For small business owners, a business website is your door to the universe. It is on your website where people locally and internationally can learn about you. They can buy your products, and engage with your brand. Unfortunately, cyberspace has tons of other sites competing for attention which makes it difficult to get traffic to your site. The good news is, there are many things you can do to increase visibility and traffic online for your website. However, without a good strategy in place, you could lose out on hundreds of site visitors per day. Here are some reasons why you’re not getting the traffic you deserve…
1. Your site is not listed anywhere.
Firstly, make sure that your website is listed in all possible places on the web. If you are a brick and mortar business Google has a great option that could get you top listings very quickly. It’s called Google My Business and it’s free! With this tool, you can include your website and business info in Google Maps. Additionally, you can add pictures, respond to reviews, share what’s best about your business, and edit all your information instantly. When people search for something that you offer in your town, your business name and website link will appear at the top and your location pinpointed in Google maps.
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Also, sites such as Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Merchant Circle, White Pages, Super Pages, City Search, Yp.com, EZ Local, Manta, Thumbtack, Show Me Local and more offer business listings that you can quickly add your business to with a link back to your site. To find more listing opportunities just do a search for ‘local business directories + your town’ to discover even more great sites to add your website to.
2. Your e-mail list is not cultivated.
Sending e-mails to your customers is very important because it’s a reminder that you are there. If you’ve established a great rapport with customers or prospects on your e-mail list, sending out regular e-mails will boost sales and website visits each month. However, if you don’t have a great relationship with them, they will not respond to your efforts because they may not recognize who you are. Similarly, they may not view you as an authority figure in your industry. This is a bad thing, which brings us to the next issue.
3. Your e-mail campaigns are lacking.
You don’t have great conversion rates and people are just not clicking on your links. E-mail content should contain links that point back to your site. A/B testing will help you figure out what number of links is ideal for your reader base. Also, there should be a good reason why a reader needs to click on a link. Will they get something free, or a discount, or find out something new and improved about a product or service?
Conduct the proper research to find out e-mail best practices for your industry. Research of this nature helps identify do’s and don’t’s specific to your audience. For example, studies have shown that text links convert better than image links in e-mails. When given the option to click a text link or an image, users will click on text links more often. Make sure your subject lines are interesting and intriguing. Free tools such as CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer can help you craft subject lines that pop. Give your e-mail campaigns a fighting chance by utilizing these tools and tips for better conversion rates and more visits to your website.
4. You are not publishing regular content to your website.
Search engines love fresh content! If a website is being refreshed regularly with new content, then the website is relevant in the eyes of the search engine. Relevant sites get pushed to the top of search results, thus giving you high visibility and more website clicks. The best way to maintain a consistent flow of regular content for small businesses is by hosting a blog on your site. Business blogs not only provide customers and prospects with unique information about your business, but when content is being posted regularly search engines will become more willing to serve up your site. Additionally, new blog posts give you more content to share in e-mail campaigns. It’s a win-win.
5. You’re not utilizing search engine optimization techniques.
A website is not doing much good if no one knows about it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great tool to get your website noticed and ranked high on search engines. There are many opportunities to optimize your website to be search engine friendly. Most methods utilize relevant keywords throughout the website to increase search engine traffic. There is a wealth of knowledge and tools available to help you maintain excellent SEO for your website. Additionally, we offer a great Free tool that will audit your site. Our Audit Tool provides a detailed report on how well your site scores and offers practical tasks you can do to improve your ranking. Go to our homepage and scroll down, then click on the ‘Scan Now’ button.
6. You have no social media presence.
Or, your presence is very minimal. Either way, you miss a big segment of your market if you don’t take social media seriously. Social media is very important because it sends traffic to your website if used correctly. Small Businesses should strategically select social media platforms that attract their target market. Profiles on social media should be filled out completely. Every opportunity to share information about your brand should be utilized including posting your website address in the about sections.
Go a step further and post relevant status updates regularly. Updates should spark interest and provide juicy information for your ideal customer. Thus making it easy to promote engagement, which is the ultimate goal in social media. Anything you can do to initiate engagement such as a contest, a question or poll, and replying to comments will help increase your visibility and send targeted traffic to your website.
7. You’re not telling people to visit your site
Make your website a hub for your audience to visit regularly. For example, events like contests, polls, forum discussions, industry news, and discount promotions (for your website visitors only) will create a buzz surrounding your website and intrigue people to visit more often. Tell your onsite customers, promote these events on social media, and link to these events in e-mail campaigns. Give people a really good reason to visit you on the web. Other techniques such as guest blogging, providing answers on question and answer sites, and commenting on blogs can help bring in more website visitors as well.
In conclusion, waves of website traffic to your site can be tricky but with a little work and research, you can experience high volumes of traffic each day. If you don’t know exactly where to start, go to our homepage and take the SEO Audit today! It will tell you exactly what you need to do to get your small business website ranked at the top of search engines.
