If there is one thing each company has in common is that we each want more website visitors. But how could you possibly attract complete strangers to visit your site while worrying about keeping up with benchmarks and marketing trends? How could you build trust with your potential buyers if there are hundreds of companies similar to yours? The key is to believe that you can generate traffic. Mix this idea with the 5 other easy steps from the inbound methodology listed below and you will be well on your way to driving an influx of traffic to your website.
1. Create content using your most valuable keywords.
Keywords are what they say they are –key. If you want to generate organic traffic, it is necessary to optimize keywords that are relevant to your business. People are actively looking for solutions and ways to reach their goals and if you are producing content that helps them solve their problems and use their searched keywords, these searchers will find and visit your website.
How do you find your most effective keywords? By understanding your audience –your buyer personas– you can utilize keywords that those individuals are searching for and adjust your strategy to fit those words.
After identifying those buyer personas, utilize tools such as the Keywords Tool in HubSpot to sort keywords by ranking, conversion and long tail opportunities.
2. Write relevant, problem solving blog posts –and do so often.
Your blog is one of the most powerful tools that can help you attract traffic to your site. Every time you write a blog post, it is one more indexed page on your website, meaning it is one more opportunity to appear in someone’s search. Thus, it is important to blog on a regular basis to keep the consistency on search engines.
Utilize those valuable keywords to optimize your blog to answer your persona’s questions and problems that they are searching for online. If prospects find answers to their questions in your blog posts, they are much more likely to trust what you have to say even before they learn about your product. Not only should you write valuable, educational content, use each post to add a lead generating call-to-action such as free eBooks, free live webinars, or free trials.
3. Produce a separate blog post for each of your most relevant keywords.
You know to use your most valuable keywords and to compose many blog posts but exactly how many should you write? Your buyer persona will use a wide variety of keywords in their search. So why limit yourself by trying to use many keywords in a single post rather than creating a unique post for each keyword?
Treat each keyword as an opportunity to be discovered more often and have more likelihoods to appear on a search engine. Use this chance to write more posts centered on a key word that answers a prospect’s question and compose another post to center around another word. Each new keyword is a new opportunity for someone to discover a new page on your website.
4. Invest time in optimizing your presence on social media.
Keywords and blog posts are not the only critical tools used to drive traffic. Social media can help your company build a community of avid followers who are eager to read your content and want to share your resources with others. Build a following by constantly engaging with your network and encouraging individuals to follow your website, blog, emails, and other content.
Not only should you share your content, seek out opportunities to comment and answer any questions prospects have about that are relevant to your services. Have a blog post that answers their question? Link that post to your answer and it becomes a win-win situation on both ends!
Since most of your audience uses a wide variety of social media sites, makes sure to reach all of your customers by publishing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other relevant sites.
5. Do not overlook your e-mails.
You have created a personalized copy and made a catchy call-to-action. Great! But is it enough? Many marketers overlook important components of effective emails or simply forget to include a follow-up email or a lead nurturing workflow—all important concepts in attracting users to come visit your website and see what you have to offer.
Whether you are sending an informational email, a newsletter or a welcome email, each element in your email should showcase your brand and highlight your value to recipients. How will this drive traffic to your website? Your emails can include tips and information that can build trust among potential leads, answer questions about your product, or offer call-to-actions that will guide readers to a new page on your site.
Conclusion
Each of these components is critical to driving traffic to your website. But can you only use two or three of these steps to really make a great difference in your goal? The answer is no. It is important to integrate each of these 5 steps with one another.
Use each of your keywords to write remarkable, educational blog posts. Finished a blog? Share it on all of your social platforms. Have a lead subscribe to your blog? Great, now email them and guide them to a new landing page on your site. The point is, you can do all of these things separately, but if all of your tools are integrated with one another, you will have the chance to generate the right strangers to your website in many different forms.
