“If you build it, they will come.” That is a classic line from the 1989, Field of Dreams movie. As noble as it sounds, that is not true when it comes to websites. There are millions of websites out there that are built, fully functional and even visually stunning that still have little to no daily website traffic.
Another myth is that well-written and interesting content will generate significant website traffic. The fact is content can help you retain visitors and even bring back some return visitors however, to drive new traffic content alone is not nearly enough for business owners to depend on.
So how do website owners build traffic?
There are four main components to building website traffic that all can focus on to generate the visitors they are looking for. The different components are: Paid Advertising, Social Media, Referrals, and Backlinks. Surprisingly, three of these four areas can be accomplished without spending any money for bootstrapping or cash-strapped business owners.
Paid Advertising
Paid Advertising is the only one of the four categories that requires an actual budget. The overall King of paid advertising is Google. Google Ads are placed in the world’s largest search engine as people make a search on their website. The amount businesses spend varies depending on their budgets and however many small to medium businesses spend in the ballpark of $3,000 per month. Larger businesses spend more, upwards of $8,000 per month to generate traffic from those searching on Google.
There are many other options out there for paid advertising. LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and more offer ad space. All use an auction-style system where you set transaction and maximum budgets. How do you pick where to run your ads? I tell my clients to consider the audience, for example, if you are a business-to-business service industry, I recommend advertising mostly on LinkedIn and Google. Run a consumer service-based business, I suggest advertising on Facebook and Google. Have an eCommerce business? Generally, I recommend clients advertise on Amazon along with Google and then typically mix in LinkedIn or Facebook depending on if they are consumer or business-focused. When do I recommend YouTube? I recommend them for any of my clients who have explainer videos, or if they market to the digital world with either products or services.
I strongly suggest clients do some market research before building out their budget designations with paid advertising. A quick survey of their client behavior can help clear up where their potential clients are most likely to be hanging out online. The data can save you thousands of dollars and help you generate better results in less time.
Social Media
Business Social Media Pages can have a huge impact on building an audience and generating traffic. Not only website traffic be built on social media, but even further, the best kind of visitors are generated. Trust is vital to sales and traffic from social media visitors is far more valuable than that driven via paid advertising. Social media visitors are 75% more likely to buy from a business because of the pre-established trust factor. Social media visitors are also more likely not to bounce and stay longer helping SEO scores.
If you ever have the choice between traffic sources, social media, or paid advertising, make the smart choice and go for the social media channel traffic.
Companies do not have to pay for social media management, but many still do as they don’t have the time or knowledge needed to it effectively. Social media managers, like Bowman Digital Media, are typically paid on a monthly basis. The fee they paid covers creating content and engaging in comments on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more. Fees typically start at $1000 per month but can go much higher. Larger companies even have full-time staff dedicated to the position as part of their marketing team.
Social Media Goals
The goal is simple, to attract attention, engage with visitors, build rapport and increase visibility. Social media pages are key entry points to drawing in new visitors. Hundreds of millions of people are on all of the major social media networks. Every business has a free opportunity to attract and engage with people from every walk of life. There are many ways to capture attention with posts and comments on social media. The fact is the more interaction between the company social channels and those visitors of the platform the better. The first step is to catch their attention, then as they visit your business page to get them to hit the follow or subscribe button. The more people see posts and read comments that are positive and professional, the more likely they will visit the website, especially if there are effective call to action statements that appeal to the target audience.
On social media the page manager should focus on building followers as that is an indicator on how effective their activities are. Slow or no growth with followers/subscribers is a warning sign that the activity style or content is not connecting and needs to be revised. As previously stated, social media visitors are 75% more likely to buy when they visit a website, so if a social media channel is not growing, a change in managers might be the best remedy to recharge slumping sales.
Referrals
Every successful business has referral sources. Typically, free sources of referrals are found from vendors, happy customers and family members. Paid referral sources can also be a big help too. Affiliate programs on websites, employees, customers, and organizational memberships are all major channels that can help drive website traffic.
Remembering the fact that referrals are 75% more likely to purchase that paid advertising sources on websites, with reduced bounced rates, business owners would be wise to consider investing in encouraging referrals.
Backlinks
A backlink is simply an active link from one website to another. If you are on one website and click on a link, button or graphic and it opens another website, that is called a backlink. There are several types of backlinks including: dofollow, nofollow, sponsor, and user generated content (UGC) that all have different benefits.
A dofollow link is typically created by the website it resides on and is the strongest for building the SEO score of the website it points too. The higher the domain authority of the website the dofollow link is on, and the more it helps the target website. Dofollow links are typically on partner tabs, in blogs, or on product description pages. To build a website with dofollow links, many business owners will write sponsor blogs for other websites to post. This can help both websites because the poster of the blog gets additional content and keyword pickups and the author gets dofollow backlinks to their website.
Nofollow links are typically found in user comments on blog posts. The main value they offer is visual. For example, if someone mentions in a post comment a website address, anyone who reads the comment could copy and paste the website into a browser and visit that website. The Google crawls when sites are indexed will not give credit to the target of the link, however, so there is no SEO value in a nofollow link and these are not worth paying for.
Sponsor links are dofollow but not given as much value by the crawl indexing because they are not natural links and were bought. Sponsor links can be extremely valuable for driving traffic to a website because it takes advantage of the traffic on the website it sits on and they are active, meaning when clicked on, it will open the target site. The index of the site will contribute to the SEO score of the target site too, just not as much as a natural dofollow link.
User Generated Content (UGC) links are most valuable when they are live, meaning they are clickable. Many social media managers will add UCG links whenever they can. They do not add much in the way of SEO juice, however, they can be a big source of website traffic for up and coming websites, especially in the comments of viral posts on social media.
The Map Is Set So Start Driving
Do you want to build website traffic? You now have the roadmap in your hands after reading the information in this article. Are you still confused or overwhelmed? No worries, you can hire a professional to help you with all of the above. Bowman Digital Media is here to help if you want and we would be happy to earn your business and help you build your website traffic. For those who want to get started on their own, we suggest you focus your efforts immediately on social media, referrals, and backlink building. Then read up on paid advertising methods while surveying your existing web-based clients on their social media habits, so you know where and how much to invest in paid advertising. Improving your website traffic is not rocket science, but there is a lot of science behind it. Best of luck to you as you go about building your audience.