In the first part of our series about increasing web traffic, we covered a few important tips about the importance of knowing your target audience. And we meant what we said – the first step in maximizing traffic on your site is developing a clear understanding of your intended visitors. Without that understanding, you might be designing a website that would be completely irrelevant to the people you’re most interested in attracting.
But once you’ve defined your target audience, what is the next step? In our opinion, it’s simple. Once you know your intended visitors, you have to find ways to inform them you have a website, or all the hard work you’ve done to quantify your audience and build a nice site could go to waste after all.
To illustrate the importance of promoting your new website, we’ll use the example of a local plumber. Let’s say the plumbing website design phase is complete, because our local plumber has done a good job of identifying the target audience and has published a good-looking website that communicates all the services offered by the plumbing practice itself.
If our hypothetical plumber were to simply go live with this new website and then wait for the phone to ring, there could be some serious disappointment in the results! Logically, if no one in the local area that’s being served by the plumber knows about the new website, no one is likely to visit it.
To solve that problem, we’ll focus on two main areas.
First, our ambitious plumber will want to implement as many current SEO techniques as possible. We’ve covered a few of them in past blog posts, such as frequently updating websites with fresh content, thoughtful use of keywords in page titles, maximizing the use of backlinks and implementing meta elements.
Assuming that our plumber has done a little SEO homework and put those tactics in place, the second area of focus will be on promoting the new website on a local basis. And that, in our opinion, is where the greatest opportunity to increase the plumbing website traffic will lie.
With that in mind, here are five key strategies for promoting a website to a specific local region:
- Take advantage of the local search feature offered by search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, CitySearch, and Yelp. By registering your business on sites like these, your website will appear in keyword searches that people conduct from your locale. Obviously, that can come in handy if someone living within 10 miles from our hypothetical plumber types “leaky faucet” into Google.
- Use location-specific keywords that include your city’s name. This is important, since it affords potential website visitors and customers the opportunity to narrow a search for “leaky faucet” down to plumbers that are close enough to help. So, “leaky faucet, MyTown, NC” is going to bring your site up much closer to the top.
- Consider offering a contest (with prizes) or printed discount coupons at local barber shops, restaurants, grocery stores, dry cleaners and beauty shops as well as your town’s Chamber of Commerce or Visitors Center. Make sure any printed material you hand out includes your website address.
- Check into online advertising opportunities offered by local media outlets such as newspapers, radio and television station websites. They can provide excellent local exposure at prices that are in keeping with an inexpensive small business web hosting strategy.
- Maximize your exposure on community-oriented websites such as your local chamber of commerce, business directories, city or county websites, Craigslist, Angie’s List, and trade organizations. Sometimes all it takes to get your business listed on a community site is to offer a reciprocal link.
Between effective use of SEO techniques and a more specialized approach to local promotional strategies, any small business can realize a significant boost to website traffic.
We have more ideas to help your organization increase its web traffic. Stop back soon for our third “Increasing Web Traffic” blog post, where you’ll learn a few tips for promoting your website on a national level. And if you ever have any questions about how to build your website from scratch, don’t hesitate to give us a call!
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Thanks for the article. The tips you gave are very helpful, and something that many small businesses miss out on with their everyday seo and marketing plans.
I like your post about web designing for small business.
Great insights,I really get feed with the info you share.It is really important that you have a great strategy to achieve your objectives.
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