Websites are digital storefronts for your business. Setting up a blog or website for your product is just the beginning. For your site to get traffic, it needs to get noticed first.
While having a good website structure is paramount, following an effective content marketing strategy is also critical for generating traffic. So what can you do to reach that perfect target audience who is genuinely interested in your product?
How can you convert your traffic to substantial sales? In this article, you’ll discover the top ways to help your website attract highly targeted traffic that delivers results.
Search Engine Optimization
Ranking high on search engines is all about passing the test of credibility and quality. In addition, keyword placement also plays an important role in showcasing a website high on the search results. You can make your website visible on the search results by optimizing its content for search engines. How do you do that?
Make sure to fill out the alt text option in all the images on your website. In addition to this, you can make the most out of meta-descriptions. SEO experts advise you to create internal links on your website that connect to the latest content being posted on your site. Being proactive and performing keyword research can help generate organic traffic that will most likely engage with your business.
Social Media Marketing
Almost everybody uses social media nowadays. For businesses that cater directly to the customer’s needs, social media platforms are one of the best ways to advertise their products.
By posting relatable content based on a formalized media strategy, any business can gain followers on social media easily. With a notable online presence, you can increase brand awareness for your business.
Most social media platforms allow businesses to link their websites to their account so that visitors can seamlessly check out their services. If you have an engaging and visually pleasing landing page, chances are high that your social media campaigns and paid ads will generate value for your business in return.
Blogging
According to the top SEO experts, one of the best ways to add relevant keywords, that can help your website rank high on search engines, is to start blogging.
Most people who look for a product, service, or even answers to some questions turn to search engines for help. If your website provides relevant information to seekers, it won’t be difficult to create a positive brand image.
According to the inspirational quotes on https://bloglingo.com, life has its challenges (like driving targeted traffic to your website). By faith, however, all things are possible. Although it may take you some time to see consistent results, keeping your content as genuine as possible is crucial. If you try to trick the algorithm by stuffing keywords meaninglessly, your blog may even get banned.
Paid Advertisements
The best way to get your website noticed by potential customers is by smartly placing ads all over the Internet. You can use search engines and social media platforms to build your brand and attract new customers. More traffic means more sales.
Paid advertisements are highly customized to suit your needs and help your business reach its goals. You can focus your ads to gain more traffic for your website, get more footfalls on your blog, and convert visitors into new customers. However, you need to consistently modify your advertisement strategy based on the feedback you get from your previous ads.
Referral Traffic
Many new businesses find it profitable to collaborate with another business of the same or somewhat related niche. By adding relevant links in meaningful places, you can guide potential customers from one website to another. Also known as referral traffic, this strategy is focused on interlinking similar businesses to help them benefit mutually. You can collaborate with reputable sites to help your business gain visibility in front of visitors.
However, if you link your website to malicious sites, you may face penalties from the search engines. The best way is to create high-quality content that compels other sites to establish links to your website.
Structure, responsiveness, and quality of content are major factors that affect the way new visitors react to your website. In addition to a compelling and visually appealing website, you might want to set up Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and use Social Media Marketing (SMM) to get your brand noticed.
If you’re already implementing these two strategies, you can also do blogging, paid advertisement, and referral links, to help your site reach a wide base of potential customers further.
The biggest challenge for any brand is to figure out how to get attention. Everyone has Facebook tunnel vision because they’re the 800lb gorilla in the industry.
But Facebook as a platform has become more difficult to work with. Yes, even more than usual.
Facebook costs keep increasing
Organic reach is a joke
Unpredictable banning policies for advertisers. I’ve seen guys running the most vanilla Shopify stores ever getting banned.
Public approval of Facebook seems to be at an all-time low due to The Social Dilemma documentary and Facebook banning Trump.
And iOS 14 is coming. Apple will severely limit Facebook’s ability to track users’ activities across the web.
Some people will stick to Facebook no matter how much their platform changes. However, all these changes have many marketers scrambling to diversxify away from Facebook. So the question is, which platforms should you focus on for distribution?
I want to share a mental model that can help you answer that question. Think about attention as an asset class. Yes, an asset such at the stock market or real estate.
The profits are made when you can find underpriced assets and exploit them. It’s kinda like buying TSLA stock or Bitcoins last year vs. buying them today. Using this mental model: WHERE can you find attention right now that is underpriced?
If you’re a performance marketer, it’s as simple as costs vs results. If you’re a content creator, then it’s resources vs impressions. (How much effort it takes to create a piece of content vs how much attention it gets).
What does it take to start a successful business? Everyone talks about having a great product or building a brand. I’ve seen so many companies over the past decade explode because they took advantage of an undervalued distribution channel.
I’m going to share with you some examples, what causes attention to be underpriced, and where some underpriced attention assets are in January 2021.
Whether you’re a content creator or a performance marketer, this mental model will apply.
Note:I first heard about this concept through a Gary Vaynurchuk video.
Companies Built off of Underpriced Attention
Between 2013–2016, everything I posted on my Facebook page reached at least 75% of my followers.
For example: If I had 10,000 Facebook fans, each post reached 7,500 people. So I took advantage of that and posted twice a day.
These days, I have 30,000 Facebook followers. I’m lucky if posts even reach 5% of my followers.
What happened? Facebook started tweaking the algorithm. They wanted to make more space for ads and posts from friends and families.
But during that time period, so many content powerhouses such as Buzzfeed were built.
2013–2016 was the golden age for Facebook fan pages. Now imagine trying to build a media company in 2021 off of Facebook fan pages. The playbook doesn’t work anymore. GymShark is a billion-dollar company that sells fitness clothing. Their marketing came from partnering up with emerging social media fitness stars. They’d give them free merchandise, and the stars would promote their affiliate link. You might know this now as influencer marketing. However, this was groundbreaking back in 2012.
Warby Parker hired a publicist within a few days of launching. The publicist helped them get featured in GQ with an article called the “Netflix of Eyewear.” This led to a 200,000 person waitlist.
So many DTC brands got huge during 2012–2016 because Facebook clicks were so much cheaper.
Are you seeing a pattern? There’s a “golden age” for every distribution channel. There’s no need to whine because you missed out on the golden age for something. You’re in the middle of the golden ages of several distribution channels right now—you just have to figure out what they are.
What Causes Attention to be Underpriced
Let’s look at the underlying forces affecting attention. Understanding this means you’ll be able to identify opportunities a decade from now.
1/ First, People underestimate network effects. There’s always a hot new platform. People love novelty, and each younger generation wants to claim a platform of their own. A hot platform can grow its user base exponentially, and that user base is hungry for content. There’s a sweet spot where the supply of content can’t meet the demand. In the early days, there’s not enough content creators to feed the machine. So anyone creating content is going to get a massive organic boost. That’s why it seems like there are new TikTok celebrities every day, while building a fanbase on YouTube is so much slower.
This reminds me of one of the 22 Laws of Immutable Marketing: “It’s better to be first than It is to be better.”
You HAVE to bring your A-game to stand out on YouTube now. People demand great editing, a charismatic personality, and high production values. A decade ago? Sitting down in front of the camera and telling stories could go viral. People didn’t have options.
/2 It’s a pain in the ass to advertise. All platforms are a pain in the ass to work with in the beginning. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to set up ads on Facebook now vs 2008. Here’s the thing: friction is good for us.
That friction is what’s keeping the competition away. Eventually, the platform will build out its advertising tools to make it easier. Then the floodgates will open. Right now, it’s a pain in the ass to work with influencers. It won’t be one day. There will be platforms, benchmarks, and standardizations that make it easier.
Prices will go up.
Train yourself to think that “pain in the ass” = opportunity.
/3 Marketers don’t like to take risks. Seriously. That’s why marketers always want to know what’s “hot” and they’re constantly stealing ideas from each other. It’s their way of lowering risk. Some people aren’t willing to give a new platform a try until they see results from other people. They’re waiting for that step-by-step guide or that case study.
It reminds me of investing in crypto or a hot stock. By the time everyone’s talking about it on your newsfeed, a lot of the profits have already been taken.
Where to Find the Current Arbitrage Play?
It’s tempting to feel as if it’s too late. Ah, if only I was more aggressive with Facebook Ads in 2015! Why didn’t I start a TikTok account last year? Remember this: there’s always a new opportunity right now. Here’s how I train myself to look at opportunities.
/1 Where is your target demographic spending their time online?
I love hip-hop and forums a lot. I remember a few months ago that this app called “Clubhouse” was blowing up.
My fiancé love skincare. I noticed she was posting questions on different Facebook groups. Get into the trenches and see where your customers are hanging out.
/2 What apps or websites are gaining a lot of traction?
You want to have a macro view of the landscape.
I love looking at charts. I use charts as a way to update my mental database.
Everything looks normal to me except for #8 in the Overall downloads. What is SnackVideo? It’s important to look for data by demographic. I saw a chart a few days ago. I can’t seem to find it anymore. I learned two things from that chart: first, Snapchat is the #1 app for Gen Z. It ranked higher than Instagram and TikTok. I had no idea Snapchat was still popular. Second, boomers loveNextdoor. If you’re advertising to older people, well they’re all hanging out on Nextdoor. I took a look at their advertising page. I see an advertising department that’s not well built out. Minimum spend is $25,000. This is friction, and friction = opportunity.
Friction is good. Facebook and AdWords make it easy for anyone to advertise online. The easier it is to advertise, the more competitors you’re going to face. You can think of friction as a defensive moat.
Influencer marketing still works well in 2021. Part of that is due to its inefficiency. There aren’t any standards or efficiency. It’s a pain in the ass working with influencers. It’ll be much more efficient five years from now. I can see there being more marketplaces and formulas that people follow. Contracts will become standardized. While it’ll be easier for you to work with them, the prices will skyrocket.
/3 Always take advantage of new features on an existing platform. The first-mover advantage is real. I made bank when newsfeed ads were first introduced on Facebook years ago. It was new and people were slow to adopt it.
Instagram is giving boosts to anyone making a Reels video (Their TikTok competitor). Using Instagram’s “Shop” tab is free money. On YouTube, creators that are using the “stories” feature and the “premiere” feature are getting attention that they otherwise wouldn’t.
One great way of staying on top of platforms is to follow the right people. Gary Vee is someone who’s always on the cutting edge of social media. He said that “Musical.ly” was going to be the next big thing over five years ago. If you haven’t heard of Musical.ly, it’s the former name of TikTok.
Next, follow brands that are on the cutting edge of marketing. Watch what they do.
Where are the Opportunities Now in 2021?
You might be wondering where the opportunities are now in January 2021. Here are a few interesting ones.
1/ Instagram Reels
Death, taxes, and Mark Zuckerberg stealing ideas from the latest social media apps. He’s scared of TikTok. So he introduced the feature Reels on Instagram to play catch up. They’re incentivizing people to create more Reels by giving them a ton of reach. If you’re a creator, Reels is a great place to get eyeballs. If you’re a marketer, test out Reels with influencers. It’s newer so there’s not as much established pricing yet.
/2 Clubhouse
Clubhouse is the talk of the tech world right now. There hasn’t been a social media app using audio as the main form of communication until now. You might be thinking, isn’t that pretty much where people chase clout and try to sell courses? Well, yes.
But TikTok’s reputation originally was where teenage girls dance. Instagram was where people post food and travel pics. As the network grows, so do the opportunities. I’m sure in the near future we’ll see more niched rooms. Let’s say you’re starting a skincare brand. Imagine hosting a daily room for skincare Q&A.
/3 YouTube Ads
YouTube ads aren’t new. Why do I think they’re a great opportunity now? Google is getting more aggressive about monetizing their videos. YouTube video watch times keep growing. And finally, it’s a pain in the ass to create YouTube videos. It doesn’t take much to create a 20-second ad for Facebook. Long-form YouTube videos take time and resources. And to be frank, most people seem “scared” to make YouTube ads. That creates a tremendous opportunity. /4Snapchat Ads
When was the last time you heard someone talking about Snapchat ads? Barely at all, compared to Facebook ads.
Yet… Snapchat is the #1 app for Gen Z.
There are tons more opportunities out there right now besides the ones I listed. Here’s the thing: it’ll require experimentation. There’s no step-by-step guide out there.
The Current Opportunity
As an entrepreneur, you’ll always have a feeling that it’s “too late.” You’re looking at the playbooks of other people and realizing you can’t follow them directly anymore. There are too many changes, and too many competitors. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. There’s more competition than ever before because the barriers of entry has been reduced. While you’re thinking it’s too late, there are other entrepreneurs taking advantage of the opportunities that you’re blind to now. Five years from now, you’ll be thinking back on all the opportunities that were around in 2021! So train your mind.
It’s no secret that Google loves updating its SEO algorithm. In fact, over the course of a year, they may make upwards of 500+ changes!
SEO is the process of optimizing your content, so it shows up more often in search results. With so many changes to navigate, it’s easy to miss something. And soon enough, you could find your first page search rankings now on the second or third pages.
If your site content isn’t ranking in the search engines for your preferred keywords and phrases, all is not lost. There are still plenty of ways to improve your rankings while also getting quality traffic from other locations as well.
But if you get it right, you can reap the benefits of increased traffic, which leads to more conversions, improves lead generation, and boosts sales.
To help with this process, here are five practical content creation and marketing tips that worth exploring. Be sure to read along and follow these tips to increase back traffic to your website.
1. Blog Regularly and On Schedule
In recent years, blogging and content marketing have been very big components of the digital marketing landscape.
Now it seems like most businesses and websites have their own blog, and with good reason – blogging brings more traffic to your website, helps you establish better and stronger relations with the audience, and will help you to establish yourself as a lead thought in the niche.
However, it to comes to blogging and business, there is a certain art to it. For example, what are ecommerce sites and ‘boring’ niche markets supposed to blog about?
More often than not, the best way to get around this is to create content that is relevant to the business or service offered, but still providing value to your audience.
A perfect example of this can be seen on WithClutch, as they are a refinance and personal finance business, but also have blog topics ranging from “When is the best time to buy a car?” or “Whats the cheapest state to buy a car in?” and other related topics.
The key takeaway here is that they are able to create content through their blog that are covering topics that their audiences and potential customers are likely already searching for. This is a win-win situation for both the blog and the end user.
As with all blogging efforts, will take time, but it’s really worth it when you have a clear plan and a content calendar in place. You can also convert the blog content into an infographic, slide deck or e-book. And definitely make sure you are taking advantage of social media and everything it has to offer.
The better the content, the more it is enjoyed and discussed by the public, which means more readers and loyal fans who visit your blog on a daily basis.
2. Focus on SEO and Long Tail Keywords
Like it or not, search traffic is still one of the most effective ways to get high quality traffic and leads back to your site. The only problem is it’s super competitive and saturated.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which a website is visible in the search results, and can improve their rankings by making improvements to their site, content and social channels.
This can be done by optimizing keywords and site layout, reducing loading time and making the website easy for mobile users to search the site. It’s also important to make sure you are using SERP tracking tools to see what keyword and ranking movements your optimization efforts are having.
The early ranking algorithms of the search engine relied heavily on the content of the keyword for ranking purposes. This meant, however, that website designers could hack the system and use keyword stuffing to increase rank.
Now it’s a much more complicated process and not one that is easy to game. Page ranking algorithms are much more advanced and rely on several factors, like inbound or backlink quality and relevance.
If you are going to spend your time writing content, it’s important that you make sure it’s worth your audiences time and provides real value. It’s also a good idea to focus on ‘evergreen’ topics so you content doesn’t go stale after just a few months.
Some of the best forms of evergreen content come in the form of resource guides, how to’s, and user tutorials. You must then create content that targets the customers rather than robots—using quick, short, but true phrases.
Depending on the niche market you are currently focused on, this might be easier or harder to accomplish. MeetEdgar has a nice resource guide that highlights a few different examples of evergreen content across a wide range of niche markets. Be sure to check it out to get some new content ideas for your site or blog.
No matter what type of content you are creating or who it’s for, there are several great ways to show search engines that your site really provides content of value — and that through detailed, authoritative, evergreen content.
Here are some of the working methods to best accomplish this.
Long-form content stick. Longer content tends to exceed shorter content (at least 2,000 words).
Use LSI keywords. There are keywords or phrases that are closely related to the content of your post.
You will have to do research to write quality content so that you can have information that is very valuable.
Be easy to learn. Be quick to read. Html uses whitespace, headings, short paragraphs and related photos to facilitate the page’s consumer consumption and time rise.
Have links and deals of high relevance on the page. Provide meaningful internal connections to address the query of a reader. This will also reduce error rates significantly to bring people onto the website.
Include photos, illustrations, video and text. This catches the interest of readers and makes them more interested in the content.
Before writing your next article, be sure to run through the list above to make sure your content hits all of these fine points.
4.Comment and Contribute on other Relevant Blogs
Despite what many people thing, commenting on and contributing to other websites and blogs is still very effective today. Yes, you might not get a dofollow link back from these efforts, but they can help with getting your name out there and boosting new clicks and visits over to your site.
Comment threads are very close to forum marketing, in the sense that you can take time to show that, rather than searching for traffic, you are trying to contribute when commenting on a post. In a perfect future, you can frequently try to comment on your own blogs.
And the act of guest blogging or contribution with original content to other sites is also nothing new, however, it is still a huge opportunity for your site and brand. More often than not, the only cost associated with guest blogging is your time and outreach effort, and as you continue to gain new placements on smaller sites, this will help with your ability to contribute to much larger ones down the road.
Both of these methods are perfect for backlinks and creating influencers in your niche, but in this situation, you are still a daily reader and blogger so you won’t sound as though you were a spammer by linking to one of your pages.
5. Find Your Audience on Social Media
Social media can be a perfect way to build your following and consequently boost your website traffic. You cannot, however, only post links to news items or blog posts and hope people can fly.
Instead, you need a plan to identify the best brand platforms and then find out how your specific target customers use those platforms.
And when it comes times to read new audiences, don’t over your options with influencer marketing. And depending on your niche market, the reach and power of influencer marketing can result in higher
With more than 3 billion users spread across the most active social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, it’s now easier than ever before to reach new audiences and redirecting them back to your site.
With influencer marketing in play, it’s also a cost-effective solution for testing out. While celebrities and big players are generating thousands of dollars for individual posts, smaller micro and niche-influencers often cost a fraction of that, but also offer much tigher audience targeting.
Bonus Tip: Promoting Webpages on YouTube
This last bonus tip is one that we could write a whole resource guide on, but we will just quickly recap here and let you explore it in more detail on your own.
In short, YouTube is the largest video search engine in the world. It’s free to use and they even host your video content for free. Throw in that billions of video impressions are taking place daily, and when utilizing this platform correctly, it could be a huge source of traffic for your site.
When creating videos, don’t forget that most readers have a short focus and attention span, so the video must be short, snappy and also includes a call to action telling the viewer to click on the links in the description area.
YouTube allows for users to add backlinks to their video content descriptions, which also means more clicks and traffic back to your site. To learn more about how to rank videos on YouTube, check out this YouTube SEO resource guide.
Quick Tips on How to Increase Real Traffic to Your Site
There you have it. Five simple and effective expert tips to help increase traffic to your site through the use of improved search rankings, more social activity and creating better content for your audience.
Be sure to start implementing these methods, while also keeping an eye on your traffic levels to see which methods work best.
