best way to increase organic traffic

 

Every small business entrepreneur wants to attract more traffic to their website, and oftentimes they will exhaust themselves chasing after every little tool or hack that promises “more traffic now” or “increase your traffic overnight”. Most of the time, it’s not an overnight process, it takes time.

 

There are so many ways to attract more website traffic and in this article we’ll look at the 10 BEST ways to increase organic traffic to your small business website that actually work!

 

 

1. Use Long-Tail Keywords

 

Gone are the days where one word keywords used to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).

 

Nowadays, Google tends to focus more on the key phrases users type whenever they are looking for something online. In fact, the majority of Google algorithm updates have been focused on understanding “user intent” more than specific keyword matching. The majority of people use more than one word to search for a specific result and this is actually a good thing for you! The more specific the search, the more specific the results will be. For specialty small businesses, this will make it easier to create and optimize web pages for specific long tail keywords so their target audience can find them. No more worrying about competing with results that aren’t actually in your same industry or niche.

 

 

 

2. Be a Guest Blogger

 

Guest blogging is an effective way to generate more website traffic and brand awareness for your small business website. Just one post in a popular blog can improve your website visitors twofold and eventually expand your customer base. The web revolves around new content and relies on users seeing and interacting with it to spread it around. If you’re able to access a new audience or potentially increase the number of people who will see your content, you can expect that your interactions, comments, likes, shares etc will increase as well.

 

But, it’s not always that simple.

 

how to increase your website blog traffic

 

If you want your guest blog post to actually start increasing your organic traffic numbers to your website, your content has to be amazing. After you finish writing a new piece of content, ask yourself, “Would I share this with my friends or co-workers?”. If the answer is no, back to the drawing board! Make sure to create valuable and actionable information in your blog posts, mix up your content by using a useful video or some supporting images, include social media share buttons, and insert reputable, in text backlinks where your readers can go to validate your information.

 

At the bottom of the blog article, many guest bloggers create a short bio or “about the author” section. This is another space you can use to let your individual writing personality shine through and let your readers know you’re a real person. You can include a link to your small business website, your social media pages, and a business photo. Make sure the information in this section represents you and your company in the best way possible.

 

 

3. Create Engaging Videos

 

Content, content, content, that’s what your small business website is all about. But, you need to have different types of content on your website to keep your web visitors, prospects, and customers engaged.

 

Marketing and sales videos are hugely popular right now! Short and practical YouTube videos are a great way to capture your target audiences’ attention and provide them with another opportunity to interact with your content on their terms. If your customer doesn’t want to take the 10 minutes to read your blog post, they can just watch or listen to your 5 minute YouTube video instead. Using video also tells your customers and target audience that you’re a current and modern small business, helping to better establish your small business brand in your niche market.

 

For every video that you post on YouTube, you have the option to include a video description (where you can include links back to your website), tags to help categorize your video, and closed captions so your videos can be easily consumed by a larger audience. You can also post these videos on your small business website and publish them on your social media pages as well.

 

Check out Cazbah’s YouTube video channel HERE so you can see what it looks like!

 

 

4. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising

 

Another great way to increase your website visitor traffic is to run a pay per click (PPC) campaign. A PPC campaign allows you to market your website as a top result for a user’s search in hopes of driving more traffic to it, leading to more clicks and potential customers in the process.

 

The Google Adwords tool is pretty much the leader for PPC campaign planning and implementation. Understand that you’ll have to part with a few bucks to do so however. Basically, in Adwords, you’re bidding for your specific ad to be featured over other ads trying to optimize for the same long tail keyword. For this reason, you should only run an Adwords campaign for specific and targeted long tail keywords that have proven to be effective for your small business. The good news is, you can control your budget down to the penny!

 

 

5. Provide Online Reviews

 

You won’t gain any new leads for your small business if no one’s talking about your business!

 

You need to go out there and make your small business website known! Word of mouth can actually increase your small business awareness a lot and dramatically impact how many website visitors you receive. People tend to trust the opinions, reviews, and evaluations of others who have been down their same path before. For that reason, it’s imperative that you encourage your customers to review your small business products and services online. You can include those customer online reviews on a “Reviews” page on your small business website and include them in your Google My Business page as well.

 

you need to include customer reviews on your website

 

Once you start getting more customer reviews, make sure to interact with them and comment back. Google likes to see businesses that engage with their clients and are active online. You can also ask willing customers to provide video testimonials of their experience with your small business and why they’ve chosen to work with you. You want these testimonials to be candid and honest. Your future customers who see your reviews and testimonials will appreciate the honesty with which you’re portraying your small business.

 

 

6. Embrace Affiliate Marketing

 

Affiliate marketing allows you to work with other websites or individuals to promote your products for you. In affiliate marketing, there are three main players: the merchant, the affiliate, and the customer. You (the merchant) would contract with other websites or individuals (affiliates) to promote your products and services on other websites and online space to drive more traffic to your small business website. For every paying customer you receive from this transaction, your affiliate will get a fraction of the proceeds.

 

To get started with affiliate marketing, you will need to establish who your affiliates will be and what their commission rate will be. You can use tools like Gumroad or Digital Product Delivery to help you manage it all. Affiliate marketing is a great way for your products and services to gain recognition in new audience and marketing spaces. The more (niche) spaces your small business is advertised, the more people that will see it!

 

 

7. Post on Social Media

 

I can’t stress this enough, if you have yet to create social media accounts and pages for your small business, DO IT NOW!

 

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn can be potential gold mines for increased organic traffic to your small business website. Social media is basically free advertising for your small business. You can interact with your target audience through DMing (direct messaging), post useful content that will appear directly in their newsfeeds, follow other leaders in your market industry, and find new contacts in your target audience to network with. The options are endless!

 

In your social media profiles and post descriptions, you can create links back to your small business website or to specific pages you want to increase traffic to. But, if you want to develop a dedicated social media following, you need to post consistently and regularly. You can use a content posting platform like Buffer to help you manage and schedule all your social media posts so you can ensure consistency across several social media platforms.

 

 

8. Attend Networking Events

 

Attending networking events like seminars, trade shows, new small business grand openings etc. may be considered “old school” marketing techniques, but they’re still as relevant as ever.

 

simple ways to attract new customers you probably forgot about

 

Networking events puts you (and your business) in the direct path of those within your same niche. You can build connections with potential customers by having a simple conversation. Once those people are aware that your specialty small business exists, and can put a face with the name, they’ll be more likely to check out your website for themselves. Developing an initial friendly relationship with someone that isn’t focused on a sales pitch, helps to build trust and association with your small business brand. When that individual has a need, they’ll automatically think of your small business.

 

 

9. Leverage Email Marketing

 

Email marketing can be a reliable source of organic traffic if it’s managed correctly. Don’t bombard your email recipients with too many messages. If you do, they’ll learn to glaze over them in their inbox and automatically delete them, or worse set your emails as spam.

 

An occasional email reminder about a new product or service, a special store promotion, or specialty customer coupons and deals are great email marketing topics. Keep your customers in mind when you create your emails and make sure you’re only sending them information they’d actually want to have. Make sure your emails are short and sweet and include links to the pages you want your recipients to visit. If they have to work too hard to receive the information you’re telling them about, they most likely won’t even bother.

 

 

10. Create a Responsive Website

 

Website visitors use various devices to access the internet. To see the most popular devices your website visitors are using to browse your site, head over to your Google Analytics account. Select “Audience”, then “Mobile” from the drop down menu. The “Overview” section will let you see the percentage of your website visitors using desktop, mobile, or tablet to search your website. The “Devices” tab will allow you to see with what specific make and models of devices your visitors are searching with.

 

how to check your device search percentage in google analytics

 

Even if mobile search is not the majority of your user search method, you don’t want to limit your website to those who only use desktop computers. More and more people are using their smartphones to make purchases, read articles, and search the web, so you need to make mobile optimization a priority for your website to capitalize on all organic traffic.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Take a look at the 10 ideas above if you’re struggling to create more organic traffic to your small business website. It’s not always going to easy, but it’s not impossible either. Small business website optimization is an ongoing project, so working to maintain high organic traffic rates to your website should always be a priority for you. Start with one of these tips above and work your way through this list. You’ll be amazed at the results!