How to increase your website traffic

Your website is an important part of your online marketing. Many of your visitors come to your site because of a referral from a friend or associate because you’ve given out your business card to someone at an industry event. Still many people looking for a service provider use the web to search for a local provider, so your website needs to come up among the top results in search engines.

Here are some things to keep in mind about boosting your web traffic. They are not all inclusive and you’ll probably want to talk to your web designer or an internet marketing firm for more suggestions.

Search Engine Optimization

A few weeks ago, Angie Dubis did a very thorough blog post on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), (read: Why is SEO Important and Where do you Start?) where she explored why it matters and how to optimize your site. The bottom line is to optimize your site with the key words that are most relevant to your market in order to stay high on the search results page.

Your challenge is that many of the words you use to describe your business are highly competitive.  You can try focusing on your specialty to maintain a higher ranking. For example, “Chicago massage therapist” will bring up many more results than “Chicago massage therapist for arthritis.”

Wordtracker is a good search engine tool – they offer a free trial – to help you determine popular key words in your market. Google AdWords is another tool to use to find popular search terms; and it’s free. You also might want to consult with an SEO specialist.

Great content

As part of your content strategy, consider blogging. You’ve got a lot of knowledge you can share with your readers. Add keyword-rich blog posts to your site and you can expect to see an increase in your traffic. Not sure what to blog about? Consider focusing on a treatment, product or seasonal skincare needs; you might even want to write about the various members of your staff.

Post links to your blog on your social media networks – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – to direct traffic back to your site. Also periodically feature guest bloggers to introduce their followers to your site.

Other content can include articles or videos that offer your visitors how to information or an update on something in the industry.

Email blasts

If you have an opt-in mailing list, periodically send out email blasts to drive traffic to your site.

Free directory listings

Consumers frequently check Yelp and Google Places for service providers. The directories receive high placement in the search engines. Even better, you can list your business on these sites for free, including contact information, business description, logo, photos, and most importantly, your website link.

Advertising
Consider running a banner ad on another site in your marketplace that links to your website. Also pay-per-click (PPC), which are the “sponsored search’ on the top or side of Search Engine Results, can increase traffic to your site.  PPC enables you to take advantage of keyword-specified traffic.

Keep in mind that ‘build it and they will come’ is not your winning online marketing strategy. “Build it and drive traffic to it from multiple sources” is.

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