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4 Ways to Drive Traffic to Any Website [Ultimate Guide]

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website_ Ultimate Guide

One of the most significant as0.43pects of running a successful online business is being able to drive traffic to your website.

In simple terms, more traffic means more people visiting your website, and therefore a higher chance of some of them converting into customers.

Of course, there are multiple ways to do this – some of them are free, and need time to happen, others require financial investment, but happen immediately.

All of that, and more, we’ll be taking a look at today, as we delve deeper into the world of online website traffic.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: The Main Paths

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: The Main Paths

  1. Search engine optimization.
  2. Advertising.
  3. Social media.
  4. Email marketing.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Using search engine optimization is the cheapest way to drive traffic to a website. Of course, you should be aware that it won’t happen immediately. You need to invest time and effort into understanding the core principles of SEO, and then to properly apply them.

SEO really has a lot to offer, and it can, practically, bring unlimited traffic to your website, provided you manage to master it properly. Truth be told, though, the beauty of SEO lies in the fact that it changes constantly.

Each Google algorithm update changes the rules of the game, more or less, and you need to be able to constantly adapt and quickly.

Now, let’s take a closer look at how different aspects of SEO can help you drive organic traffic to your website.

Keywords

The keywords that you use on your website matter. There are different types of keywords, and depending on the phase of your website development, domain authority, niche expertise, and so on, you need to choose those different keywords accordingly.

For example, long-tail keywords are perfect for newer websites, or older ones that haven’t focused on search engine optimization before.

What’s the difference between a long keyword and a standard one, you ask?

Well, here’s an example, using the keyword “apple pie recipe”:

Search Engine Optimization

As you can see, it has a global search volume of 279.4K, and a keyword difficulty of 82%. In practice, this means that unless you’re a well-developed and optimized website in the cooking niche, you won’t rank on the first page for that search term.

Thus, using it as your main keyword would make little-to-no sense. Instead, you can focus your optimization efforts on a long-tail version of the keyword – “easy apple pie recipe from scratch”.

Search Engine Optimization 2

Here, the global search volume is much lower, and the keyword difficulty is lower, as well. First, it would be much easier to rank on the first page of a SERP, and second – this keyword is more specific and targeted.

In this case, it is geared towards users who need a complete guide on how to make an apple pie, easy and from scratch.

As a general rule of thumb, you should also aim to place your keywords strategically.

Links

Both internal links and backlinks are crucial to your SEO endeavors. Internal links are a way to point users to other useful articles on your website, which leads to a longer average session duration.

What’s more, they help Google crawlers better understand what your website is about, and to rank it accordingly. Plus it highlights, through descriptive anchor texts, which pages on your site are important, and they’re about.

Backlinks, or external links, on their own, help you to rank higher in the search results, as they indicate how much expertise, authority, and trustworthiness you have.

You see, when a high-authority website links to a page on your site, it’s an indication for both search engines, and humans, that your website is legit, and can be relied upon.

Of course, not all backlinks are equal – receiving a link from a suspicious, unknown site will not bring you any advantages, quite the opposite – you might get lower rankings, and lose credibility as a source.

That’s why it’s important to conduct a backlink audit from time to time and disavow any harmful or unwanted links.

In case you’re still wondering how any of this affects the traffic to your website, it’s quite simple. Properly setting internal links, and obtaining high-quality links from reputable websites, helps you rank higher in SERPs, and that leads to higher visibility, and respectively more traffic.

Meta Descriptions and Title Tags

Another essential aspect of optimizing your website is writing compelling meta descriptions and title tags. Both can lead to higher click-through rates, and ultimately make people visit your site.

The meta description is the text you input in a special field below your article draft. In most cases, an SEO plugin is used – Yoast, RankMath, AIOSEO, etc., and it’s quite easy to spot where you should write your meta description.

Here’s how it looks on Yoast:

Meta Descriptions and Title Tags

The importance of a good meta description lies in the fact that it can drive a user to click on your page, instead of another one. Some good practices regarding meta descriptions include:

Good meta description practices

  • Adding a call-to-action.
  • Featuring your main keyword.
  • Avoiding clickbaits.
  • Keeping it relevant to your content.
  • The length should be ~155-160 characters.
  • Always write a unique description.
  • Sparking the interest of readers.

Title tags, similarly, have the goal of luring readers to click on your page. Pretty much, the same principles apply – always write unique titles (don’t copy-paste the same ones), try to make them interesting, include your focus keyword/s, and mind their length – for titles, they should generally be under 60 characters, but you can always double-check, using online tools.

What’s more, it’s proven that questions in title tags increase click-through rates (14.1% higher, in general), and including numbers, dates, and years also help, as they can indicate relevancy or give extra information about the article.

Here’s a comparison of two titles, which would you prefer to click on?

  1. The Cause of Economic Recession
  2. 5 Causes Behind the Economic Recession [2022]

Content

Sorry for the cliché, but content is king. High-quality content is king.

You might lure people to your website, but with questionable content, they will quickly leave, and chances are, will not return again. On the other hand, great content will keep your audience coming back, stay on your site longer, and even become your customers.

Make sure to always do proper research, write unique content, approach topics from a different angle as well as trying to add extra value, as opposed to simply rewriting what others have written.

Naturally, there are some common content writing mistakes, which you should also always try to avoid. Here are some quick tips on how to write content, in case you’re a beginner:

How to write content_ Tips for beginners

  • Break up your content into shorter paragraphs.
  • Never plagiarize.
  • Include call-to-actions.
  • Create an outline.
  • Use storytelling as well as naturally sounding language.
  • Incorporate keywords, without stuffing them.
  • Review/edit your content before publishing.
  • Avoid sales pitches.
  • Answer questions users might have.
  • Place images, memes, videos – custom or with a cited source.

A good way of ensuring consistent traffic is by writing evergreen content. Article types like statistics, how to, what is, and so on.

For example, topics like “How to lose weight?” or “What is a credit score?” are ones that will not really change over time, therefore what you write will be relevant, more, or less, forever.

Still, it’s good to revisit your older content, evergreen or not, every once in a while because updating older blog posts can actually boost your traffic.

On top of that, it’s always beneficial to write about trending topics that bring huge volumes of traffic to your site.

Search Intent

User search intent is crucial to both SEO, and traffic. You may have written good content, however, have you researched what the search intent behind the query is all about?

Search Intent

How do you know what the search intent is?

It’s easy. Observe the SERP (only the first page) for the query you’ve decided you want to write about. Let’s say that is “What is WordPress?”.

As you can see, all the results are guides, tutorials, and so on, thus, writing an article focused on “WordPress SEO” will not help to rank you on the first page.

There’s a reason why certain articles are displayed on the first page – they are what users want to read, and Google promotes such articles. This is generally the top goal of search engines, after all.

There are four types of user search intent:

Four types of user search intent

  1. Informational. Users want to know more about a product or service, or have a specific question answered, like “how to make homemade ice cream?”.
  2. Navigational. Users already know what they want to find, and they’re looking for an exact term, like “Apple website”.
  3. Commercial. Users are looking for a product, brand or service, like “best link building tools”.
  4. Transactional. Users are looking for a specific product, brand or service, like “ahrefs link building tools”.

What’s more, sometimes, when you are researching search intent, you can see that there are some content gaps for certain queries.

Finding and filling a content gap means your website will most likely get all the traffic for that query, and your business will benefit from more conversions.

Google Features: Snippets, Images, Video

Modern-day Google search engine result pages are filled with all sorts of features that aim to assist users in finding relevant content, and fast.

For instance, you have various featured snippets for different searches – the “People Also Ask” boxes, the paragraph, the numbered and bulleted lists, the table, and the video.

All the above can bring a lot of benefits to your SEO, and business. Featured snippets, although not available for every search query, are always displayed at the top of SERPs.

Apart from your ability to brag about being ahead of everyone, this brings in much higher traffic than any other search result, boost your search visibility, brand recognition, and ultimately brings more customers to your business.

If you see a bullet list at the top of the results, then you need to optimize your own page similarly.

Here’s an example of a paragraph featured snippet:

Google Features_ Snippets, Images, Video

Featured snippet aside, you should also pay attention to how you optimize your images, and/or videos, if you use the latter.

Image SEO is not something you should underestimate. After all, images are much easier to digest than paragraphs of text. What’s essential is that you input an alt text, and title text on all images you upload.

The first is important for search engines to understand the content of your image, as well as, for visually impaired people. It’s also helpful in cases when the image fails to load.

Naturally, in order to keep your website speed at an acceptable level, you should always compress your images and use the appropriate image format.

Last but not least, always use images that add value to your page. No stock photos, as they are generic, and most probably used by dozens of other websites.

If your organization has a design team, let them handle the graphics for your website, if not – create images using free, beginner-friendly software like Canva, instead of relying on stock photos.

All the effort to optimize your images will pay off. High-quality images that have been well-optimized have a higher chance of ranking at the top of Google images search results, and can drive more traffic to your website.

2. Advertising

In case you want faster results and are willing to pay for them, advertising is an efficient way to drive website traffic.

Search engines are the biggest traffic generators, but contrary to SEO, where you build organic traffic, when you pay for a top spot, you are practically buying traffic.

Still, there’s more to it than just spending money. Let’s analyze in more detail.

Advertising

Google Ads

The most popular PPC platform is Google Ads – responsible for 97% of the revenue Google generates, and more than 80% of global businesses trust it for their PPC campaigns.

Knowing how to use Google Ads is beneficial for your business. This way you will not be spending money, without any prior strategy.

There’s something called Quality Score Optimization, which helps you identify issues, measure performance, and establish how you’re doing against competitors bidding for the same keywords.

Quality Score Optimization has three main focus areas:

Quality Score Optimization Metrics

  • Ad relevance. How your ad matches the user search intent.
  • Expected click-through rate. The chances someone will click on your ad when it’s displayed.
  • Landing page experience. The relevancy and usefulness of your ad for the people who land on your landing page and click on it.

Each of these metrics has three statuses: Below average, Average, Above average. The evaluation is based on comparisons with other advertisers that used the same keyword within the last 90 days.

Basically, you can use these ratings to determine whether your ads deliver a good user experience. UX is extremely important, after all, so a less-than-satisfactory UX could be a reason to rethink your keyword bidding.

Here’s an example of how ads appear on a Google search, in this case, for the term “SEO tools”.

Google Ads

Google Ads allows you to target your ads – select the age, location, gender, devices, etc. of the audience which will see the advertisements.

Personalizing your ads is one of the best PPC practices, and one you could benefit from immensely.

On the downside, you should know that people generally avoid clicking on paid results, thus the average click-through rate for Google Ads is 4-6%.

Display Ads

Display ads are one of the methods most used when attracting visitors to your website. You’ve all seen them lots of times on a daily basis, to the point where you’ve probably developed banner blindness.

Most display advertisements are on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning you get charged every time a user clicks on your ad through a search engine results page.

Typically, display ads come in four different types:

  • Banner ads. The most classic form of advertising. Banner ads are usually placed at the top of websites, with the main components being: an image, text, and a clickable call-to-action that leads you to the desired page.
  • Interstitial ads. As the name suggests, these are ads that are displayed in transition points of app usage, like between the levels of a video game, or when you pause a video. They typically cover the entire screen.
  • Rich media. These include interactive elements such as audio, video, or clickable elements. For example, you can include a contact form directly inside the ad.
  • Video ads. YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook display video ads all the time. They are often ads that appear before a video.

One might argue that display ads are very ineffective, regarding the volume and quality of traffic they can bring to your website.

Sure, it will be hard to bring visitors to your website using methods that irritate people, so you need to be creative in the way you use display ads.

However, these traditional methods could work for your business.

As you might know, controversial ads are the ones that people remember the most and stand out from the crowd easily. Of course, even in controversy, you must establish some calculated risks.

However, you all remember a certain “crazy” ad you watched online or on television. You probably still remember it to this day, along with the brand that was advertised.

In terms of benefits, though, successfully executing your ad campaign, can:

  • Boost brand awareness.
  • Reach target audiences.
  • Create a memorable brand experience.
  • Help you retarget interested audiences.

3. Social Media

Social media can be a huge factor towards website traffic. You should generally research your target audience beforehand, so you can decide which social platforms to put more effort in.

Once you have established which ones to use, you should follow the best practices regarding maintaining and promoting your social media accounts.

Of course, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc., all have their specifics, but there are some general guidelines that apply to all.

Here are some of the best practices, in a nutshell:

  1. Promote website content.
  2. Post content regularly.
  3. Share visuals.
  4. Collaborate with influencers.
  5. Use social proof.
  6. Stimulate UGC.

First things first, though, to drive traffic to your site via social media, create a solid social media strategy. This means determining how your page will look – the logo, cover photo, etc. You should also decide how often you will publish your content, making sure you are consistent.

Social Media Advertising

Social media and ads go well together – that’s been the deal for the last couple of years. A few years ago, one was able to reach thousands of likes on their Facebook page only with organic methods – inviting people, publishing cool content regularly, and so on.

Now, however, it’s a different story. If you’re serious about building your Facebook presence, and driving traffic to your website from it, you must invest in ads.

Facebook is the third most visited website, trailing behind Google and YouTube. So, chances are, your target audience is on the social platform created by Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s no wonder that there are more than 8 million active advertisers across all Meta platforms – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.

Moreover, the average click-through rate for Facebook ads, across all industries, is 0.90%, and the median cost-per-click is $0.43. That means people do click on FB ads, and it’s not a waste of time and money.

While you need to target your ads properly, you don’t necessarily require a million dollars to do so.

Now, what about LinkedIn, you ask? Not only is it a great platform to develop your employee branding, it can also be a great place to advertise and reach your audiences.

LinkedIn hosts more than 58 million companies on its platform, and LinkedIn ads are responsible for a 33% increase in purchase intent. In simple words, 33% of people who have seen an advertisement on LinkedIn, have most likely purchased from you.

As with other social media, it’s important to develop a content strategy, if you want your marketing endeavors to be successful.

4. Email Marketing

Email is one of the oldest communication channels of the recent era. It has many benefits, including its efficiency, affordability, and ease of automation. And, of course, you can reach an unlimited number of people, plus it allows you to personalize your emails.

Of course, there are some rules to establishing an efficient email marketing funnel that will bring in potential and qualified clients to your business.

Here are the main steps towards achieving your goal:

Email marketing rules for qualified prospects

  • Build your email list with quality subscribers. Spamming emails, or buying email lists just to grow your subscriber list, are not viable options. It’s better to invest in building your list with quality subscribers who are actually interested in what you offer.
  • Create relevant landing pages. Once subscribers visit your website, your goal is to keep them engaged. So, provide more information so that they’ll sign up to your site and leave an email address.
  • Monitor your performance. You’ll never know whether your efforts are paying off or not, unless you track your performance.
  • Combine with social media. A great way to enhance your website visibility is to connect your social media accounts with your emails. Place your social media icons within your emails. Maximize your marketing consistency across all channels so that they all lead back to your website.

All in all, if you manage to successfully execute your email marketing campaigns, you will not only end up getting tons of organic traffic to your website, you will acquire new customers, as well.

Conclusion

Your number one priority should be your website. There are many paths you can take to achieve your goal. While it’s not necessary to delve into all of them, a combination of them works best.

Work on your search engine optimization and think about ways you can benefit from advertising. Also, develop your social media channels, and rely on quality email marketing strategies.

Use your creativity, analytical thinking, and business intelligence to drive website traffic. Last, but not least, don’t get discouraged when you don’t succeed immediately.

The power is within your hands, and in case you feel overwhelmed, remember – DevriX is always here to help you!