How do you increase a site's traffic? SEO, content marketing and other methods

Any site will work and generate sales only if it has a constant flow of traffic. Every business owner wants to increase a site's traffic in order to get more enquiries and more profit. There are many solutions to that task. We will go through all the main ways of drawing traffic to a site. 

You will learn: 

• The main myth about attracting traffic and how things really stand. 

• Where should the work of promoting a site begin? 

• Why does promoting a site require constant work? 

• How is a site's traffic connected with the hostingit is kept on?

• And much more. 

The main misconceptions about promoting a site, and the hard truth 

Thousands of people wonder how to increase a site's traffic for free. Let us say at once: that is unrealistic. Even if you do everything yourself, your time has a price too. 

The second fact: traffic cannot be increased quickly and then fixed at one level forever. Your competitors are not standing still either and will act energetically in the fight for visitors and enquiries. The key to success is considered action and systematic work. Where to start, and which tricks and tools to use, is what we talk about next. 

A site's SEO: the technical side and the content 

SEO is only one of the instruments of promotion, but it plays a very large part. So let us start with how to optimise and promote a site in Google and other search engines. 

Check whether the site has fallen under a filter 

Before promoting a site energetically, you have to make sure it has not fallen under a Google filter. Filters were developed by search engines in order to prevent manipulation of the search results. Offending sites can be lowered in the results, or some of their pages — or all of them — can be excluded.

Because of a filter, sites lose positions sharply and organic traffic can fall to practically zero. If something like that has happened you will receive a notice about the sanctions through Google Search Console. 

Getting a site out from under a filter is difficult; it is better to turn to an experienced SEO specialist. 

Sometimes a site simply needs time

Search engines have a certain inertia. They are not very fond of young sites. Often, even when the optimisation is done perfectly and the content is superbly interesting and well made, you have to wait. Sometimes six or seven months pass before the first serious results. If competition in the chosen niche is low, you will see the effect of promotion in three or four months. 

It is very important to work on the site regularly. Keep creating new content and work on earning good-quality backlinks. The result will certainly come. 

Good optimisation is the foundation of future growth 

 

Well-considered usability and stylish design matter a great deal to any site. But they will not work if the site is not visible in search engines. Every resource has to be optimised for Google's requirements. 

The first step is a detailed site audit. It is better to commission that from freelancers or an SEO studio. An audit is needed if your site has problems with promotion, or when the site is promoted by a company other than the one that built it. 

An audit often reveals technical problems with a site. They can seriously get in the way of its promotion. The most common problems:

• slow page loading;

• 500 and 404 errors;

• duplicate pages;

• meta tags that are not unique;

• content that is not unique, and so on.

Before promoting a site, every technical error has to be fixed. It is also very important to optimise the images on the site by reducing their size. But here you have to find a sensible middle ground so that quality does not suffer. 

Problems often arise because a site is placed on poor hosting or the plan has been chosen badly. Host4Biz specialists will help move your site to our server and solve other technical problems. 

If the same company builds and promotes the site, the result comes faster. In that case the work starts with the semantic core. We write about that in more detail in the article "Where to start building a site". 

We will only remind you that a semantic core makes it possible to improve a site's structure, and that the queries collected must be clustered — distributed across the pages. An ordered semantic core is the basis of the brief for a copywriter. 

Promote the site as energetically as you can

Once the site is optimised, start promoting it. Every available analytics tool has to be used. What should you do to grow the traffic? 

• Launch a blog on the site. Add good, useful articles connected with your field regularly. Publish links to them on social media and forums. Remember that spam will not help you. The links have to be appropriate, in relevant communities and forums. 

• Grow the number of links from other sites gradually and steadily. Sources of links can be posts on popular subject blogs, press releases, infographics and useful videos. 

• Where you can, use YouTubeas a source of traffic. Create your own substantial content. It will not be cheap, but it will certainly pay off.

• Use Pinterest to generate traffic. It will be especially effective when promoting a site to the USA, Canada and other English-speaking countries.  

• Analyse the results in detail and adjust the strategy. 

The main piece of advice is to work systematically and without interruption. Only that approach brings results. SEO works. Its main advantage is that the average cost of a lead keeps falling. 

Follow the news and the trends in your field 

Follow the news in your field. If you have a car dealership, be sure to publish articles about the latest motor shows and new models. Selling mobile phones? Review the new arrivals and add them to your range. 

To analyse popular subjects you can use: 

• Google Trends;

• Ahrefs;

• Buzzsumo and other tools. 

Analysing trends will help you find the most promising market niches, goods and services. 

Content marketing 

Content marketing became fashionable back in 2017. By 2019 this promotion channel had become practically obligatory in highly competitive niches. Content marketing includes: 

• running a blog on the site;

• informational posts on Facebook and other social media;

• videos on YouTube;

• infographics on social media pages and on the site;

• mini-books in PDF format available for download (several links to the site can be placed in the file);

• a blog on the site;

• interviews with experts and opinion leaders;

• guest posts. 

Content marketing performs several functions at once:

• it raises brand awareness;

• it builds the trust of potential customers;

• it forms a loyal audience;

• it increases traffic to the site;

• it helps grow the link mass;

• it helps earn positive reviews.  

For the promotion to be effective you have to:

• determine which types of content competitors use;

• draw up the list of subjects the articles will be written on;

• set a publication schedule and stick to it. 

Other methods

There are several other ways of attracting extra traffic. 

Affiliate programmes

This instrument is used by online shops, tour operators and other companies. The idea is to offer a reward to users who bring in buyers through online channels. Every participant in an affiliate programme gets: 

• an affiliate link and other tools for advertising;

• a personal account;

• tools for analytics and for tracking earnings. 

An affiliate programme can be launched on your own site or through advertising networks. 

Competitions 

Remember that the effect of a competition is short-lived. For the result to be as good as possible, it is important to:

• define the competition's goal (raising awareness, traffic to the site);

• devise the mechanics of the competition or use tried and tested ones (we advise using proven scenarios, and something can be borrowed from competitors);

• offer an attractive prize (discounts on services, gifts, cash prizes, trips);

• publish announcements of the competition on the site and on social media. Publication in relevant communities and on other sites will strengthen the effect. 

Advertising in print and electronic media 

We also recommend using advertising and PR articles. They are published in online and printed media. If your audience reads expensive magazines, be sure to use that channel. The site's URL can be given in the article. It helps if it is easy to remember. Our guide on how to choose a domain name for a sitewill be useful to you. 

If you need an audience from particular cities, choose popular city portals for publication. That guarantees you the highest quality traffic. 

Conclusions 

There is an enormous number of ways to promote a site. They are all closely connected and work better together. What matters is choosing the instruments with the budget and the nature of the business in mind, developing a strategy and sticking to it. 

And remember: every popular site needs reliable hosting. Host4Biz will keep your corporate site, blog or internet portal running steadily. We will help solve the technical difficulties.

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