10 Beginner Hacks to Drive Traffic To Your Website

So you've created your website, published it and then you sit back and wait but all you hear is *crickets* - your analytics show you're getting no website traffic, absolutely nothing (almost). The only people who come to your page are sympathetic friends you've nagged into taking a look (and your Mum). If you get lucky a few people might just stumble across your page by mistake but then they disappear and your website just sits there waiting in hope that the right person might come across your page and buy your products and or services.

The reason? The internet is oversaturated with billions of webpages and new websites are being published everyday promising everything under the sun, so how do you make your website stand out from the crowd, get it found and drive traffic to your page? Read on for our top tips!

10 Amazing Strategies to Increase Traffic to Your Website

1. Write engaging and relevant titles, descriptions and content for your pages to encourage visits to your site and add 1 or 2 cross links to other relevant pages on your website to encourage visitors to stay. It's also worth adding a blog to your website and updating it regularly.

2. Use keywords in your content, descriptions and titles – think about if you were searching for your content what different words would you type in a search engine to come to your page

3. Easy Navigation – Make it simple for search engines and customers to navigate to the pages you want them to look at with your navigation. Ensure you have an about page, contact page, a testimonials/ portfolio page and blog page clearly visible on your navigation menu and make sure these pages have content.

4. A clean page is a must, keep to a simple colour palette (a maximum of 2 or 3 complimentary colours is best) and do not clutter your pages with links. If your website is overly cluttered this can be off putting to visitors who won't want to spend time scrolling through your page to look for the information they want – a more minimalist approach is currently best.

5. To encourage engagement and bring people to your page, show common problems and how you or your business solves them on your page. Use tutorials, checklists and top tips which are a quick read and consider doing give always such as free eBook's, checklists, workbooks and reference guides to those who subscribe to your email list.

6. Good branding – adopt a common styling to your content and pictures and try to replicate this in all your content – then if your regular visitors come across your content elsewhere on social media they will know that it is yours from looking at it.

7. Photo's and Graphic's are key in your content. If photography is not your thing, hire someone or use stock photography – visitors love visuals and are more likely to stay on your page if you have images.

8. Optimise your page for Social Media - Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram accounts are great for increasing traffic and engaging with visitors – ensure your accounts are linked from your page (and vice versa), use social media regularly and also add buttons to your content so this can be liked, pinned or shared by your visitors to their own social media pages.

9. Engage with your visitors – reply to comments on your blog, or social media, and respond to emails in a timely manner. It is also worth putting your response times on your contact page and make sure your contact information is up-to-date.

10. Network – find others in your industry who do products which compliment yours and feature them in your blog and social media and they may just do the same for you. You could invite them to guest post on your blog and this might lead to an invite from them to do the same on their page.

Read our tips but web development not your area? Want us to do the work so you can concentrate on your business and make more money –  talk to us about what we can do to help you.