If you recently launched your first website, chances are that you tried to get by with simply paying the weird guy down the street to create a website for you.
At first you’re all excited because you finally have a website up but after about six months you start to wonder why you’re not driving traffic to your website.
The reason? ….allow me to provide a little insight.
Your website does not provide any value.
Think about it like this; would anybody buy your product if it didn’t add value to their life? In other words, if your product or service didn’t solve some problem for people, would they have any reason to buy it? …no.
The same is true about your website; you can’t simply have a website and expect people to go there.
How to fix:
- Create content that is valuable to your target market
Comments:
You need to figure out how people come to the conclusion that they need your product and the types of questions they have along that path. Once you determine those questions, you need to write content that answers those questions. For example, we recently launched a website for an animal removal service in Gainesville. We know that potential customers of this service aren’t likely to start off by searching for “animal removal”. Instead, they are more likely to search for something like “are armadillos dangerous” or “do armadillos bite”. With that knowledge, we’re able to create content that answers those questions. From there, of course, we would lead them into the next stage of thought; capturing and preventing armadillos.
If you can figure out what your customers are asking and then answer those questions, you’ll be driving traffic to your website in no time.
You’re not driving traffic to your website because you’re not marketing your website.
Marketing a website is, in a sense, very similar to marketing a product or service. No one will visit your website if they don’t know about it.
In the past, it would have been sufficient enough to simply put a website up because there weren’t many websites on the Internet. However, that’s not the case any more. Check out this chart by Netcraft.com.
Essentially, the chart gives insight into how many websites are on the Internet. The point is, there are A LOT of websites on the Internet; driving traffic to your website will require you to be smart in how you go about marketing your site.
How to Fix:
- Create and implement a marketing plan
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There are several different tactics you could possibly include in your marketing plan. Here are three tactics I’ve had success with:
- Content marketing: If you just launched a new website, you need to be producing valuable content on your site, as well as on other popular websites. One way to determine the popularity of a site is to use Alexa. If a website has an Alexa score below 500,000, it’s typically an excellent place to try and place quality content.
- Building meaningful relationships: Business is human. One of the best ways to market your new website is to build meaningful relationships with your readers and the readers of similar websites. Be sure to reply to every comment on your website and make time every day to go and provide a few valuable comments on other blogs (do NOT spam).
- Make your website social: It never ceases to amaze me at how much traffic social networks send to my blog. Trust me, you’ll want to give your readers the option to market your website for you. If you use WordPress, I would recommend the sharebar plugin. It seems to be doing the trick for me.
You and/or your website lack credibility.
Business is about trust. And driving traffic to your website will require that you gain people’s trust. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have done something to make them not trust you, it could also mean that you haven’t given them a reason to trust you.
How to Fix:
- Narrow in on credibility factors and continually improve
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In short, we could split this up into two sections; (1) building credibility away from your website and (2) building credibility on your website. Since the off-site concepts are similar to the ones I mentioned above, I’ll give some quick insight into on-site credibility.
- Design and layout: if your website makes it incredibly easy for visitors to find the content they are looking for, your credibility score goes up one notch. Continually test your website to improve your credibility.
- Indications of expertise: Likewise, people will believe you more if you use stats and facts. If you noticed, I used a chart with stats in an example above. How did that impact your perceptions of me?
- Indications of trust: Similarly, your credibility score goes up a couple notches when visitors come across “indications of trust”. Things like broken links, misspelled words, and inappropriate grammar indicate to visitors that you are not trustworthy. Find and use tools like the “broken link checker” plugin to help keep you in check.
Your website structure is terrible.
One problem with having the weird guy down the street build you a website is that he often doesn’t know the correct way to build and structure a website. As a result, your website is full of markup errors. This is a problem because search engines give preference to websites that make it easier for them to crawl and index.
How to Fix:
- Educate yourself on best practices or hire a professional.
Comments:
If your an entrepreneur, chances are you don’t have time to learn how to code websites and then continue to learn “best practices” that come out. If that’s the case, you are going to want to hire a professional. There are, seemingly, an infinite number of “Internet gurus” and solutions out there. If you do decide to hire a professional, make sure that they can show you a clear connection to value that helps you improve your business.
Conclusion
So there you have it; these are a few reasons why your website may not be getting traffic. At the end of the day, an online presence is a delicate thing. You have to take care of it and guide it in the right direction in order for it to develop.
What are some tips or tricks that you have for driving traffic to your website?