You have just spent a lot of your hard earned money on developing or redeveloping your website and now you are sitting by the phone waiting for the customers to ring but it ain’t ringing! What are you going to do now?
This article will give you some valuable tips on how to increase the traffic to your website and generate good quality, valuable leads for your business.
What Is The Function Of A Business Website?
I believe that to understand the function of a business website we have to look at it in simplified terms: A website is a communication tool that allows you to communicate with new, existing and potential customers online to promote and sell your products and services. It is an online brochure for your business, hence the term “brochure website” and you can also have an e-commerce website which allows you to take payment and sell your products online.
Why Is Your Website Not Delivering What You Expect?
There could be a number of reasons for this:
1. You need to have realistic expectations. Many people expect that the minute they set up a website their phone will start ringing. If you offer a niche product or service this may well happen but in general, when you operate in a competitive market this is not the case. Many of your competitors can have well established websites and they out rank you in Google for many keywords or phrases.
2. Your content is light! Many people don’t spend the time writing good content for their website and when website visitors read it they are not convinced to contact the business or to buy their products or services. Poor quality content and lack of content also negatively affects your rankings in search engines.
3. A website needs to look professional but more importantly a website needs to be targeted so that potential customers can find your website in search engines, this process is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Many website design companies do not provide an SEO service (we do!) and without effective SEO a website will not perform near to its potential.
4. Sometimes there can be technical issues such as the website is blocking search engines from indexing or ranking your website and customers can not find your website on search engines. If your website is not appearing at all on search engines, this may be the case. Website speed can also be a big issue.
What Can You Do To Improve The Return From Your Website?
Similar to the real world, when you have a presence online you have to compete with many businesses similar to your own. Whether you are late to the party and you are just beginning to establish your business presence online or you are well established, you need to engage in digital marketing to promote and grow your business.
You should spend time developing a digital marketing strategy for your business and your website should be an integral part of that strategy. The following are ideas to help you increase your traffic to your website:
1. Improve Your Sales Pitch
Like any good brochure, your website needs to have good quality (well written) unique content that will convince website visitors to do business with you. Your content also needs to convince Google to recommend you by moving your website up the rankings so you appear on page one of Google Search.
2. SEO
There are over 200 factors involved in SEO and for a brand new website, it takes time for your website to start ranking higher and your website has to build a reputation with Google.
Blogging is good for SEO – Image by Pixabay.com
Improving your website content and updating your website with new content is hugely important for SEO. Blogging is an extremely effective way to add new quality content to your website. You can also follow the steps outlined in our previous article to improve the onsite SEO of your website: how to get your website to rank higher in Google.
3. Pay Per Click (PPC) / Google Adwords Advertising
PPC advertising, when done right, is one of the fastest ways to deliver high quality traffic to your website. PPC allows you to target customers who are searching for your products and services on Google. You can target people based on their location, their demographics, interests and the words and phrases they use to search for your products and services. You can also retarget people who visited your website but did not purchase anything or contact your business, this is called remarketing and it is an extremely effective method to convert website visitors to customers.
I will warn you that without the right experience and knowledge you can spend money very fast on PPC with little or no return on investment.
4. Social Media
Social Media offers an excellent opportunity to connect with existing and potential customers. Many people believe that Social Media is free but this is incorrect. Similar to your website, Social Media is a platform or a communication tool for you to communicate with your customers but you have to invest time to do this and your time is not free. If you are serious about using Social Media for your business then you should spend time developing a Social Media strategy. I developed a framework to help you do this and it is free to download here: Social Media Strategy Framework For Business.
Social Media paid advertising is also a very effective way to target the right people: mainly because of the large amount of information people disclose on their Social Media profile. You can target people based on their age, sex, hobbies and interests, marriage status, education and much more. This is a great method to target the right people with the right message.
Conclusion
Establishing your business online takes time. Your website is an extremely valuable communication tool but you have to invest time to improve and promote it. Developing a good digital marketing strategy and implementing that strategy is the key to delivering new customers to help your business grow.
Feature image by Erika / Pixabay.com
I hold an MSc in Digital Marketing from Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, UCD and I am Google Adwords Certified.
If you would like to discuss what we can do for your business you can contact me on (083) 1026964 or email: cathal@www.www.enablemarketing.ie
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