If you build it will they come? Part one of a two part series on how to build traffic.
So you’ve poured your heart and soul into building your website.
You’re all ready and waiting for those leads to come in, you’ve got your first webinar planned and and ready to go in a few weeks
But you don’t have any traffic and your Alexa ranking is in the tens of millions
How do you get started building traffic to your website?
Content marketing is important but traffic is the key ingredient you need for building your list.
Building traffic is one of the hardest but most important parts of online marketing
Most people don’t know how or refuse to implement the basic traffic building methods that are critical to building their business. I want to point out that you need to be consistent and patient as these methods are the foundation of building traffic and that your results will not happen overnight.
What you need to know about building traffic
1. Build traffic by using the right keywords
When it comes to building traffic, its like baking a cake and the first ingredient you need to have is the right keywords. At first you won’t be able to rank for the high traffic keywords like List buildng so it is better to find and use a long tail keyword that focuses on something that your target audience wants to buy or learn about. An example of that might be how to build an email list.
The next thing you want to do is to use SEO Quake and do a little more research to see check out your competition for this keyword phrase. This is a free extention that you can add to your browser and check out your competition. If the competition is low then you’ve found your keyword.
I suggest that you find more than one long tailed keyword to add to your marketing tool box.
2. Build traffic using original content
Content creation and marketing should be the cornerstone of your business and traffic building strategies. While you can and should research the most popular content in your niche, you should be writing from your own unique perspective on them.
Doing this allows you to develop your own voice and helps you to stand out in the crowd.
Longer post are more powerful than short posts! According to the graph below by MOZ, The longer a post is and more informative to your audience, the more it will be read.
Personally, I think that it is okay for you to mix it up. But remember make sure that the majority of your posts are longer. And that being said, make them readable. Read more about this here: Five Part Formula For A Successful Article
Every piece of content you create should have at least one graphic. IF you can add a video or infographic to your content that will help to engage your audience even more.
I also want to point out the rising popularity of podcasting here. If you record your post and set up your site with the blubrry powerpress plugin you can get your content out on another platform that will drive more traffic to your website.
3. Use Social Media to build traffic
Social media is what you use to build short term traffic to your site. You’ll want to get your content out right away on the big three Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. But don’t overlook StumbleUpon, Pinterest and Google+.
One of the first things you’ll want to do right away when you publish your content is go to your post and make sure you share it on google+. You want to do this because doing this alerts google right away that you have published new content and they will start indexing your site.
4. Interview influencers in your niche
You should know who the influencers are in your niche, I have built a list of 100 people who are influencers in my niche to follow and begin to build relationships with them.
It is never to early to start reaching out and building those relationships. Ask them for an interview by sending them a short email (LinkedIn is great for this), introduce and tell them a little bit about yourself and ask for the interview. I suggest starting lower on the list of influencers, they will probably be more likely to agree to an interview.
I suggest that you send them a list of questions prior to the interview. And then once the interview is finished, send them the recording and the notes for the post. Ask them to share the interview with their audience. If you are lucky and they have a good list, you will get a nice boost to your traffic.
5. Build traffic with Infographics
Graphics are an important part of marketing! They are the first thing that grabs the reader’s eye, more than the copy itself.
Infographics is a great way to share your information in a visual way and if you are on Pinterest at all, you know that they are some of the most popular pins.
You can get started creating your own Infographics using a tool such as Visual.ly.
Anatomy of a great Infographic
An attention grabbing headline
Make it vertical, not horizontal
Short points that illustrate your topic
include statistics where possible
Keep your points at 9 or less, otherwise you will loose the attention of your reader
Add your branding and url at the bottom
Promote your Infographic to build traffic
This is where you want to use embed codes. This makes it easy for your visitors to share your infographic and is a way for you to naturally generate some inbound links, since your image will automatically link back to your website.
Here’s how to add your embed code:
Add Embed Code Generator plugin on your websiite,
Add your infographic to your post
then click on the embed code field and add your to your infographic.
This is where embed codes come in. Providing embed codes to make it easy for your visitors to share your visual content on their own blog is not only a great way to encourage sharing. It’s also a way for you to generate some inbound links too, since the embedded image will automatically link back to your website.
Stay tuned for more information on how to build traffic to your website. Leave me a comment and let me know if you found this helpful!
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