Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
5 Things To Get More Traffic To Your Website That You Can Do Yourself.
Show Notes
Wouldn’t it be great to get more traffic to your website without having to ask somebody else to do it for you?
Here are my five tips.
- Make sure your website is mobile responsive.
- Tell people about your website.
- Share your website.
- Add content to your website.
- Blogging
Now, we’ll go into each one in a bit more detail.
Make Your Website Mobile Responsive
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But you’ll be surprised how many people don’t do it. Making sure your website is mobile responsive, what does that actually mean?
It means that your website is designed and built in a way that will adjust to any device it is showing on. So, whether that be a desktop or whether that be a very small smartphone or something in between, a tablet or an iPhone. The user experience on all those devices needs to be roughly the same, so that people can clearly see what your website is about without having to scroll up, down, or sideways all the time.
If you don’t have a mobile responsive website, you will find that your bounce rate goes up and your potential customers end up at your competitor’s website.
We’ve all been to websites where you’ve had to swipe sideways and move it around and you still can’t read the text. Now that’s not a good user experience and people won’t put up with that. We’ve all got busy lives and everything’s fast moving, so if you can’t find what you want on a website, on a mobile device quickly, you will just swipe and go back and redo your search.
Most businesses up to 50% of their traffic is now coming from mobiles, so you really need to make sure that your website is mobile responsive. And truly mobile responsive, not just so that you can see it on a mobile, but so it actually acts in the way that people want to see, so they can see the images, they can see the text in a font that’s big enough for them to read. Now, Steve Jobs says, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like, design is how it works,” and that is very true for mobile responsive websites.
Tell People About Your Website
The second one is telling people. You’ll be surprised how many people actually keep their website almost a secret. Now, there’s four easy ways to tell people.
Think about your email signature, does that have your website address on it or are you advertising Google, for Gmail, or Hotmail or Yahoo or your service provider? Every time you send an email out, are you advertising your own business or somebody else’s business? So when you have an email address the best thing to do is use your domain name, so that’s what it’s called.
So in my case, it’s catcoent. So catcoent.com.au. So my email address is something @ that and it’s fine to use generics as long as you don’t use the common ones, so admin, info, sales, office, reception any of those ones stay away from, because they get caught up in spam filters. If you’re doing anything with government contracts or bigger firms, your emails just won’t get through and most of the time you won’t even know.
So if you’re looking at doing a generic email address, think about what you do, are you a shop, are you a small business, as in a trades person or something? You could think of something like plumbing@ or carpentry@ or cafe@ or some of those kinds of things that describe what you do rather than the job role.
Another way to tell people about your website is your social media profile. Now, we all have multiple social media profiles and all of them have at least one area where you can link back to a website. Is that linking back to your website? Or are you sending them on the social media merry-go-round, where you’ve sent them from Facebook, to YouTube, to LinkedIn, to Twitter, or any of the others?
All of those positions need to link back to your website, because what happens if some of those platforms go away? And people are constantly using those to talk to you or see you. You need to be able to capture their email so that you can continue the conversation no matter what platform you are on.
Make sure that you use those links to go back to your website. Make sure that it’s on your signature panel, so that any time that people are looking for you, you’re easy to find. There’s lots of free directories that you can share your website to. If you’re writing blog posts or articles, and we’ll talk more about that soon, make sure that you have a link to your website there.
Share Your website
Often overlooked is the offline area as well, so think about things like your business cards, your signage, any promotional material that you put out, whenever you’re putting anything out to the public at all, put your website address on, that way they can contact you easily.
Tim Ferriss has got a great hack, he says, rather than spending my life on data entry and typing, I take a photo on my iPhone of business cards, wine labels, menus or anything that I want to search, so that way when somebody takes a photo of your business card, they can easily see your website address, whether they’re on their mobile, whether they’re at their desktop, wherever they are, they can then look you up and find out more information.
When you’re sharing your website, think about where else you might be able to put them. Things like your social media posts, are you doing inspirational quotes? Are you sharing other people’s inspirational quotes or are you making your own? If you’re making your own, don’t forget to brand them, put your URL, your website address on those, that way when somebody else shares your inspirational quote, that’s another way that you can get your website out there.
Add Content to Your Website
Now minimalistic designs are huge, and people love them. Two problems you have is the viewers coming to your website, your audience might not know what you’re talking about, because there’s only a few pictures and maybe very little description and Google doesn’t know what you’re talking about. If Google can’t find you, then they’re not going to recommend you in search and that’s going to be difficult for people to find your website.
You need to have content, you need to have a good selection of words that describe what you’re doing, what the page is about, and don’t be too wishy-washy and try to describe your whole business in one page. Just stick to one key topic per page. Now, if you don’t want that minimalistic look, you can always put your content further down the page and break it up with more images or videos.
Make sure with your content, you have clear messaging, so you’re telling people exactly what they need to know and remember to answer those frequently asked questions. If you get something asked over and over, it means that lots of people want to know it. Frequently asked questions page is also a good idea.
Blogging
So that’s article writing, that’s adding extra content to your website on a regular basis. There are several benefits of that. One is Google. Google doesn’t want to send traffic to a website that’s stagnant and hasn’t been touched for years, they’re not even sure that you’re still there. By blogging and adding articles on a regular basis, Google knows the site’s active and there’s somebody behind it, so they’re more likely to send you traffic. Blogging is also another way that you can share your message, because you can link it to a Facebook page. You can share it in a group, you can always answer people’s questions and link back to your website, if you have a helpful article that is relevant.
That’s a perfect way, not only to share your website address, to share your content, show that you’re an authority in the area, and also serve people, help to answer their questions. Lauren Conrad says, “Social media is the key to promoting editorial posts on my website.” Every time she sends out a post, an editorial, she has a link in it back to her website. The other advantage of blogging is that it adds more content. The more things for Google to find. Think about those frequently asked questions, the questions you get asked all the time. Can you group a couple of those together and make them into an article?
Another way to blog is to offer to do guest blogging. That way you both get a benefit. Think about people who are complementary to you. You might have an interior designer who teams up with a builder. The interior designer can write an article about design, the way to position furniture, whether you should have brightly painted walls or whether you should be looking at curtains, or cushions to add that element of color, something along those lines. That will add value to the builder’s audience, as well as get the interior designer noticed too.
Think about who you may be able to team up with and who you may be able to guest post. Think about who may be able to guest post on your website. Maybe able to write an article for you. And then when they do, ask them to share it, so that way you’re getting content that adds value to your audience, as well as getting somebody else to share it to their audience. So just think about complimentary services that might work for you.
There’s lots of ways that you can share your website and let people know that you’re there. Make sure that you do, so you don’t have the best website in Google’s graveyard.
If you’d like a few more in-depth tips and suggestions on how to get traffic to your website that you can do yourself, jump over to catcoent.com.au and download my free ebook on Five Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Website That You Can Do Yourself.
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