When I visit a client there is always one question I am asked without fail in the course of an online marketing discussion with small and medium sized businesses.
“I want more visitors to my web site. How do I achieve it?”
Here are some options:-
The answer to the question can be both simple and complex as there are many ways to increase traffic to your web site.
We can consider AdWords but I find this to be an expensive option in the long term and when the spend stops so does the traffic.
We could also look at the structure of the web site itself and make improvements for search engines but this usually takes time for Google to reindex your site and it still may not be enough to improve traffic. Also the ranking, particularly for Google depends on how many other people (web sites) link to your site and the type of keyword used in the link.
e-Newsletters are also a good tool for the smaller business, especially if it can be personalised. However, I have found the biggest draw back to this form of marketing is the generation of content and the newsletter usually faulters after 3 or issues.
So how do you quickly and cost effectively drive traffic to your web site?
The answer is a blog. A blog that is related to your business and has content that is very focussed on the keywords that relate closely to your business or it’s offering.
OK, so why a blog, Well here are the primary reasons:-
1. A blog is very cheap to set up and is a long term benefit to your business.
There are a number of blogging systems readily available and these are easy to set up and very simple to get you up and running.
2. Content can be very focussed on keywords and search engines rank pages so each page can be ranked against keywords.
As Google ranks pages it is easier to write a focussed blog and maximise it’s keywords and phrases. Also a link back to your own web site helps your main web site ranking.
3. Blogs rank faster in search engines so results are quicker.
Blogs are set up for regularly updating content and Google rapidly indexes blogs
4. Blogs must link back to you main web site so this improves your main web sites ranking.
It is more beneficial if you highlight a piece of copy to link which is a key word rather than just add in a URL.
5. Blogs can be used to automatically add information into Twitter and your tweets can rank very quickly in Google.
We believe in maximising the effectiveness of a blog and minimising the time on up dating social media sites – so we set up automated processes that automatically send your blogs to Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook etc.
6. Blog content can be used to create a monthly e-Newsletter easily.
If you blog small amounts of information twice a week we would recommend you use this content to create a simple newsletter. Use your blog to gain sign ups to your newsletter.
Although blogging sounds like a very abstract activity for business it can be a very good focal point for online marketing and it can produce results very quickly.
An essential part of monitoring the success of your blog is to put in place an analytics package in your web site to monitor an increase in traffic. We would recommend putting in place some objectives as a benchmark to monitor the blogging effort against.
To find out more on how “Blogging” can help your business drive traffic to your web site – just give me a bell for some advice for your business – 0800 019 9860. We are always on hand to chat about all aspects of online marketing. There is also more about online marketing at our web site.