You Need More Website Traffic

In the movie Field of Dreams, an ethereal voice tells Kevin Costner that if he builds a baseball field, people will come to it. Unfortunately, the same is not true of your website. Just because you build it doesn’t mean people will come. Having a website doesn’t guarantee that people will visit it.

It’s crucial to create a proven strategy to get more web traffic, with tested methods for generating a steady stream of website visitors. You need tactics and hacks for getting people to visit your site and engage with your content.

The more people come to your site, the more people become aware of the great content you create. The more people become aware of your great content, the more you become known as an industry expert and thought leader. And the more you’re known as an industry expert, the more people will come to you for help.

Of course, all this raises the question: how do you get more website traffic? Luckily, here you’ll discover 10 proven strategies for getting hundreds, if not thousands, of website visitors.

It’s important to avoid jumping from strategy to strategy without giving much time to each one. Each of these strategies requires significant time and effort to execute properly. Work is required if you want to see results.

Have a long-haul mentality when thinking about getting traffic to your website. As you stack one strategy on top of another, you’ll begin to see compounding results.

Traffic Strategy #1: Create Amazing, Share-Worthy Content

  • If you want people to come to your website, you need to give them a reason to come. You need to create awesome content that attracts people and that they feel compelled to share with others. If you simply post short, uninspired articles, you’re not giving people much reason to come to your site or share your content.
  • For your best results, consider how you’re going to stand out from the crowd. How can you create content in a way that differentiates you from everyone else?
  • The best way to stand out from the crowd is to create highly valuable, in-depth content. Content that answers people’s questions and speaks to their pain points. Content that addresses a subject on a much deeper level than anything else out there.
  • When creating content, ask yourself these questions:
    • Would I want to read this content?
    • Does this add value to my readers?
    • Is this share-worthy?
    • Is this different from all the other content that’s being produced?
    • Does this content answer the reader’s questions?
    • Does it speak the reader’s pain points?
  • If you create great content, the rest of your promotional tactics become that much easier. Your content will practically promote itself when people see how valuable it is. People want to share content that is valuable and if you create valuable content, others will promote it for you.

Traffic Strategy #2: Create Various Forms of Content

  • People learn in a variety of ways. Some people are visual learners and learn best from videos. Others learn best by reading, and still others prefer audio content. If you want to connect with the greatest number of people possible, create content in a variety of formats.
  • One of the best ways to create a variety of formats of content is to use the “pillar strategy.” The pillar strategy involves first creating a lengthy, in-depth piece of “pillar” content. This pillar content could be a video, blog post, podcast, or something else.
  • Your pillar content will be the longest type of content you create and will talk about a subject from a variety of angles and viewpoints. From there, you take the pillar content and slice it up into smaller pieces of relevant content that all stand on their own.
  • For example, let’s say you created a lengthy pillar blog post. You could then:
    • Take one point from that blog post and turn it into a short video
    • Take another point from the blog post and turn it into a short podcast
    • Take a third point from the blog post and turn it into a series of social media posts
  • Each piece of content should point back to your website in some way. So, for example, at the end of your video, you could direct people to your website for more valuable content.

Traffic Strategy #3: Share Your Content on Social Media

  • Share your content multiple times across all your social media profiles. Why should you share your content multiple times? Because not every one of your followers will see every one of your posts. Sharing multiple times maximizes the chances of your followers seeing your social media posts.
  • When you share your content on social media, think about what format works best for each platform. For example, Pinterest is very image heavy. When you share a blog post to Pinterest, consider creating a specific accompanying image that fits the Pinterest platform.
  • Also, consider sharing different types of formats on social media. For example, Facebook likes to keep people on their site as long as possible and video content helps them do that (since people will give more of their attention to videos).
    • Facebook tends to push video content higher up in the social media feeds, giving it more exposure. This means you should consider using video to promote the content you create on your website.
  • When using social media, don’t be afraid to experiment with different content formats to see what works best on different platforms. Try sharing links, images, videos, polls, and more to see what drives the most people to your website.
  • You can breathe new life into old pieces of content by re-sharing them on social media a while after they’re first published. Sharing content more than once will generate more clicks, visits, and shares.
  • Don’t underestimate Twitter. Even though the lifespan of a tweet is short (short seems to be the nature of all things Twitter), you can post the same tweet multiple times, especially if you change it up every time.

Traffic Strategy #4: Advertise

  • Advertising on Facebook, Google, or other social media platforms (like LinkedIn) is one of the most effective ways to get traffic directly to your website. Yes, it does cost money (unlike the other strategies listed so far). But if you’re willing to spend the money, you can get an avalanche of traffic to your site.
  • Facebook and Google are huge. Billions of people use both websites each month. It’s an enormous audience, and if you’re willing to put some money into advertising, Google and Facebook will share their audience with you.
  • There is one distinct advantage to paid advertising above other forms of promotion: paid advertising allows you to put your content in front of a very specific audience.
    • For example, let’s say that you’ve created a guide to preparing for retirement. The ideal audience for this guide is people over the age of 45 who make more than $70,000 per year and who are married. With Facebook, you can target this precise audience.
  • Instead of sharing your content across your social media feeds and hoping that the right people see it, you can ENSURE that the right audience views your content. You can get your content in front of the people most likely to be interested in it and your business.

Traffic Strategy #5: Build Your Email List

  • Having an email list is like having your own traffic source. Each time you publish something new on your website, send a link out to your email list and watch the visitors come flooding in.
  • Probably the most effective way to build your email list is by giving away something in exchange for people’s email address. The giveaway, called a “lead magnet,” is a piece of valuable content that readers can download once they hand over their email address.
  • For example, you may give away:
    • Whitepapers
    • Ebooks
    • Case studies
    • Videos
    • Free email courses
    • Templates
    • Webinars
    • Premium content
  • Another effective way to build your email list is by implementing opt-in forms in various places across your website. For example, whenever someone first visits your site, you could have a box pop up inviting them to sign up for your email list.
  • When inviting people to sign up for your email list, give them a compelling reason to sign up. In other words, don’t simply say, “Sign up for my list!” Instead, tell people what they’ll get in exchange for signing up for your list.

Traffic Strategy #6: Collaborate With Other Content Creators

  • Always be on the lookout for ways to collaborate with other website owners and content creators. By collaborating, you get to benefit from their audience, and you can share your audience with them.
  • A simple example of collaborating with another website is to do a guest post swap. You post on their website and they post on yours. But it doesn’t have to stop there. You could appear on someone else’s podcast and then you could promote that podcast on your website.
  • The key to collaboration is being able to bring value to the other person. If you can bring value, even if that’s just sharing your audience with them, there’s a much greater chance that they’ll want to collaborate with you.
    • When you reach out to someone regarding a collaboration, make it crystal clear how you will add value to them.

Traffic Strategy #7: Guest Posting

  • If you’re like most people, you probably won’t have much of an audience when you first get started creating content on your website. That’s okay and should be expected! After all, it takes time to build an audience.
  • Guest posting on someone else’s website allows you to tap into another person’s audience. Guest posting allows you to get your outstanding work in front of an audience that’s much larger than your own, which increases your exposure and allows you to drive traffic back to your own website.
  • The most common way to secure guest posting gigs is to research blogs that are in your niche and then contact them, asking them if they accept guest posts. One thing to keep in mind when reaching out to these blogs is that they probably get these kinds of requests quite regularly.
  • If you want to stand out and have the opportunity to post on someone else’s blog, you’ll need to be unique in your pitch. In other words, you’ll need to be able to offer unique value to the other person’s audience.
  • So, what can you uniquely offer in your pitch that will set you apart?
    • Years of expertise?
    • A different/fresh perspective?
    • Research on a particular subject?
    • An insider’s opinion?
  • In your pitch to the blog, talk about what you have to offer and even suggest a few topics that you might be able to write about. Ensure that you focus on how you’ll benefit their audience.
  • If a post is published, link to it across your various social media networks. That way you benefit the owner of the website on which the guest post appears as well as yourself.

Traffic Strategy #8: Reference Others

  • If you can get an influencer in your industry — someone with a large audience — to share your content with their audience, it can be a huge boost for your website. But this is easier said than done, right? After all, how do you convince someone else that your content is worth sharing?
  • One of the most effective strategies for getting others to share your content is to quote or reference them.
    • For example, let’s say you’re writing a lengthy guide to email marketing. You could email a number of email marketing specialists and ask them for a quote for the piece.
    • Once you’ve written the guide, tell all the people you’ve quoted in the article. There’s a good chance that they’ll share your piece with their audience.
  • A simpler way to get quotes from influencers is to take something they’ve already written and quote them. Then, you can reach out to them via email or social media and let them know that you’ve quoted them. Again, there’s a decent chance they’ll share it with their audience.
  • A secondary benefit of quoting influencers and authority figures in your pieces is that it adds expertise to your content. Rather than just being your own opinion, your content also includes the thoughts and insights of industry experts, thus giving more weight to your content.

Traffic Strategy #9: Participate in Online Forums

  • Online forums like Quora and Reddit, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn groups, can be great sources of traffic for your website. There are forums and groups out there for almost every subject imaginable, and you can be sure that people are looking for the kind of information that you can provide.
  • Forums and social media groups tend to be different than standard social media sites. You can’t simply share links to them and expect people to go to your website. In fact, if all you do is share links in online forums and social media groups, there’s a good chance that you’ll get the boot.
  • First and foremost, members of these sites want you to add value directly to the group, not just through your website. In other words, they want you to participate in the conversation that is happening in the group itself, not simply spam the group with links.
  • So, answer people’s questions, contribute your own thoughts, and ask questions in these groups. Before you share any links to your own site, participate in numerous conversations.

Traffic Strategy #10: Comment on Blogs

  • In addition to your own website, there are thousands of other industry-related sites out there that are publishing great content on a regular basis. Choose a number of these blogs to regularly comment on.
  • By commenting on these blogs consistently, you’ll begin to establish yourself as a presence in your industry.
  • When commenting on blogs, have the same mindset as when you comment in online forums. Your goal is not simply to share a link back to your website, but to participate in their conversations. With each comment, you’ll want to add value to the conversation.
  • It’s important to note that the blogs you comment on should all be related in some way to your industry. A comment on a New York Times story may get a lot of eyeballs, but most of the people who see it won’t be interested in what you have to offer on your website.
  • It’s true that this strategy builds traction slowly. But the more you comment on other blogs, the more people will begin to recognize your name. And if you’re adding large amounts of value to the conversation, more and more people will begin to respect you as an expert in your industry.