We know it sounds surprising, a digital agency telling you that SEO and PPC are not the sole drivers of traffic to your website, and to investigate the other options out there. However, these tactics will indirectly benefit your SEO, as the more relevant and engaged traffic you get on the website, the more the search engines will value your website, and increase your domain authority, which in turn increases your search engine rankings – and therefore, visibility to your target audience online.
Social Media
Before you stop reading, we aren't going to tell you how to utilise Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, but we are going to tell you about the hidden gems that are sometimes forgotten about in social media. Some of these include but are not limited to:
Many businesses feel Pinterest isn't for them, that they aren't showcasing anything worth 'pinning'. However, there is a lot you could be pinning. For service providers who don't have a tangible product, you could be using Pinterest to promote your blog articles, webinars and workshops or case studies (as long as they have imagery). Product-based businesses - get your product imagery uploaded, as you don't know where your audience may be looking.
The next objection is that your audience may not be looking at Pinterest, but have you noticed that in your Google Image Search you see images pulling through from Pinterest? That's no coincidence. Pinterest automatically feeds imagery to Google Image Search, giving you another chance to be found on the search engine.
Gone are the days when WhatsApp was used primarily as an SMS service. Since Facebook's acquisition of the service in 2014, the app has moved from strength to strength and has evolved to cater to businesses as well as consumers. In 2019 came WhatsApp for Business, which allows businesses to create a profile, including a catalogue of products and services, as well as links to web-based content, meaning it is another form of communication for customers and prospective customers. Businesses now use WhatsApp as a channel for marketing to prospective and current customers by running specific campaigns, inviting users to a WhatsApp group, and providing free content. WhatsApp also has two billion users worldwide, coming in as the third most popular social media platform, just behind Facebook and YouTube.
YouTube
This brings us neatly on to YouTube, which is the second most popular search engine in the world. That's right, as well as being a social media platform, YouTube also functions as a search engine. Owned by Google, YouTube is a search engine in its own right, feeding over one billion hours of content to viewers across the world. There is a lot of noise on YouTube, but if you get your content right, and it's relevant to your target audience, it can put you in front of new customers searching online. Video content also sits highly on the search engines for relevant terms, which gives you another way to get in front of your audience and bring them to your website. Video content should be creative, engaging, and relevant to your offering, and it should get across the personality of the business simply and concisely. If you are looking to invest in high-quality video content, get in touch with a member of our team who will be more than happy to chat through ideas with you, and get a plan in place.
Guest Posting
Writing blog posts and articles for other relevant blogs can drive a high volume of traffic to your website. Also known as Digital PR, it gets your business, your experience and expertise, as well as your website URL onto other websites. There are also other ways to get your content on other businesses’ websites, for example through writing a good quality article or research piece on your website, which ranks well, and other websites will want to link to. This could be done through a whitepaper, a benchmarking report or survey results - if your data is valuable to other businesses, they will use it in their content, and will link to your website through it, giving you the chance to get your website in front of new customers.
Podcasts
15.6m people listen to podcasts in the UK, and the most popular type of podcasts are news and interview styles. You could start your podcast by discussing the news and upcoming trends in your industry, as well as interviewing relevant people within your industry, or you could source a podcast to be a guest on. Reach out to some of your favourite podcasts and see if there is an opportunity for you to be a guest - you could even record yourself asking about the opportunity to show how you would sound on the air. Once you become a guest or host your own show, your listeners could head to your website, or search for your business online to find out more information - resulting in additional traffic.
Collaboration
Collaboration with businesses similar to your own can be a brilliant technique to get your business in front of brand-new audiences and encourage those important visits to your website. We aren't suggesting you go and put on events with your competitors, as chances are you will probably both be targeting the same audience, but you could find relevant businesses that complement your product or service to partner up with on a one-off event/campaign.
For example, we partnered up with B&B Press who are Sheffield based print professionals for a webinar they were doing on sustainability. A business specialising in print works hand in hand with a creative agency, so it enabled us to get our brand name out in front of a new audience, whilst showing our expertise in design. You could also collaborate in the form of a campaign, or a competition - as long as the other businesses are like-minded and suit your brand, it will appear natural and relevant to your audiences.
Update and repurpose your content
Okay, so we couldn't write a full article on driving traffic to your website and not include a little bit of SEO. Updating and repurposing your content can work wonders for your search engine rankings, as well as driving traffic from other platforms such as social media (Pinterest included), email campaigns and even guest posting.
How do we recommend you do it? Start with Google Analytics. If you aren't familiar with Google Analytics, get in touch with our team to get you up to speed.
Within Google Analytics, head to Behaviour, then Site Content and finally All Pages.
Here you will be able to see all of the content visited on your website. Set your time frame to “all-time” and then start browsing which content has been the most popular. Once you have a list of the five most popular pieces of content on your website, you can start updating it. By updating, we mean checking that it still complies with current best practices in terms of SEO and accuracy, and that it still speaks to your target audience. Once the content is updated, you can then send it back out via your marketing channels.
There we have it, seven ways to drive new traffic to your website. Our digital marketing team are highly experienced in driving relevant and valuable traffic to websites, so speak to us and see what we can do for your business.
