No Traffic to Your Website?

Ahh, the information super highway, the place of dreams, the answer to all business problems…

A few clicks and fortunes are made and businesses switched on to the web gold rush will never need go prospecting for customers again.

-NOT!

Let me guess, your business website is looking a bit like a ghost town?

What’s going wrong?

The hard truth is, just because you have a website does not mean people will find and visit it. It doesn’t matter how wonderful it looks or how much care has been taken to make it search friendly – the competition is fierce. You have to do more…

Even on a local business level where the competition isn’t so tough, it’s not always enough to have nicely optimised web pages.

So just how do you get traffic to your website?

The simple answer is don’t rely on the search engines to drive that traffic to your website.

Let me ask you a question…

…If search engines were never invented, what would you do?

Well, you wouldn’t be relying on Google, Bing or Yahoo! to generate website visitors.

I have given a few pointers about what else you can do to promote online in my last blog post and even chatted away on videos over on Facebook.  But, what may not be immediately obvious is why this approach works…

Publishing content on several online platforms will:

a. expand your reach, meeting people interested in your business where they hang out
b. increase your online visibility as someone who knows what they’re talking about
c. leave links back to your website and not only will people click the links to find out more about you, links also help to increase your search engine rankings…

All of which help you get traffic to your website. Not just any traffic, but targeted traffic – people actually interested in you or your business.

Another option is to advertise online. Paid advertising definitely has its place, one of which is to bring practically immediate traffic to your web page. It’s an in depth subject and one deserving its own post in the future.

Is it fair that small businesses practically have to become online publishers to stand a chance of ranking in the search engines to get natural “organic” traffic?

Of course not, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the way it’s going. Even on a very local search level, the competition is heating up and it can take a bit more than putting up your website and adding your link to the online directories.

Take a look at what the brands are doing online.

Do you wonder why they have a “DIY Tips”, “Articles”, “Videos”, “Downloads” and the good old “Blog” sections on their websites?

…Traffic maybe?

Organic traffic certainly and customer relationship building.

And, that content won’t just be published on their website, it will be syndicated all over the web. Bringing more visitors.

Can a small business do it too?

Damn right you can.

Your business has goldmine of information that people WANT to know. Share it, publish it online and get traffic to your website.