When running an online store, the work doesn’t end in building a site with a catchy domain name and visually appealing layout. Business owners need to increase website traffic and turn them into leads and customers to earn revenue.
Unfortunately, over 60% of marketers struggle to drive traffic and leads to their online business websites. If you’re one of them, this guide is for you. We’ll cover seven free and paid strategies to boost your website traffic and share some tools that can help you in the process.
1. Choose the Right Web Host
Besides storing a website’s files, web hosting plays an important role in site performance and security, which can impact the amount of traffic to your website. As such, carefully research a suitable hosting provider for your needs.
With web hosting, a high price tag doesn’t always equal quality. So, consider the following aspects when searching for a host for web development and performance:
- This is how much data a website can transmit each month. Ensure the host has enough resources to accommodate your website’s traffic.
- It refers to the number of website files your host can store.
- This affects how often your website is up and running. Pick a host with a high uptime guarantee, so your site is always accessible to visitors.
- Most global consumers value security when shopping online. Therefore, choosing a hosting provider with SSL certificates, a good backup policy, and firewalls is essential to deliver a secure shopping experience.
- A good hosting provider lets business owners upgrade their plans as their business grows, such as from shared hosting to a VPS hosting plan.
2. Optimize for Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent method to boost organic traffic and increase your site’s rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). There are three types of SEO to implement for excellent website performance.
On-Page SEO
On-page optimization focuses on improving the website content. This involves targeting the correct keywords when creating content, including title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags. Use a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner to find relevant short and long-tail keywords before writing your first blog post.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page optimization techniques include link building and social media marketing to increase social and referral traffic. Build quality backlinks from high-authority websites by writing guest posts and promoting your content on social media channels.
Technical SEO
Increase web traffic by improving the technical elements of your website, such as fixing indexing issues, speeding up load time, and optimizing the site for mobile devices. Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test are helpful tools for auditing your technical SEO performance.
3. Consider Paid Advertising
Increasing website traffic with paid advertising comes with several benefits. You can promote your site on strategic pages, target the most relevant traffic, and gain insights into measurable metrics.
Here are some tips for integrating this digital marketing strategy to drive more traffic to your website:
- Use effective targeting tools. Paid advertising platforms offer various targeting options and ad types. For example, Google Ads provides multiple ad formats, like text ads on search pages, while Instagram’s ad types include Stories, Carousels, and Reels.
- Create engaging ads. Integrate power words and keywords in the ads, then test different ad versions and optimize for the best results.
- Target the right audience. Use the platform’s features to show your ads to specific segments. You can target based on demographics, life events, and geographic locations.
4. Improve Customer Journey for Product Purchase
Making it easy for website visitors to purchase products or services is vital for running a successful online store. In fact, over 85% of shoppers are willing to spend more for an improved customer experience.
Optimizing your payment page is a great starting point. Reduce the number of steps for faster checkout and ensure all buttons and links are easy to find and click. Creating a seamless purchasing process can help your site drive traffic by attracting returning visitors.
Another great idea is to provide multiple payment methods to meet the customers’ preferences. PayPal, Amazon Pay, and bank transfers are some of the most popular options.
5. Use Social Media
Social media is excellent for connecting with existing customers and attracting new ones. The best part of this off-page SEO strategy is that setting up accounts on social platforms is free, and business owners can target a large existing user base.
To start, choose the right platforms for your business by considering these factors:
- The more people use the channel, the more potential customers you can attract.
- Each social channel has a different user base, so choose platforms that match your target audience’s demographics.
- Platform features. Explore each platform’s features to see if they suit your social media marketing strategies.
After selecting the social channels, regularly create content that is engaging and relevant. Be responsive to comments and questions from followers to show that you care about their needs and improve their experience with your brand.
6. Build an Email List
Email marketing lets business owners connect with customers and keep them updated on the latest products and promotions, directing them to the website and driving more traffic.
To start growing your email list, display a sign-up form on your website in the header, footer, or as a pop-up window. Show online reviews and offer freebies or discounts to encourage visitors to subscribe.
Also, include an opt-in link in your emails so people can easily subscribe to the email list.
7. Track Your Progress
The key to optimizing an online business website and driving traffic is regularly monitoring its progress. It helps identify which strategies generate visitors the most so you can make adjustments based on the data.
Google Analytics is a free tool to help you with this process. It analyzes traffic coming to your website, from channel sources and popular queries to users’ activities.
Another useful tool is Google Search Console. It provides resources and reports to improve your website performance, including crawl errors, index status, mobile usability, and core web vitals.
Consider setting up recurring email reports on these tools to stay updated on your site performance.
Conclusion
Learning how to generate traffic is a must for online business owners. To bring more website traffic organically, focus on your SEO strategies and improve the customer experience by picking the best web host and delivering a seamless payment process.
Then, grow your email list and run digital marketing strategies on social media to gain even more traffic. If you want faster and segmented results, consider paid advertising on search engines and social media platforms.
We hope this article has helped you plan the best strategies to increase traffic to your website. Good luck!
