Fast & Easy Ways to Increase Website Traffic, Part 2

Newsletters

The last two strategies to increase website traffic will come in handy for getting a newsletter off the ground if this is something that’s been sitting on the backburner. The list can be built up through social ads, since your fans are not necessarily your subscribers, and content for the campaigns can come from the blog.

Email has been ignored by too many companies for too long even though it’s continued to be one of the best converting marketing tools out there. Not convinced? Take a look at some of these numbers:

• 1 in 3 millennials check their email as soon as they wake up.
• 17% of Americans check their email immediately upon waking up.
• 89% of Americans check email at least once a day
• 6% check their email 1-5 times a day
• 59% of workers admitted to checking in with their bosses or coworkers at least once a day while on vacation
• 1% said they purchased a product from a retail store after receiving an email about it

The reality is that people are hyper-connected to email. Even when people take a break or “log off” of social media, they will still check email. Getting in front of people in their inbox is a simple way to immediately start increasing traffic to the site and increasing brand recognition.

When we talk about the newsletter, we’re not talking about promotional or transactional emails — we’ll get to those in a minute. The newsletter should be a way to build value with customers. A few ways to do this could be:

• Sharing informational and educational blog posts
• Sharing information on new services and products
• Highlighting content from fans and customers (UGC)
• Sharing tips and tricks for using a product or service more efficiently

Once there is a content strategy in place, the key to gaining consistent traffic from the newsletter is sending regularly. Sending once a month is not enough for most businesses to stay top of mind in their customers’ inboxes. Create a consistent schedule to send bi-monthly or even once a week. Remember, everyone won’t be able to open every email just like everyone won’t see every Facebook or Instagram post, so consistency is key!

Transactional and re-engagement emails

We’ve all experienced transactional emails. They usually involve some kind of promotion or offer. These types of campaigns often feel like a sales pitch — because they are. However, we’ve also all experienced being sold to too much, which is why any powerful email marketing strategy needs a combination of transactional and informative campaigns.

However, many businesses will only send one type of transactional email and there are many ways to upsell to customers via email. A few common examples can include:

• Abandoned cart emails
• Upsell emails after product or service purchase
• Special offer/discounts
• Special offer after cancelation

These campaigns are extremely effective at converting customers because they are typically targeted at already warm leads. Especially if the list has been receiving regular newsletters, these audiences are already familiar with and well informed about your brand making them more inclined to buy.

Keep in mind that just like everything in life, email addresses change. If the list is 6 months old or older and has never received a single campaign, sending a few re-engagement campaigns will be important to see how much of the current list is still active.

Re-engagement campaigns can include top performing content to pique their interest or even a special, limited time offer to pull in repeat customers. Remember, if they signed up for the list, they are already familiar with the brand and therefore further down the sales funnel. Giving these warm leads specific attention can increase website traffic, social engagement, and overall sales.

Local SEO

Brick and mortar businesses not paying attention to local SEO are falling behind. Local SEO is what helps your business show up on searches for restaurants, shops, and even handyman services in a specific area. These listings are not chosen randomly, they are prioritized based off of, you guessed it, an algorithm. Understanding the key elements that go into this algorithm will give your business a better chance of showing up the next time someone searches for “food near me” or “lawn care services”.

Local SEO can be an entire specialty on its own, but business owners can take action today by improving these elements:

• Claim your business listings
• Add location pages to the company website
• Improve consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number across every platform online
• Update everything in Google My Business
• Focus on gaining real reviews

There are many other ways to prioritize local listings, but starting here will give the business a solid foot forward.

BONUS Long-term Tactic: Technical SEO

Though the strategies above will give your business a leg up in website traffic, there is no substitute for a long-term SEO strategy that includes technical SEO. What is technical SEO?

Traditionally, the phrase technical SEO refers to optimizing your site for crawling and indexing but can also include any technical process meant to improve search visibility. Technical SEO is a broad and exciting field, covering everything from sitemaps, meta tags, JavaScript indexing, linking, keyword research, just to name a few. Generally this has been everything that is not on-page SEO or everything that happens on the backend where customers don’t see.

Working with a developer may be helpful here, but contrary to popular belief, not all technical improvements are overly complicated. Many can be handled by someone with a little knowledge and website access. The most important step to starting a technical SEO strategy is getting a crawl report to see where improvement can be made. Most crawl reports will recognize and highlight any technical issues like error pages, page load times, duplicate content, and mobile usability. This report will be the roadmap to follow to make lasting improvements that could steadily increase organic traffic for years to come.

Where to Start

If these tips for how to increase website traffic sound overwhelming, don’t worry! Simply start where you are. If the business already has a blog in place but it hasn’t been effective at converting traffic or leads, start with a new strategy there. Then slowly fold in the other strategies. You don’t have to go “all or none” for these tactics to be effective and start sending more customers your way. Even minor improvements in all these areas are sure to get the wheels turning in the right direction for increased site traffic!