5 Ultimate Web Marketing Strategies to Increase Website Traffic

The growth of traffic to website or to acquire more customers is generally a predominant concern for most marketing professionals. Here are 5 online marketing tactics proven to help you maximize your brand awareness and continually increase traffic to your website:

• 1. Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing
• 2. Advertising on search engines (Pay-Per-Click)
• 3. Advertising on social networks
• 4. Online Contest
• 5. Email marketing and newsletters

1. Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing

Goal:

Acquire traffic through referencing on search engines such as Google and Bing, finishing as high as possible on the search results pages.

How it works:

The contents of a website determines how search engines understand and categorize a website for search engine ranking on specific keywords. Moreover, search engines look at how the website content is shared and the number of people interacting with it on social networks.

By sharing, these content acquires certain “authority” through these social signals (I like them, Sharing, Comment, Favorites, etc. content on social networks), which now significantly influence the positioning in search results.

Authors who have some popularity on Google Stream (formerly Google Plus) also develop some authority that can influence SEO of the contents they produce.

Here are the available ranking factors:
• The website must be optimized technically to turn to search engines to index the content.
• Relevant keywords related to products, services, and blog posts.
• How many other websites have a link to pages of the site (page rank).
• Total number of articles on a certain subject and how often new content is published.
• How often the site content has been shared and generated an interaction in social networks.
• The authority or popularity, the author of the article on the social networks.

Proven tactics:

• Enrich the content titles and articles of the site with search keywords that are most popular to the blog (using Google AdWords Keyword Planner for example).
• Publish articles regularly on the blog section of your website with keywords related to your services and products. Frequency: at least once a week (preferably several times a week).
• Share articles on social networks and create commitment to get the right social signals (Like, Share, Comment, Favorites, etc.).
• Measure the performance of your content on the website and SEO traffic generated on given keywords.

2. Advertising on search engines (Pay-Per-Click)

Goal:

Acquire traffic by posting an ad on the first page of search engines.

How it works:

Search engines like Google and Bing allow advertisers to create campaigns that show an ad on the results page when searching certain keywords.

The advertisers are charged only when a user clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser’s site. Hence the term “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC) where you only pay if the user clicks on the ad.

Ad placement on the home page on given keywords is via an auction process where advertisers are willing to pay more for click ad appear at the top of the results page research.

Proven tactics:

• Find those search keywords that are popular and affordable in your niche to create optimized ads (using Google AdWords Keyword Planner).
• Create different versions of your ads to make A / B testing to determine the best ad that will perform better.
• Track and optimize campaign performance to maximize traffic to your website and reduce campaign costs.

3. Advertising on social networks

Goal:

Acquire traffic by publishing an advertisement on the news feeds (or “wall”) of the user’s social network.

How it works:

Social platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn allow advertisers to create ads and place them on the new page to target new users. Facebook and LinkedIn in particular allow advertisers to target their audience by geography, demographic and their interests.

There are generally two billing models on these platforms:
• “Pay-Per-Click” advertisers are only charged when a user clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser’s site.
• “Cost-Per-Management”: advertisers are charged a fee for every 1000 impressions of the ad on the social network.

Another promotional method is to increase the range of a message posted by the brand on the social network.

Facebook, for example, allows marketers to pay a certain fee to display the message as an advertisement in the news feed of targeted users. This practice tends to produce stronger engagement performance than more traditional promotional advertising.

Proven tactics:

• Create different variations of campaigns to make A / B split tests to determine the ad that performs better.
• Create messages on the Facebook page and increase their reach by paying an extra fee for the “highlight”.
• Track and optimize campaign performance to maximize traffic to your website and reduce campaign costs.

4. Online Contest

Objectives:

Collect emails and demographic data from participants through a contest where you offer prizes and rewards.
Boost your fan base on social networks by offering viral contest they invite their friends.

How it works:

If the price is attractive and that the participants trust your brand, they probably fill an entry form and give you permission to send them newsletters.

You can maximize the reach of this campaign by launching a viral contest where participants are rewarded when they invite their friends to sign up for the contest. It is common to reward the referrer once their friend become new leads.

Note: it is no longer possible to force participants in a Facebook contest to become your fans.

Proven tactics:

• Simple form in the competition registration.
• Viral contest where each participant can share the contest with a unique affiliate link and have more chances of winning if their friends also participate.
• Photo or video contest voting station where participants can be part of. You can get more leads by allowing your participants to vote on photos or videos.

5. Email marketing and newsletters

Objectives:

Collect email addresses of people interested in your products and services or your blog.
Create incoming regular traffic by inviting customers to come to your website regularly.

How it works:

Allowing people to subscribe to your newsletter gives them a way to express their interest in your brand and content, and this will allow you to contact them whenever you have something interesting.

If you offer an informative content and promotional news, you can regularly create and advanced traffic to your site by sending newsletters to your subscribers.

Proven tactics:

• Send a newsletter regularly with interesting content (at least once per month).
• When you reach a large number of subscribers, begin to segment your audience and target each segment with newsletters with different variants to maximize engagement so that you will not lose your subscribers.