5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic to a Site

Increase website traffic with these proven strategies

Three or four times a year I get to help launch a new website. Given that we use organic sources like search engines, links from referring websites, and social media to drive qualified traffic, getting those first visitors to a new website is an interesting challenge. The tips provided below will help increase website traffic to a new website, or help an existing website increase website traffic, too.

Increase website traffic, jumpstart tip #1: SEO campaign management

Every website I work on will ultimately use free downloads as the nexus for each organic marketing campaign. It shouldn’t surprise you that I tell all my clients this is the primary jumpstart program to increase traffic for a new website. Ideally, we’d like to have three to five free downloads ready to go when the website goes live. Then we start a new SEO campaign every week to get things moving. Most publishers will then move into a maintenance schedule launching a new campaign every three to four weeks. If you’re new to SEO campaign management and would like increase website traffic, download our free report or check out our 90-minute webinar.

Increase website traffic, jumpstart tip #2: Affiliate marketing

Perhaps the safest way to build circulation with paid media is to partner with an affiliate who has similar demographics and a large opt-in email subscriber base. For most markets, affiliates abound who will charge you a dollar or less for every new email subscriber they send you. Choosing to work with a publisher who uses email newsletters to drive traffic to your rapid conversion landing pages guarantees that your first subscribers will be responsive to email newsletters. You’ll want your first subscribers to be email responsive so they can open, click, and forward your emails to others.

Increase website traffic, jumpstart tip #3: Google AdWords

I like leveraging work I’ve already done. A Google AdWords campaign designed to promote my free downloads leverages those downloads and all the keyword research built into my Google Visibility Report. All the keyword research I’ve done for organic marketing identifies the same keywords I can use in a Google AdWords campaign. In the testing I’ve done over the years, Google responders all look the same. Whether they’re clicking from an organic listing or a paid listing, they are high-quality users who are simply looking for information.

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Increase website traffic, jumpstart tip #4: Remnant banner advertising

As I noted above, I like recycling, reusing, and repurposing my work product. The copy that went into my Google AdWords program is a great place to start when designing banner advertising. While most banner ads are pretty and flashy, they simply don’t work as well as a heavy text ad like the one pictured below. One of my clients remarked to me the other day, “I’m not sure it’ll work because it looks so much like real content.” I assured her that that was exactly the reason why these text heavy banner ads work.

Text heavy advertising banners will typically outperform their graphic heavy counterparts by a ratio of three or four to one. Consumers like to discover information and take action. No one likes to be sold, but everyone likes to buy. Because text ads look like content, they put consumers in discovery mode and let them take charge of the transaction process.

With your winning text ads in hand, you’ll find that many large websites with tens of millions of visitors have plenty of unsold advertising inventory that they’d be willing to part with for as little as $3-$5 per 1,000. There are also a number of large ad networks willing to make the same deal. Banner advertising is a buyers market because there’s way more supply than demand. This bodes well for the savvy direct marketer equipped with response oriented advertisements.

Increase website traffic, jumpstart tip #5:  Appending your postal buyers

Of course, all five of the above programs can be part of an ongoing audience development program. SEO campaign management is the backbone of organic marketing. Pay programs like affiliate marketing and Google AdWords can also be a permanent part of your audience development program if they represent sources that allow you to buy low and sell high.

If you’ve recently launched a new website and used some other source, method, or program to fire up your website traffic and email circulation, please share it below.

Happy traffic building.

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Originally published 4/30/2012