Drive online traffic

The best way to drive traffic to your website is to optimise your online activity to appeal to your ideal customer. Your website is the command centre of any plan for online traffic generation, and you should start with fresh, readable, and easily searchable content. This content serves two primary purposes. First, you want to appear for the most relevant search phrases at the top of people’s search results. Second, you want the people who find you to stay on your site so they can eventually become qualified leads and then customers.

Get to the top of search engines

To be better ranked in search engines (and ideally appear on page one), you should look at your search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics to increase the quality and quantity of website traffic through non-paid (also called organic) search engine results.
 

Search engines work mainly three ways:

1. The search engine crawls the Internet for content, looking over the code and content for each website they find to see if the information is relevant to whatever someone entered in the search bar.
2. Any information found is then indexed and stored to be displayed as a result to relevant queries.
3. Content that will best answer a searcher's query is then ranked, with the best matches first, worst last (there are usually millions of results).

To help get to the top of a search engine:

• Conduct keyword research to find out what your customers are searching for, what common phrases they enter into search engines, and the format they want that information (web text, a video, a podcast etc). 
• List all the things your business does and assign words or phrases to each product. You can think about comment terms customers might enter, like 'Auckland Hotel', but often it's best to ask existing customers how they search. Weave these words into your website and use Google's Keyword Planner to help refine your results
• Try to have these search phrases in titles, content headings and main content pages. 
• Include links to popular websites relevant to your business and ask if they will link to yours (a common tactic is to offer content like a blog to a well-known website that has a link back to you). Search engines like reciprocal links to well-known websites.
• Be mobile friendly, as search engines often reward sites that are easy to see on a phone. If you're not sure, use Google's free mobile friendly test to see how you fare.
• Have content that is expert, authoritative, trustworthy and regular. On-going content will help you rank higher than a website that hasn't been updated in months (or years).
• Use Google Analytics to see what your customers are looking and clicking on, to offer more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Add searchable content to your website 

Creating content that enriches the customer experience by providing advice, tools or insights will make your website more valuable to your customers and search engines. Content can take the form of whitepapers or industry guides, e-books, articles or case studies, and blogs related to your business or industry.

Use social media 

Social media platforms offer many opportunities for businesses to engage, participate and sign-up followers, which you can direct to your website. In addition, word of mouth is amplified on these platforms, so social media participation can be key to driving traffic. You could also reach new audiences with influencer marketing, by sending free samples to Instagram influencers, and contacting bloggers to offer information or advice.

Create an email campaign

No online traffic plan is complete without a strong email marketing system, as it's one of the more robust forms of marketing because of email's continuity in peoples' personal and business lives. If you can gather a large database of existing customers and prospects that opt into your email newsletter, you'll drive traffic back each time you send it.
 

Professional email campaigns should get to people's inboxes when they want them, and offer engaging and relevant content, news, opinions or offers.

Finally, use paid media

Spending money on advertising will drive traffic but take care it's the right traffic. All too often, you can double or triple the visitors to your website, who bounce out as fast as they come in. The most common paid social media campaigns are with the various ads run by Facebook, Instagram, Google, You Tube and LinkedIn. The good news is that you can inexpensively experiment with all of these and continue with those that work.
 

Regardless of which tactics you try, decide how much time, skill, or experience you'll need to execute (you can always pay someone else to do it for you), and how long it will take to see any investment increase traffic and sales.

Next steps
 

• Optimise your content for search engines using a multi-step approach across all your mediums
• Check your website is mobile-friendly and consider redeveloping and relaunching if an upgrade is needed
• Reach out to your followers on social media and every time you post, have a link back to your website for more information to sign up for an event or download a piece of content.
• Start an email marketing campaign if you haven't already. It may take some time before you have a large following, but it will be worth the effort.