In order to stay on top, every digital influencer produces huge quantities digital content. The content’s quality, originality, and the influencer’s expertise set them apart.

So offer to bear some of that burden.

Research your influencer, their likes, dislikes, needs, voice, and passions. Get to know everything you can. When you’re ready, you can approach them.

Offer them something the other hordes aren’t. It may be a brilliant guest post on a topic they’d love. It may be a video interview with questions specifically tailored to their brand. It may be a podcast duet which fits into their latest experimental marketing campaign.

Offer them something they can’t refuse. If they like you, they’ll return the favor; and that spotlight will be hunting you.

Click to Tweet

More social shares mean a wider audience. A wider audience means more visitors. So, how do you get readers to share your content?

One of the easiest ways to design your content so that it’s shareable with the click of a button. When you take the work out sharing your content, readers are more likely to share it.

Every popular social media site (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) offers an easy method to share content on their platform. With Twitter, it’s particularly easy.

First, you find something tweet-worthy in the content you recently posted. Shoot for a bite-size tip, strategy, statistic, or quote. Then use Click to Tweet. With it, you write your tweet, and the tool generates a special link for you. You include that link to your content and presto! Your content is now tweetable with a single click.

Facebook is pretty easy too. With very little effort, you can create a Facebook post that has the potential to go viral.

Focus on List Posts

List posts are arguably the most tedious posts a blogger can build. They’re repetitious, superficial, and overused. I hear you.

The problem is their popularity crushes all other content formats. It’s not even close. There’s not even a race. List posts dominate.

They create 6x more shares than how-to posts. They create 40x more than infographics.

Drop your other content plans, and focus on list posts for the next three months. We guarantee you’ll see massive website traffic.

Get Filming

73% of U.S. adults use YouTube in 2018. Only 68% use Facebook. 35% use Instagram. The numbers for other social media sites drop from there.

This year, videos are the most viewed content and most shared content. If you want to increase your audience and drive more visitors to your site, make videos.

The most successful method is to create your own YouTube channel. Load it up with videos you create. Look at your present marketing campaign and design a video strategy to compliment what you already have in place.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Video Tutorials
  • Authority Interviews
  • Experimental Marketing Videos

Shoot for videos under three minutes, as viewers are statistically more likely to share them.

Go Long

We already discussed the value of producing certain types of content (aka list posts). Now let’s discuss the benefits of producing certain lengths of content.

Content has a sweet spot. In 2018, that sweet spot is somewhere between 1k to 3k words. Content this length produces the most views for the least amount of effort.

Build your articles around those numbers.

Stalk Your Competitors

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could steal your competitors’ traffic? Guess what. You can.

You have two different strategies. The first is to find out which pieces of their content attract the most traffic. Then you build better pieces of content on the same subject.

Use BuzzSumo to figure that out.

The second tactic is to find out which websites are referring traffic to your competitors. Then you approach those website owners with enticing offers. The goal is to have them create links to your site instead of your competitors.

Use SimilarWeb to discover that.

Then you’ll know where to post links to get traffic.

Advertise

This approach is neither new nor free. But it’s still one of the most effective tools available to build rapid, red-hot website traffic. Every social media platform offers paid advertisements.

First, gauge your budget. Then research, research, research.

Who is your target audience, and where do they hang out? Focus your ads there. Easy peasy.

Other Recommendations

Now you have a handful of new strategies to drive traffic to your website. This list is by no means exhaustive. Implement these tips, but don’t stop there.

The key is to build a strategy that works with your specific marketing design. To do that, you must stay up-to-date on current search engine algorithms and marketing strategies.

Before you leave, do just that. Take a few minutes right now to check out the other huge SEO trends in 2018.

So long and good luck.