When you first start your website, barring a miracle, there is little to no chance that it will generate a lot of organic website traffic. This can be a problem if you’re trying to get your business off the ground or looking to generate leads through your online content.
But wait, this isn’t just another SEO post. Though we have covered SEO as a topic on our website, your website’s age plays a big factor in how the search engines rank it. Therefore, if you do have a young website, you need to be creative.
In this article, we look at seven different ways to boost website traffic to a young website that isn’t all about SEO. These are based on tips we have used for our website, which has shown great results.
build website traffic to a young website
Take advantage of the free Google My Business listing
This free service by Google is an easy way to generate free and quick traffic to your website. For those who may not know, Google My Business is a business listing that connects your business to Google services and apps like Maps and others.
The profile you create usually contains your website link and is a great way to be discovered by potential customers. Most websites see an immediate uptick in impressions and then eventually web traffic.
Submit your site to online directories
Ever heard of Yelp or Tripadvisor? Well, by creating accounts on these review and listing websites and keeping them updated, it is a great way to boost your visibility and drive traffic to your website.
Because many listing sites have been there for many years and are ranked high on most search engines, your business’s free review page on Yelp or any local listing site might actually rank higher for relevant keywords that your customers are searching.
Just in case we didn’t mention it, it is usually free and quite simple to do. So, to start, just search for online directories and create a list – use this list to make enquiries or submit your business profile online. It takes some time but is a simple and easy way to get discovered.
Get your business featured on news websites
Backlinks are great and need to be built because it will consistently help improve your ranking on search engines. Most news websites generally have great daily web traffic and high domain authority, so a single article mentioning your business can be beneficial two-fold – improving your own domain authority and getting referral traffic to your own website.
Generating media interest is not that difficult if you put some effort into it and even small businesses can be featured in local blogs, news websites and more, simply by cold emailing and doing the little things right to get that essential news feature.
Get your network to market your business
Know someone interesting or influential in your industry – just reach out and ask them if they want to post an article on your website about themselves or their business. Maybe invest some time and even sit down with them to interview them for your website. This is a great way to create authentic and unique content that your customers would want to consume.
The resulting content might have a higher chance of being found online if their business or even themselves are prominent, and they are more inclined to share your content to their own network. This will help you generate a lot of visibility for your business and very good web traffic.
Improve your social media game
Social media remains one of the most popular free marketing tools for any business and has a huge role in driving traffic to your website.
As a business, you should definitely use Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever platform that works for you to promote your content and useful web pages. Try to create content that encourages sharing, which will help spread it further and ultimately drive more traffic to your website.
Make use of hashtags and tagging relevant businesses and people when you post, in order to reach a wider audience. It takes advantage of the social media platform’s algorithms, as well as increases the likelihood of these businesses liking and sharing the content.
Engage your community
Hard work pays off in the end and being active in online groups and on your social media platform that are relevant to your business doesn’t cost money, just time.
Make sure you do the needful and comment on blog posts that impact your audience and relevant social media posts, answer questions on Quora, and always participate in online discussions around your industry. This increases your profile and visibility to the community.
Try to avoid that initial temptation to be aggressive and spam all conversations. You should try to engage your community moderately and definitely avoid including links to your website in your comments — this is a hallmark of spam comments and can be hurtful to your young reputation. The goal should be to add value, not gain traffic, that will come once the community sees what you have been sharing.
Share your content with online communities
Known as content dissemination, this is simply the act of sharing your content to relevant online communities. If it is something that is relevant and adds value, they will definitely be inclined to visit your website to read, listen or watch your content.
These online groups can usually be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, online forums and even message groups such as WhatsApp or Telegram groups.
Just make sure your content is relevant and try to avoid spamming these groups with unnecessary or badly done content – it is a sure-fire way to get kicked out of the group.
The key to making your website a success is to focus on providing value by creating great content, as well as persevering. If you are not seeing amazing results at the start, the efforts you put initially will eventually lead to a website with a good reputation, sound organic traffic and the fundamental structure for you to scale your efforts easily.
