A website is more than beneficial for your small business – it’s essential. It will make you more visible to new audiences and increase both leads and sales. But you can only reap these benefits if you put in the work to get new eyes on your site and its content. There is a long list of strategies that you can use to drive traffic to your site. Whether you implement all of them or just a few, it’s important to develop a plan for generating traffic to your small business website.

Attracting More Visitors to Your Site

These are just a few of the many things you can do to drive traffic to your website:

• Make the Most of On-Page SEO: Search engine optimization, or SEO, is very important for attracting visitors. On-page SEO includes using keywords that your audience will be entering into search engines and creating content that is valuable for them.
• Optimize Meta Descriptions: On-page SEO helps your content appear in search results, but meta descriptions convince people to click on your link. Make sure you are using keywords in these descriptions and crafting them to entice people to click.
• Include Hashtags in Social Media Posts: Your social media posts will entice your followers and encourage engagement, but hashtags will help new followers find you. Include every hashtag that’s relevant to your industry and content.
• Build an Email List: Email marketing is very effective for promoting your content and services. While algorithms change for search engines and social platforms, email inboxes don’t change that much. There’s no reason for your emails not to reach your audience. An opt-in offer, such as a free guide or checklist, will convince people to provide their email addresses in return. Then you can send your content directly to their inbox and tell them about sales, promotions, and new products.
• Partner with Affiliates: Affiliate programs are becoming more and more popular among bloggers and other publishers. Each affiliate can bring a unique audience to your company. Basically, it works like this: an affiliate, such as a blogger in your industry, promotes your product or service to their audience. When someone purchases that product through their special affiliate link, the blogger receives a small commission. Though this means providing the affiliate with a small percentage of your revenue, it can greatly increase sales and provide a profit beyond what you pay the affiliate.
• Guest Blog: This approach also allows you to take advantage of new audiences. You can write a post for another website in your industry and will receive a link to your website in exchange. This post should provide as much value as any piece of content on your own site.
• Get Listed on Review Sites: Review sites, such as Yelp, can help attract visitors as well. Your page on these sites will include a link to your website. Many people check reviews before they decide to buy, so the more positive reviews you can garner, the better.
• Use Paid Advertising: Though most of these techniques will cost you little to no money, this one does require a degree of investment. How much investment is up to you – it’s important to set up a marketing budget that will fit your company. You’ll still want to engage with people online, but paid ads are being given more focus on social networks like Facebook and can help you attract new visitors.
• Use Analytics to Develop a Winning Strategy: Not all the above strategies will be relevant for you and your company. Analytics can help you determine exactly where your best traffic comes from, such as social media or search engines. This will allow you to focus on that specific type of traffic. For example, if you know you get the most conversions from search engines, you can focus more on SEO. If Twitter is your main source of traffic, you might work on optimizing posts for that platform. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, focus on the channels and strategies that work best for you.

Growing Your Site’s Traffic

The final thing you can do to promote your content, drive traffic, and increase sales is to obtain the right web hosting. BionicWP provides secure WordPress hosting. Small business websites in any industry, from small e-commerce shops to large content agencies, can build secure, effective, and beautiful websites to suit their company best. Real-time uptime monitoring, monthly hosting and SEO reports, and SEO advice can help you improve your rankings in search results to attract new visitors. We offer many security features as well, including:

• Off-site backups
• Updates for core software, themes, and plugins
• Daily malware scans
• Hack promise
• CDN integration to guard against viruses
• Free SSL certificate

Professional WordPress support can help you with any aspect of your small business website, including design, development, content, and project management. Contact BionicWP today to find out how we can help you generate traffic to your business website.