So, you have been tasked with driving new traffic and visitors to your site. Pretty straightforward task huh? On the face of things, it is like being asked to lick your elbow or running a two-minute mile or pushing a boulder up a, particularly icy hill. Well, I can tell you from experience it is not that simple. However, at the same time, there are steps you can take to start moving in the right direction.
Before you get started with your glacial boulder, and at the risk of thoroughly mixing metaphors, you will need to identify some low hanging fruit. So to make that fruit reachable, here a few minimal effort tactics you can employ to start driving more traffic to your website.
1. Driving New Traffic with Basic Link Building
So this involves some talking to people. Firstly it is worth identifying the sites which are ‘watering holes’ for your target personas. You might already have a list – if you do not – build one. Ask existing customers what they read and where. Then adapt and grow your list. The next step is building relationships with those site owners. That may sound like a painful, time-consuming journey but you can make it simple. As a side note, Hubspot came up with some pretty incredible email templates that could help with your outreach in a recent blog article. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/link-building-email-templates
Asking people to can be an awkward matter. It can easily come across like you’re trying to force your way through the front door. But at the same time it could be a mutual relationship and ensuring you are at least on the leading content publishers radars is critical to your success.
It is well worth identifying broken links. Most savvy site owners might be dismissive, but a broken link building strategy requires you only sending them an email telling them of the problem and then introducing a replacement URL from your site to help them fix the problem. If you do not have a relevant replacement bit of content on your site use the Wayback Machine to compare the content on the first link and use or refresh that message it to produce something comparable.
If you are struggling to find broken links that are going to provide you with value, then take a look at finding expired domains with a lot of existing links.
2. Driving New Traffic By Inviting Guest Bloggers to Your Website
Now, this is a quid pro quo. Find an influencer or blogger in your market niche and ask them to publish content on your site. Once you promote that blog on social media, they will, of course, help themselves and you at the same time. Don’t forget that everyone is slightly egotistical. It is worth starting with your immediate network of people. Not only is an excellent way to achieve some link quid pro quo, but it is also a genuinely useful way of creating more content.
Once you have exhausted your initial network, it is worth building out some Calls-to-Action that promote a ‘Write For Us’ page on your site. Do a bit of promotion for it. You will see a return, trust me.
You will need to ensure that the content is of high quality and being an editor can be time-consuming. One method is to detail your criteria for selection on your ‘Write For Us’ page. A tip is to take a look at traditional news sites. While the link below is a little old school – it gives you a pretty clear view on exactly how you should write if you want to get published by The Guardian.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2004/07/15/styleguidepdfjuly2004.pdf
Finally, a word of warning about reciprocal linking, don’t fall for the scare tactic. Just ask for a direct link or guest post and space out your request from when you publish their initial post, and you will be just fine.
3. Driving New Traffic By Offering More Than Just Content
One familiar route and you will see this on lots of sites, is creating a post that involved “The Five Best Software Platforms for Gardeners” or “Best Marketing Roles on the Web Today” and building a list of websites that are related to your niche. Now, this strategy, while cheap and easy, will encourage the site owners to link to your site, so they can show their followers you have featured them – it is a potent method. Nonetheless, do remember, that if you are new to the market or don’t have the brand weight, it might be seen as transparent and opportunistic, but trust us it does work nine times from ten.
It might be worth striking up a relationship with the linker site to work out if the strategy suits.
4. Driving New Traffic By Getting onto blogs earlier than anyone else
This is not necessarily the easiest approach in this list. However, it is worth looking at a couple of services that could help you. Frist, Sourcebottle – which is particularly useful in the anglo-sphere of UK, Eire, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States – there is also a service called HARO which is an entirely US-centric option.
You will see a whole host of listings in their early stages, all of which are asking for content. You may rarely get a prospect from such domains – but it is useful because if bloggers are looking for content, it is a good sign they are serious about continued work on their site.
It is likely when they build and grow their blog into a more sustainable impactful site they will become more selective about whom they allow contributing. That means you will become involved earlier in their development, giving you access to posts on a blog that will be inundated with guest post links and drive new traffic to your site.
The more content you produce, which is obviously time and effort from you, will give you a stronger case for being a bigger fish in your niche of the market. While that is not necessarily a quick win, it is still highly valuable and essential. You could be creating entry-level content that becomes part of a much bigger site into the future and bringing more influence.
Conclusion
In summary, these are all quick wins. Please be warned that they are not all big wins. The positives lie in the fact that they can be done quickly and in a way that can be replicated and easily scaled as part of an ongoing process or strategy of driving new traffic.
Now, not to pitch, but it might be worth considering what tasks can I outsource. Moreover, if I did, could I be spending more time on building out more valuable premium content offers that are going to help your business stand out in an increasingly competitive market. In the meantime – give these strategies a go and tell us what you think below.