You’ve got a gleaming new business website up, congrats. That’s a big milestone, but it’s hardly the end of the race. With your new website up, you’re at the starting line. After all, you didn’t build that website to sit there idling vacant. It’s time to drive traffic.

It can sound daunting, but it’s not. There are some easy ways that you can get website traffic. Lots of articles give you some high-level strategies to try (like write compelling content), but I’ve got some real-world tactics that you can do.

My background: I work in content and SEO marketing for Swagbucks and other Prodege LLC brands where I write and produce content to bring traffic and revenue to our websites.

Here are 10 tactics you can implement today to increase your presence in search engines and get traffic to your website free.

 

1. Step You SEO Game Up

SEO means search engine optimization. It means optimizing (continually improving) your website so that people can find you from Google, Bing, and other search engines. Free traffic to your website from search engines is called organic search traffic.

 

 

When people talk about “SEO”, they’re talking about driving traffic to your website from search engines. So if a person googles something, like typing “going green for ROI” into the search bar, then “going green for ROI” is the “keyword”.

“Going green for ROI” is four words, you’re right. But a keyword can be one or two words or even a longer phrase like “What brands are going green to improve their ROI?” Keywords that are a few words or more in length are referred to as long tail keywords.

Think of any keyword, longtail or otherwise, as a Google search. That’s all. It’s a question or query that you’re asking the search engine.

After someone enters their keyword in the search bar, Google returns related results. You’ll be shown some websites that have content that Google believes has high quality content with the information you are looking for. The better your website can answer the user’s question, the higher up your website will be displayed in the search page.

Most people will click on a result on the first page. They’ll skim the headlines and accompanying text or page description. They’ll then tap or click on the result that looks most useful, and then they’re on their way.

Sometimes, a user can’t find the answer to their search query on the first page of results and they’ll go to the second page or even third. But results on page one are where you’re going to get the most visibility and most website traffic. The higher you rank the better, with the first slot commanding the most traffic.

So how does your website rank?

Pages on your website need to have content that answers the person’s exact question they’re searching for. But you also want to anticipate potential customers’ questions and answer them.

 

With popular searches, Google will show users other popular related searches. Keep scrolling down the results page, and you’ll see a “People also ask” section. These are other questions that people searching “going green for ROI” want to know about.

In your blog article about going green for ROI, you’d want to have other content that addressed these related topics.

While you probably won’t get hired today as a sustainability consultant, you’ve planted a seed. You have helped the customer and shown that you are a good resource. You’re proving your EAT: Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. The more helpful your content is, the more likely they are to trust you and shortlist you as a potential vendor.

Having EAT is key to getting Google to show your web page in search results. Also, other websites and blogs will want to link to your website too. This is another way to step up your SEO game and get more traffic.

 

What Keywords Should I Use?

Keyword research tools like Moz or Ahrefs can help you do some research and find out what people are searching. You’ll get hundreds of suggested keywords to write about that will drive traffic to your website. While Moz for example is a paid service, there is a free or freemium version.

Google Search console a free SEO tool that gives you insights as to what searches are trending and what’s bringing traffic to your website.

Here’s a Google Search Console view for a blog website. It shows an increase in website traffic over the past 3 months.

 

 

You can see which queries or searches are driving website traffic. Impressions is the number of times this blog shows up in the search results. Clicks show the number of times someone has clicked on the result and visited the blog.

You can also look at Google Trends, a free Google insights tool. Enter a term related to your business and see how popular it is and whether or not it’s gaining or losing in popularity over time. If you see a new term is gaining interest, that’s a great time to spin out some related content before there is more competition.

I also like to use Google Search to guide what I write about. If you query “Kohl’s coupons”, for example, Google will show you other popular relevant searches.

Take a look at the “People also ask” feature. Depending on how many ads there are, you may need to scroll down the page to see it.

 

 

With Kohl’s, for example, you can see people also ask about Senior Day, online coupon usage, and 30% off deals. This is a great snapshot of other keywords and topics to use.

Without this data, you might think that someone searching “Kohl’s coupons” is literally looking for a paper coupon that they can print. But really, these searchers want to know about discounts for seniors and if they can stack multiple coupons. “People also ask” gives you insight into what people are really getting at when they search a certain term.

Swagbucks is a cash back shopping and rewards site. Swagbucks doesn’t have any print coupons for Kohl’s. But Google knows that Swagbucks offer ways for shoppers to save money at Kohl’s and earn cash back rebates, so Google will show Swagbucks’ coupon page for Kohl’s in the search results on the first page.

 

 

When the searcher clicks on the result, they are brought to a highly informative and relevant page.

 

 

2. You Need a Blog

I’m not talking about a spill your hearts out confessional type blog. Or one that gives a curated look into your life and the things you like. That’s a personal blog. And while personal blogs can be useful for your business in driving web traffic (see #3), your business website should have a business blog with information about your industry. An informative blog is an effective way to drive high quality traffic to your website or online store.

 

 

Online children’s boutique Taylor + Max has a blog article about buying sustainable clothing for kids. The article contains links to several sustainable brands that Taylor and Max sells.

 

If you’re a photographer, you could write articles about how to coordinate family outfits for photos or 10 cool overlooked spots to do senior photos. This provides useful information to help customers and a chance for you to showcase some of your work and testimonials.

Even if they take your family photo tips and book a different photographer, that’s okay. A reader has to come to your blog and find the content helpful and engaging. This will improve how Google sees your site so you can rank higher in search results. (Google knows your content is helpful based on how long the reader stays on your site, if they click other links, or view other pages.)

And a site visitor who is a competitor’s customer today, or just shopping, is still a prospect. They’re just earlier in the conversion funnel than someone who is ready to make a purchase today. Odds are good they will make similar web searches in the future. If you show up more often in their search result, they can revisit your website more frequently and start to trust your brand.

 

 

Getting Started with Your First Articles

For a blog, I’d start with 7-10 pieces on a range of different topics that are relevant to your business or industry. Articles should solve common problems or answer frequent questions. It’s a matter of sitting down and cranking out some articles.

WordPress has a number of free plug-ins you can use for guidance about headlines and keywords to use.

 

In the plugins tab, you can search “SEO” and look for free tools that you can add on to offer SEO suggestions for your articles and webpages.

 

You’ll want to structure your article with a good title or headline, several subtopics, an intro, and a conclusion. Where relevant, link to products and services on your website. FAQ format articles can be particularly helpful.

If you are not a writer, there are inexpensive resources like Fiverr or Thumbtack. Most every writer says they have SEO experience. Look for writers who have credentials and experience with SEO platforms like Ahrefs, Moz, Jasper, Surfer SEO, or SEMrush Writing Assistant.

After you stand up your first several articles, you can add an article or two per week or per month – whatever cadence makes sense for your business.

You can even do more academic type blog posts and position them as whitepapers that are available by download. Or you could do in-depth reviews comparing multiple products side by side like this review of the best mattresses.

 

 

 

3. Blogger Outreach

After you’ve got some helpful content up on your blog, it’s time to start reaching out to other bloggers and other businesses that have a blog. Reach out to them and ask them to link to your blog post. It’s another way to get more free traffic.

Reach out to bloggers who write content that appeals to your target audience. If you’re a food and beverages distributor, you’d probably look at blogs about travel, dining out, food and beverage trends, and the restaurant industry.

Smaller businesses are more likely to be receptive than large businesses. And small businesses with a well-maintained blog are better to reach out to than a small business blog that has not been updated since 2015.

The practice of getting other sites to link to your website is called backlinking or backlink building. There are several benefits to getting backlinks but these are the top two reasons:

1. You can get traffic from these other websites. When one of their readers clicks on a link to your content and visits your website, that’s called referral traffic. It’s another way to get free traffic – possibly even a significant traffic boost.
2. When other sites link to your website, that’s a major win in Google’s eyes. Google perceives your site as more expert, authoritative, and trustworthy when other sites link to your website. Having backlinks is helpful at getting your website to rank higher in the Google search results.

 

Getting the Backlinks

The most effective way is to do an email blitz to ask other blog sites to link to your blog.

 

This is an example of a backlink. You click on “this Hugo boss wool skirt” and it brings you to a product listing on the Hugo Boss website for that wool skirt.

 

 

Here’s another example of backlinks for the Udemy coupon codes page on MyPoints. When you click on “Earn Points” or “Get Deals” it brings you to the Udemy website.

 

You need to offer them a compelling reason to do it. Here are some ways to ask for backlinks:

1. Offer to write a free article for their blog. In that blog, you can work in a reference to your website.
2. Tell them you would be a helpful resource for their readers and ask them to share your website with their readers. You can ask them to link to a specific blog article on your website from their resources page or a related article on their site.
3. Ask them if they would like to do a guest post exchange. You publish an article from them and they publish an article from you.

You can find some actionable, easy-to-implement tactics on building traffic for your blog, including some form emails you can use.

 

 

4. List your website on the Google directory Google My Business

Claiming your business is an easy way to increase your visibility in the Google Search results. It’s a free to use service and the set-up is quite easy.

 

Join by going to My Business and going through the easy steps that are outlined.

You will need to verify your ownership (which is a good thing. You don’t need some random troll listing your company and causing you grief) and then provide some basic information like business category and contact information.

 

Great Benefits of My Business

• Control how your business shows up in search results when they’re looking for a local business.
• Make sure your business is accurately displayed on Google Maps.
• Make sure the business hours, contact number, and physical address are all accurate. You can include links to your menu or product catalogs.
• Visitors can leave reviews for your business through My Business. This gives you insights into what people like or don’t like. Good reviews can build trust for new web visitors. With critical reviews, you can respond giving you a chance to show how responsive your business is to feedback.
• You can get Insights from My Business to understand your audience. It will show you how many clicks you get on your business listing and how people engage with it. Are people clicking on the map and then drifting away? Are people sharing the listing with friends?

 

 

5. Optimize your website’s performance

Everyone has visited a website that looked and performed so poorly that immediately you back-clicked out. When I see multiple font colors and 30-point font, I run. And if the page is slow to load, I immediately leave.

When a person reaches your website and immediately leaves, that’s a bounce. The higher your bounce rate, the worse off you are. Like with golf, you want a low bounce rate.

Not only are you losing potential sales and conversions when someone bounces from our website. Bounces hurt your chance of reaching new users before they even have a chance to bounce.

Bounce rate is a big part of SEO and how Google sees your website. The higher your website, the worse Google thinks it is. And if Google thinks your site offers a poor user experience, it will stop showing your website in the search results.

 

 

How to Improve Your Bounce Rate

You need to first see what your bounce rate is, if you’re not already tracking it. Google Analytics is the easiest way to do this. It’s a free service and gives you loads of useful, actionable data about your website and how visitors are interacting with it.

It’s a small amount of code that you can place on every page. It’s easy to find your Google Analytics code. Then, in any website builder, like Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, or WordPress, you can easily add it. It’s just a line of code that you can copy, paste, and save. You don’t need to know how to code.

 

 

With Google Analytics, you can look at bounce rate by page to see where people are leaving or bouncing from your website. Maybe it’s at the checkout page that people are bouncing. Or maybe it’s on your homepage because there’s a video on there that takes a long time to load.

If you can see it takes 5.8 seconds for a certain page to load, you probably have your answer as to why the bounce rate is too high. Google Analytics will rate your page load time as green, yellow, or red for good, so-so, or bad. You might think 2.9 seconds is a great load time, but Google could be telling you you’re in the red zone. If your competitors’ sites take 0.5 seconds to load and yours takes 2.9 seconds, you’ll need to speed up your page.

 

 

You can get a quick snapshot of your Google Analytics performance within your website for Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or other platforms where you can build and host websites.

 

 

Identifying resource hungry page elements that a long time to load (like videos or too many images) can help. You can reduce the size of these video and image files, or remove them altogether. Afterwards, you can re-test your page speed and see if it’s improved. You can find ways to increase your page load time in Google Page Insights.

Google Page Insights is another free and vital resource to use for making sure your website performs at its best. Google Page Insights will tell you exactly why it’s taking certain pages too long to load and make specific recommendations.

 

 

If you’re still not sure why your website has such a high bounce rate, do a little bit of digging. Ask for feedback from family and friends. Or you can get feedback from non-biased Internet users on sites like UserTesting, User Brian, or Usability Hub They’ll give you feedback in the form of surveys, a written paragraph about their experience, or even in a real-time video where they are navigating the site and giving you their impressions out loud as they go. You define how you want to get the feedback.

UserTesting is the most well-known user testing site and one of the most spendy. Tests can cost $35 per user. Other user testing sites or market research companies may offer cheaper solutions that give you the same data.

Bottom line is you need feedback. After you know what works and doesn’t work, you can start testing new solution ideas, new designs, and doing some A/B tests (testing one new version against another new version).

 

 

6. Guest post on other blogs and websites

Publish posts in other related blogs or blogs that your customers read. Writing guest posts increases your visibility and builds your brand’s reputation. Readers, other websites, and Google will come to view you as a trustworthy source of information about your business or industry. This content strategy will also generate traffic from relevant websites. Relevant traffic is converting traffic.

 

I regularly write about ways to make money online on the Swagbucks blog, so guest writing an article about how to manifest money in a similar fintech blog was a natural fit.

 

 

There are lots of ways to go about asking to guest post on other blogs and websites. Here’s one way that I go about it for a small blog about sustainable kids’ clothing.

1. I look for other companies in my niche that have a blog. What clothing brands have blogs? Build a list of these brands, their blog web address, and a contact name to email. I tend to look for smaller brands. I love Target, for example, but I doubt they would want me guest posting since I’m not Meghan Markle or Hailey Bieber. I don’t want to waste time on high-hanging, pie-in-the-sky fruit.
2. I look for other blogs that write about similar topics. I just Google and will query terms I blog about like the ethical children’s clothing brands or doing the 100-day dress challenge. I make note of the blog web address, name of the blogger, and email. It can take some digging to find the email, but it’s usually there somewhere.
3. I look for other companies that have content about different clothing brands that are high-volume but low competition for SEO like Birkenstock. On Swagbucks, you can find an article for Birkenstock Black Friday deals or Birkenstock coupons and cash back. So if I wanted to publish a review about children’s Birkenstocks, this is a site I might reach out to.
4. Do an email campaign. That sounds not fun to most people, but trust me, it’s not bad. And the end result is more than worth it. It’s not like a cold call campaign; no one is going to yell at you or hang up on you. Just send a short and sweet message like “Hi Jamie, I read your article about XYZ. I also write about XYZ on my company’s blog. Can I submit a guest post on [INSERT RELATED TOPIC]? I would like the opportunity to build my company’s online presence and think your readers could really benefit from my experience in the field.”

It is time consuming to send 100 personalized emails. Usually, I’ll send out one email to 100 businesses at a time. I have used automated email services like MailChimp or Hunter.io. Or you can just email the message to yourself at your business address and BCC it to other recipients.

It will have to be a more canned message “I like your blog. Can I write for it? My name is Pat and I want to write an article about XYZ. You can see other content I’ve written for blogs on my business’ website at mybusinesswebsite dot com. My writing style is conversational, helpful, and a little bit humorous. I think your readers would find the content informative. I would love to give you a week off from writing and idea-storming and spin out something fantastic for you.”

I’ve found that I can usually get a 3% to 12% response rate when I do email outreach campaigns, so volume is key. From there, not everyone who responds is interested. It’s best to cast a wide net.

 

 

7. Promote your website on social media

There’s still time to get into the social game. Unlike 2007, it’s not all about just getting business page likes.

If you’re a B2C business, you can connect with your audience on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more. For B2B companies, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter are great channels and some have found success on Facebook through retargeting campaigns.

While fashion and lifestyle brands are an obvious natural fit, plenty of other businesses find success on social media.

 

This talking heads video (two people from the head up talking to each other over Zoom) has generated over 1,400 views in a year. The merch they’re selling? A financial product: 529 college savings plans in California.

 

 

Firstly, you can take care of some basic housekeeping. Stand up a page or account for your company, provide links, contact information, business hours, testimonials, and other vitals.

Then, you can create videos, reels, and posts to share what your brand is up to. Can you spotlight a star employee or a sustainable supplier? A feature like this is a nice way to talk about yourself without talking about yourself. And the other featured person or business is likely to share it with their followers so you can get additional coverage.

Are you a solar panel company? What about a reel with someone sliding off the roof (and landing mostly unharmed) with a wry comment about this is why you need to call in professionals.

There are lots of possibilities. Even if you’re not social media savvy, do you have a niece or nephew in college who is? Can you get a trusted regular customer to manage your social media pages in exchange for free merch – or bragging rights? You can reach out to digital marketing agencies too. And you can find freelancers who specialize in crafting really thoughtful and engaging posts for you to share. It’s less risky and much less money to find someone to do a few posts for you.

 

 

8. Build a list of leads

You don’t need to go cut-throat and build a list of leads Glengarry style. (Although while I’m lead-building I like to sip coffee and chuckle.)

There are tools like Mail Poet or MailChimp that you can easily add to your website to start gathering visitors’ email addresses. Based on audience sizes, you can get a free subscription. On MailChimp, for example, it’s free for up to 500 contacts and up to 2,500 sends per month. That’s up to 5 emails per month to up to 500 contacts.

While some people think email marketing is a relic of Y2K, email marketing is still very relevant.

Let your contacts know about current and upcoming promotions, industry changes, new locations, new vendors, and your take on timely stories. The latter would be grabbing timely topics and creating a headline relevant to your business. (i.e. Is Taylor Swift touring in your city? Try a headline like “Why Taylor Swift would tell you to _________ if you she lived in Dallas.”)

Your emails can link people to product pages, sales forms, specific blog articles, and more. You can also use this feature to remind customers that an item they hearted earlier is now on sale or about to run out of stock.

 

Use your email list to establish your expertise

You can create a newsletter related to your industry. You can send out your newsletters weekly or monthly based on how often you have updates or news to share about your business or industry.

If you’re a plumbing supply parts company, you could write about changes in costs and shipping. If you’re a market research firm, you could write about Gen Z trends and how to woo this young generation and transform them into brand loyalists.

Adding charts, infographics, and photos is helpful but not always necessary. And email services often have a free newsletter builder feature that you can use to create a clean, professional looking template.

A common practice is for your email to show a preview of the email (an image or graph and then the first few opening lines) and then to bring the reader to your blog where the newsletter or article is published in full.

 

 

8. Use infographics

Infographics are a fun, graphical way to call out facts and figures related to your business. No matter how cut and dry it might seem, if you can find a number related to your company then you can put together a killer infographic.

Are you an Online Travel Aggregator (OTA) website? Try an infographic about travel. You could illustrate and call out interesting figures like these:

• 34 million adult travelers in the US have booked an Airbnb stay before. If they all hold hands, they’d form a line
• 38,637 miles long – that’s enough to circle the globe 1.55 times.

Having 8-10 data points should be enough. Make sure to add your brand’s logo and website on the infographic.

Here’s an infographic on the Prodege.com B2B blog about changing purchasing trends.

 

If you’re not a designer, there are easy tools you can use to create attractive infographics. With many platforms, there is a free trial version or you can build your first several infographics for free.

 

This infographic about saving money at Sam’s Club is not elevated design, but it does the job. It’s been shared on dozens of websites.

 

 

On Fiverr, you can find a designer to create an infographic for as little as $10. A $10 infographic may not be amazing, high-end agency quality. But you can get something that’s perfectly usable.

After you have the infographic, you can share it on your website in a blog article or another relevant page and on Pinterest and other social media platforms.

It’s helpful if you ask the designer to create different size versions optimized for Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and your blog.

You can share your infographic to infographic share sites. You can make it available for others to re-use if they link to your website. Now, you’re in position for the infographic to get picked up by other bloggers and businesses and visibly build your authority.

Additionally, a quality infographic image can help your site’s SEO and bring more traffic to your site. Name the infographic image something that’s rich in relevant keywords (i.e. OTA travel trends for Airbnb) and your infographic will show up in Google Search results. Increasingly, more search results are visual ones. The right image tags (names) will help.

 

 

9. Host a webinar

This is a way to engage with people who are interested in your business or who have industry related questions. Maybe you want to tell people about ways they can reduce their heating and air conditioning bills. Or how to open a college savings account. Whatever you do, you want to let people know you do it best and that you can help them. Webinars are an excellent way to generate leads.

 

 

You can use free tools like Zoom to host them, and advertise your Zoom webinar in advance via email and social media.

If you’re worried about scant audience attendance, you can ask some friends and family in advance to attend and to ask some questions. Having some friendly faces in the audience can alleviate some anxiety. And if there’s only one customer prospect who shows up, it’ll be less awkward.

A webinar can be as formal or informal as you want to make it. Think of it as a way for you to talk to an audience of customers who are more qualified than your random average customer off the street. Having a slide presentation (PowerPoint or Google Slides) with talking points is very helpful.

Generally, a good flow is to introduce yourself and qualify your credentials. Tell them what you’re going to go over in the presentation and when there will be a Q&A session for open floor questions. And then start in.

If no one asks questions at the end (because your audience plants have fallen though), don’t worry. You don’t have to have to ask “Anyone? No one?” while the crickets chirp.

As once, and then say, “Ok, well these are some common questions people have.” And toss out a few common questions and provide the answers. Have these written out in advance. I’ve seen this artfully done many times. And in most instances, it leads to other people in the audience raising their hand too. Sometimes people are shy and need you to break the ice for them.

Similarly, you could just host a live Q&A session. Then you don’t have the pressure of needing to prepare a specific presentation.

 

 

10. Lean into influencers

If you haven’t tried influencer marketing, now’s the time to lean in. Even if you’ve already dipped your toes in, there’s still lots of untapped potential.

 

 

Influencers aren’t just Generation Z TikTokers with millions of followers there to check their drip, or celebrities like Serena Williams or Beyoncé.

They can be everyday people who regularly share helpful tips and content with a large audience. While some Instagrammers can command thousands of dollars per post paid upfront, there are other Influencers who will promote your brand in exchange for free products and services.

 

Why do I need more website traffic?

Website traffic is business traffic. You need people to shop your digital storefront. Even if you have a strong position today, that can change as new competitors emerge or existing competitors up their SEO game.

We’ve mainly talked about ways to get free traffic, also called organic traffic. This is when a visitor finds your website because they are searching for something online and your business shows up in their search results.

This is based on content you’ve created, whether it’s a website product page, blog article, infographic, explainer video, social post, or other content. They are not clicking on an ad or a sponsored (paid) post.

Paid traffic is traffic that comes to your website because they’ve clicked on a paid ad on Google Search, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, or another ad network.

While free is always great, don’t neglect your paid game.

Reasons why you should do paid campaigns in addition to trying to get free traffic

SEO strategy is very much a long-game. If you put up a website and several blog articles today about dog grooming, it will take some time for customers to find you. Google has to crawl and index your site to understand what it’s about and when and where to show it in the search results.

It can take weeks or months (more common) to see SEO gains. With paid traffic, here are some benefits:

• It can be inexpensive to do PPC (pay per click) and other types of ad campaigns on search engines. There is no minimum budget on Google Ads for a search campaign (to get your paid ads to show up in the search results). You could spend $10 a month if you wanted.
• Paid search results show up above organic or non-paid results in Google Search. Your paid ads are often more likely to capture the consumer’s attention.
• Paid search can help your SEO or non-paid marketing efforts. If a consumer sees your brand’s name show up in their Search results or on Facebook a few times, they can grow familiar with it and develop an association. This makes them more likely to later google your brand name or click on your brand in the organic search results.
• Google’s search algorithm can change overnight. Your website might be ranking well today and showing up high in the search results, but what if tomorrow it gets shoved off of the first page and your traffic drops by 90% or more? If you have a paid strategy in place (i.e. a small budget campaign running), you can beef up those efforts to regain traffic while you work on getting back your page ranking in search.
• Play defense. Other brands might be bidding on your brand in ad campaigns or outranking you in Google Search for their organic content about your brand. The latter can happen. It’s cheap to bid on your own brand terms (like pennies per click), you’re displacing your competitors, and you’re dominating the search results page. There are many instances when a brand’s ad is the top ad on the search page and then the top slot for organic search. Above the fold, the brand owns all the territory.

Google Ads, Bing Ads (aka Microsoft Ads), and Facebook Ads are easy to use platforms to get started. They are very beginner friendly and can offer lots of helpful articles and suggestions to get your first campaign up and running.

Or you can reach out to digital ad agencies with expertise in this domain.

 

Make sure you’re monitoring your traffic

Your big, overarching goal is to keep more customers or more traffic to your website. But you need to understand what they do next so you can grow your sales and revenue. There’s no point in investing time and resources on getting more traffic if that traffic doesn’t buy or do anything you need them to do.

You need to understand your overall website performance. Google Analytics is the ultimate workhorse in understanding what your web traffic does. And it’s a free tool to use.

Google Analytics offers a sea of data about where people are coming from (zip code, desktop or mobile devices) and what people are doing on your website. It can be overwhelming, but these are the most important metrics to hone into.

• Pageviews: How many times any page on your website is viewed. Pageviews are generally higher than your total unique visitors.
• Unique visitors: How many unique persons visit your website. One person is one unique visitor. However, they may click on three different pages on your website and generate 3 page views.
• Conversions: A conversion is when the person visiting your website does the desired action like making a purchase, scheduling an appointment, or downloading a whitepaper. Ideally, you have more than one conversion goal. Maybe you have one goal set up to get a sale and another goal is for someone who adds 2+ items to their cart. Later, you could create an ad campaign to target only people who have added items to their cart but not have made a purchase. B2B sites have multiple goals, including whitepaper downloads, contact form completes, and article shares.
  Organic traffic channels: Where is your website traffic coming from? Organic search, paid search, or social? Or other sources? Understand where the traffic is coming from. For example, if you see one blog is sending you 100 visits per day, it would be worth your while to visit that blog and reach out to the blogger. Can you offer them a deal to promote your brand even more heavily? A special promo code they can give to their users?

You also need to monitor how your search traffic is even getting there. Google Search Console (GSC) is helpful for helping you understand your search performance. Some helpful GSC metrics include:

• Impressions: This is the number of times your website shows up in the search results when they are searching a particular term.
• Clicks: This is the number of times someone visits your website by clicking on your website in the search results page.
• Click through rate (CTR): It’s the rate or percent of people who are clicking on your website in the search results. It’s impressions ÷ clicks to reach that rate.
• Position: Where are you in the search results? Being ranked first or number one in the search results is what everyone is striving for. You can see what your overall position or slot is for your website as a whole and for individual pages on your website. The goal is to improve your position over time as you improve your website and its usefulness to site visitors.

 

 

Bottom Line on Getting More Traffic to Your Website

There are easy, actionable things you can start doing today to get more quality website traffic. To get the momentum going, here’s a list of free things you can do today to start seeing more traffic to your website.

• Write a blog post relevant to your industry that you can publish to generate traffic to your website.
• Write a guest blog post for publication on another blog. Write a generic, canned post about trends in your industry and pepper in a link to your site.
• Create a short list of trending keywords you can create content around. Google Trends, Moz, Ahrefs, and other SEO tools for keyword research can give you this data.
• Build a list of relevant bloggers to email regarding link building and guest posting.
• Set up Google Analytics on your website. (Or dig into bounce rate, page load time, and other metrics if you already have Google Analytics installed.)
• Look at user search behavior on Google Search Console to see how your website appears in the search result pages – see what pages are ranking and what queries are bringing them to your website.
• Claim your business listing on Google Business. Provide updated information and control how your business shows up in search result pages.
• Create social media posts. If you’re stuck, look at competitors’ sites for inspiration. Or lean into socially savvy friends, family, or customers for help if needed. Email them today and ask for their help with social media campaigns.