How to increase website traffic and build an audience

You've launched a website for your online business.

Congratulations!

Are you getting noticed though? It is very busy in the online world and it is getting harder to get traffic to your website. So how to increase website traffic and build your audience?

That's what we are going to tackle today. I'll be sharing 6 strategies to grow your website traffic and audience both quickly and more consistently over time. I discuss the pros and cons of each strategy and share my own experiences using them.

Why is it important to increase website traffic?

No matter what online business you have, you need traffic to grow it.

You need eyeballs on your offers to make sales.

Getting a profitable business is largely a numbers game. Especially for a blog based business like 40plusstyle.com but also for other types of online businesses.

What are the six online traffic growth strategies that I use?

In this article I will be sharing 6 strategies to increase website traffic. Of course there are many more, but these are the ones that bring the most traffic to my website.

Increase website traffic strategy #1: SEO and content creation

I can hear you saying no, no, no, no SEO. It sounds way too complicated.

I can reassure you it is not that complicated and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a traffic growth strategy that you will want to consider.

SEO is the process of optimizing your content for Google so that they rank it highly in their search engines. When somebody clicks on, or searches for a phrase that you have written, you want to be found in the top three Google results. This ensures you get a lot of people visiting and reading your content. More eyeballs!

This is essentially how I built my business 40 +Style, which still gets a huge amount of traffic from Google every month. I can get up to 500,000 visitors from organic traffic from Google each month. Those numbers have been built over time through the process of content creation.

So how does this strategy work?

First, find out what your audience struggles with.

There are various ways to do this:

a survey,
Google searches,
using Google autocomplete
or a keyword search.

While I won't go into details on keyword research here, there is a good tool for keyword searches I like to use called KWFinder. If you use this tool, the website will give you some hints around how best to use it. Once you have a list of keywords you can start writing articles including them and the subjects and phrases you researched.

Initially you will want to focus on one key phrase per article.

You might have a key phrase that's really important that you really want to rank for.

If that's the case, your main article might be 'How to wear jewelry'. Then your supporting articles could be about what jewelry to wear with a red skirt, or what jewelry to wear to a wedding. Those other articles could still be ranked for those longer key phrases but your main article on 'How to wear jewelry' might be ranked as well. If you start linking all these jewelry articles back to your main article, you build a little web of links inside your own site that will help your SEO.

Something that will also really help your SEO / visibility in Google is to have other sites link to you.

One way is to leave comments on other websites. A more impactful link back to you site is a link that features in the content of other websites. Perhaps you can contribute to an article or write a post for another website?

This is good for two reasons; it will give you visibility to a new audience, and also link back to your website. Once you notice that a particular article getting a little bit of traction on your site and you can see that there are visitors coming in from Google, you might want to optimize it even further.

Maybe you want to add a few more images, a few more links within your own website. That way, you can make it even more popular.

Paying attention to content creation and SEO has been a huge boost for my website. It's how I built my business. I would definitely give it a try.

The big advantage is that it will increase website traffic, which will last for a long time. I have articles that I've written seven years ago and I still get a lot of traffic from them.

The disadvantage of this traffic strategy is that it may take a long time. You do need to be patient. Especially when you have a new site, it can take months or even a year for your site or your articles to get ranked by Google.

Increase website traffic strategy #2: Pinterest

My second favorite strategy to increase website traffic is Pinterest.

Pinterest is the number one social media traffic source for my business. I get up to 50,000 visitors per month from there.

Pinterest images can last a long time. It's not like Facebook. W hen you share an image there, you get a little boost of traffic that disappears almost instantly. With Pinterest your pin can last for months or even years. Pins get shared all the time from person to person.

Whenever someone shares an image of mine, and clicks on it, I get a new visitor to my website. Every month, many people discover my site and programs, through Pinterest.

To take full advantage of this strategy, I create a special image for Pinterest with each article. I make sure that image has a nice big title on it so that it's clearly visible from the image what the article is all about. You want to pique people's interest on Pinterest so that they click on your article and go to your website.

The disadvantage is that you do have to create that extra image for your website which will take a bit of extra time. It is not that difficult to do. It can often be just a slight variation on your article's main feature image.

Don't wait for other people to submit your article to Pinterest, submit it yourself. Especially when you are building a following, the image can spread very quickly.

You must also remember to pin some images that aren't from your own site as well. Once you start pinning every day, your own pins and other people's, you'll start to see a huge increase in the number of visitors that you get to your website.

Increase website traffic strategy #3: Email

I spoke about my email strategy in an earlier podcast. I discussed how important building your email list is if you want to increase website traffic and build a business online.

Building your list is important for almost any business model that you have. These are the people that really enjoy your content. They like to hear from you on a regular basis. They are the people that will potentially become your customers.

For those of you that think that people don't open their email anymore, I get up to 40,000 visitors per month just from email at 40+ Style.

It can be frustrating, some emails end up in spam, some people never open your email, but a lot of them still do. The people that do are your most loyal fans.

When people come to your website, you really need to try to get them to return. Oftentimes, people end up on your website, check it out, might like it, but leave and may never come back, You only get a very small window of opportunity to capture their email address. Make it easy for people to opt in to something on your site.

The advantages of building an email list:

Builds loyalty,
You build very reliable traffic,
You have control of the communication channel and your database. Unless they unsubscribe you have the permission to email the people on the list. If you do this in a positive, constructive and engaging way, always giving opt out options, email is one of the best ways to stay in contact with your readers and potential customers.

The disadvantages of an email list;

Not all of your emails will be delivered to all of the people on the list (you have to always remind people to whitelist your email address, to move emails that and might end up in spam or in the promotions folder to the inbox so that your emails actually arrive at the right place.
When your email list grows your expenses with your email service provider will increase. If you're using your list effectively though, you should easy make a good return on your investment.

Increase website traffic strategy #4: Facebook

Facebook is still a major player even though it's not as important as Pinterest for my site.

There are two main ways to engage and build an audience on Facebook.

The first is using a Facebook page. Share every post you write as well as sharing other posts that are relevant to your business and your subject. This will keep your Facebook page active and give you some traffic to your website.

The second is a Facebook group.

Starting a group can give you the potential for a lot more traffic to your website. In the beginning of a new group, you need to nurture it. You may also often need prompts for people to share within the group.

Over time, as the group grows and the community becomes engaged, members will start their own posts and prompts will no longer be required. You do need some bandwidth for this option because of the time involved at the start of the group. If people enjoy the group, they will invite their friends to join and the group will grow organically and often quickly.

I have a private Facebook group for 40+ Style with more than 7000 active members. When I have a new article, a promotion, or something to share I can do it in the group and it's guaranteed to generate traffic to the website. It's a great way to build community around a brand while supporting your business, building traffic and engage your audience.

Advantages of using Facebook and Facebook groups

Free opportunity to grow faster.
Get a lot of engagement fast
Make it easy for friends to refer them to your page or group

Disadvantages of using Facebook

It can be quite time consuming, especially in the beginning of a new group.
Facebook, of course, is very good at distracting you. You don't want to spend a lot of your time on Facebook, you want to spend more time creating your programs and your own content.
You don't have full control over the content and group. If Facebook changes their policies or stops showing your posts to people, there's nothing you can do about it.

Increase website traffic strategy #5: Interaction with other websites

Other websites can introduce you to their audiences.

If you have the chance to be featured on another website, guest post, do an interview, be a podcast guest or part of a video series, that can be a very useful strategy to grow your own audience. Of course, the more influential the website is, the better for you.

As mentioned in strategy #1 SEO and content creation, the link back to your website can be valuable.

It's not that easy to get featured on other websites so it will help to build relationships with other website owners. You can comment on their website articles, their posts on social media, give them a review for their podcast or invite them for an interview. It is best when these interactions are authentic and you are doing this because you have an interest in their website or online business.

This is how I established relationships with 40+ Style. In the beginning I interviewed people, mostly because I was interested in them. I wanted to know more about their style, what motivated them, the extra benefit being I really got to know these people. I built many great relationships and over time I have been asked to contribute to articles, guest interviews and be involved in other ways on their sites.

Sometimes when you feature people in your podcast, or on your website, they may share that with their audience, which will introduce new people to your website.

It's important though to interact with others in ways that are meaningful. Try to get interviews, do interviews and find ways to be involved with others. Big publishers are very busy, they will only really respond to people that they already know or have some kind of relationship with. If you want to pitch without having a relationship, you have to make it a really good pitch and please mention the person's name! Any emails without my name go straight to the bin.

Advantages of this strategy

It has a huge potential to grow your audience and your traffic. This is because you would only guest post, or get your links on websites that are very closely related to your topic, or the products that you want to sell. So these people might be potential customers.
Another advantage is that you get to know people really well, which helps build relationships, which may lead to collaboration in the future.

The disadvantage of this strategy

Getting to know someone takes effort and building relationships takes time. You need to visit their website, comment on their posts on a regular basis. That might take time, but it can definitely pay off. Of course, it's a lot of fun to make new friends as well.

Increase website traffic strategy #6: Paid Traffic

The last traffic strategy I will mention is paid traffic.

A lot of people use this as their first strategy and some really successful websites and programs are built on paid traffic. Paid traffic is reliable, and it's quick.

If you have a proven product, it's a very good strategy to use. For example, if your product is $100 and you have to spend $50 to get one sale, that's $50 profit. If you earn more from paid traffic than you pay, it's absolutely worth doing.

If you have a large budget, and you're starting with new products and services, you can start a paid traffic strategy before you have a physical product or service.

However, it's usually better to have a product or service that you know converts. You need to know exactly how many of the people that see your offer will end up buying your offer in terms of a percentage. When you know these numbers well, you know exactly how much you can spend.

Advantages of paid traffic

You can really target a specific group; a group that you already know is very interested in your product or service.
It can also be very quickly implemented. Although it can take some time to get the right combination of image, text and headline, so that clicks and eventually opt ins, or conversions, are affordable

Disadvantages of paid traffic

you do need to test properly. If you don't have your image, text or other things quite right, it can be quite expensive.
If you're new to Facebook ads, they're definitely a learning curve. This is something you might want to outsource to experts. On the other hand, nobody knows your audience better than you. If you choose to do it yourself, you might have to do some practice, or trial and error, with some text ads. I use a tool to test text ads called AdEsspresso, which makes it a little bit easier and quicker to do this.
It's always better to know your numbers before doing ads, so that you know how much you can spend and what your return will be.

Which of these strategies will you use to increase traffic and grow your audience?

Which ones do you already use?

Which ones will you plan to use in the future?

I hope this article has helped you identify some new strategies for your online business. Would love to know how you are planning to implement these strategies and which ones you'll be using.

Let me now in a comment below!