A business website is only as good as the number of people who use it. You could have the best-designed site in the world, but if people don’t know it exists, or aren’t able to find it during a routine search, it isn’t of much use.

Which is a real shame. The more traffic you drive to your site, the more potential customers you are attracting and the more business you might be able to drum up.

There is no single answer as to how to increase the number of visitors to your website. Different strategies work for different businesses and different target audiences – but to get you started, here are six ways in which you can drive traffic to your website.

Paid advertising

There are many ways in which you can spend money on advertising on the internet. You can pay to boost your listing with search engines, set up social media campaigns to increase your visibility on the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or fork out for display advertising on the websites of others.

All these various methods have pros and cons, and really, it comes down to what you want your advertising to achieve, whether it be to drive more traffic to your site or increase conversions.

Paying for advertising may seem like an unnecessary expense, but it is actually essential to the point where every business should build in advertising costs to their budgets. If you don’t think you can afford it, then why not consider taking out a loan from online payday loans direct lenders – that’s how important it is.

Use social media

Social media sites offer huge opportunities for connecting with potential customers. 68 percent of American adults have a Facebook account for example, while 73 percent regularly access YouTube and 35 percent use Instagram. Using social media to promote your content is, therefore, a great way to drive traffic to your website.

What platforms are best for your business will depend on what industry you are in and who your target market is. Facebook is generally suitable for any type of business, Twitter is perfect for posting short and sharp links to interesting content, and Instagram is a much more visual platform which makes it ideal for showcasing products that are photogenic.

If you are looking to capture a younger audience, then consider platforms such as Snapchat. 78 percent of 18-24-year-old’s regularly use the image and video sharing app, something which Adidas took full advantage of with their Fashion 5 ways campaign.

Make use of video content

Those user statistics about YouTube and Snapchat are astonishing, aren’t they? Of course, it points to a need to be savvy with social media, but it also highlights just what video content can do for a business’s online presence.

Studies have shown that information retention is significantly higher for visual and audio content than it is for text, which makes video marketing a great way to grab your audience’s attention. Consider incorporating a lot more video into your online output as a way of driving people to your website – YouTube guides or interviews incorporating links or short Snapchat or Instagram stories where a user can swipe up to instantly access your website are just two examples of ways that video marketing can work.

Write blogs

One way to keep users coming back to your website is if they know it is going to be regularly updated. If you run a plumbing service or a mechanics, then you might be wondering how you can keep a site that is primarily used to advertise the services you offer ticking over with new updates.

The answer comes in the form of a blog. Writing regular blog entries brings a number of benefits. Firstly, it gives you content to share that will bring traffic onto your website in the first place. Secondly, if you write a blog about how to carry out a winter car check or fix a leaky tap, you are positioning yourself as an expert in the field in the minds of the reader which will make them more likely to use your services if and when they are needed in the future. Finally, by giving away little tidbits for free, you are coming across as somebody who cares about their customers – and that goes a long way in business.

Pay attention to SEO

If you want to get your website ranked highly by the top search engines in the world, then you need to pay a lot of attention to SEO. Optimizing your content for search engines remains a worthwhile and valuable practice and there are many ways that you can push yourself closer to that coveted first page of Google.

Are you making the most of image alt tags? With the number of image searches being carried out increasing, using pictures to draw people onto your site is an undervalued way of attracting traffic. Are you creating internal links to new content? How good are your meta descriptions, detailing what the content or page is about? Is your site optimized for mobile browsing?

Paying a little attention to good SEO practice can help boost your organic traffic.

Ensure your site is responsive across all devices

It isn’t just for search engine purposes that you should take into account how your site appears on mobile browsers – it’s for general users as well. With the majority of Americans now accessing the internet via smartphones or tablets, a site which is non-responsive to browsing on those devices can prove to be a real turn off for visitors.

There is nothing worse than having to scroll across to read text which doesn’t fit on a screen or trying to zoom in and out because a site has been designed to only appear as it would on a laptop or desktop. Chances are, most visitors will make a very quick exit rather than attempting to navigate their way through, which means a fully responsive site is a must for attracting and keeping traffic.

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