How to drive more traffic to your website

It’s easy to get caught up in all the social media metrics, like how many followers we have, how many people we’re reaching and what our engagement rate is.

But from a business building point of view, these are only vanity metrics.

What does that mean?

Vanity metrics are nice to have, but they aren’t the building blocks for successful and rapidly growing businesses.

The most vital metrics in a business are related to finances. So revenue levels, profits and cashflow are vital to the health of a business. But how do you get there? Reverse engineer it, of course.  

Driving relevant traffic in volume to your website is one of the most important things you can focus on. If people aren’t hitting your website, you’re not going to get those sales further down the track. So it doesn’t matter how many followers you have, if you can't get them to visit your website they’re not worth all that much to you.

Yet most business owners have no idea how to get more traffic.

If you’ve currently got very little traffic hitting your website, below are the bare essentials you need to focus on to get traffic to your website.

1. Don't ignore SEO

Unfortunately a lot of people don’t give SEO the consideration it deserves because they find it really confusing. But it’s really not as hard as it seems, once you know how.

The reality is that organic traffic is hugely beneficial to your business and it's great for long-term growth. 

Why?

Organic traffic is free! And with a little bit of education on SEO, you can take care of much of this yourself and in return, you’ll receive more visitors to your website who are well qualified when it comes to what you’re offering. They're well qualified because they're already in Google searching for you! 

So instead of spending way so much time on social media, how about you devote a couple of hours a week to learning the ins and outs of SEO and start using it to your advantage. If you’re not, you’re definitely leaving money on the table, and in fact, handing it over freely to your competitors.

2. Share your social media posts more than once

Is one of your objectives for social media to get traffic to your website?

If not, it needs to be. We can spend hours of our life in the endless realm of social media, so if you’re not pushing traffic towards your website and making it worthwhile, what’s the point!

A way that you can really make use of the content that you do have is by sharing it more than once on social media. Once really isn’t enough, especially on Facebook where organic reach on posts is so low as they are now a pay to play platform.

One way to get the most out of your content is to create multiple images for one blog post and then schedule this out multiple times, with a different image each time. Make sure you’re not doing these all in a row, but intersperse with other content over the next 3-6 weeks.

You can also keep content cycling through as you can still get traffic from old articles – a key tip here is to republish old blogs and you may find yourself getting new traffic for them.

3. Start a Facebook group

It’s no secret that community building has become a big player in online marketing. And with Facebook’s recent announcement that they’re going to be focusing more on groups, it’s a perfect time to create a Facebook group for your business.

So start a group and start to fill it with your ideal clients. Foster a community where the members can ask questions and get support, and organically you’re going to be pushing people towards your website as they become more engaged and head over to grab the resources and freebies you're offering them. 

You can also jump into other business’ Facebook groups, join the conversation, add value where you need to, and without even being salesy you’re going to get people checking out your website (just make sure your personal profile has a link to your business Facebook page so they can check you out).

Building a community is really a great way to drive more traffic to your website and comes with a myriad of other benefits. I've had a huge amount of business from being active in Facebook groups. 

4. Expand your online presence

If you’re just focusing on one traffic source, for example, your Facebook business page, it’s time to diversify!

There are many great platforms out there that are worth a try if they are going to bring more qualified traffic to your website.

Take a look at Pinterest if you’re a regular blogger. People confuse Pinterest with a social media network, but it’s really a search engine. So start pinning your posts on there and keep an eye on your analytics.

Look at Reddit and Quora for ways to jump in on conversations and see where you can help people. People are naturally going to check you out, and if you drop a really useful link, it could get traffic for years!

If you’re in a B2B industry, try your hand at LinkedIn. The opportunities are endless, you don’t need to follow the herd.

5. Become best friends with your data

You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. So instead of following trends, study your analytics.

Take a look at your sources report to see your main traffic drivers. If one is showing promise, double down on that. Especially the ones that take little effort or time – expanding this traffic is really going to be a game changer for your business.

If you don’t know your web metrics, it's time to become besties with it. Even if you consider yourself more or a creative. 

I hope these 5 tips have helped you figure out how to get more traffic to your website!