You’ve invested quite a bundle and got a gorgeous website online that’s just itching for those massive visitors. The results aren’t that great though, and you wonder what you’ve done wrong or what you should be doing differently.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. It happens all the time and is quite a common phenomenon. There are millions and millions of websites out there, and all are competing for attention and clicks. In fact, the shear number of results a web search produces is overwhelming, and people hardly scroll down to the bottom of the first page. Hence, if your URL does not come up at the top, chances for getting massive traffic are rather slim.

So what can you do to make sure your website receives the traffic and number of visitors it deserves? Actually quite a lot. Here are some practical and mostly free tactics you can implement yourself to attract your target audiences to your website so they can read all about your great company and products or services.

Search Engine Optimization

Websites are widely found when people search for particular areas of interest. To do so, they use “key words”, which in turn determine how high (or low) your page shows in their search results.

Although search engine crawlers are able to read your website’s content and index it accordingly, the keywords people will most likely use to search for the topics you want your website to show up in must be embedded into your website’s structure.

Your web designers will – once your marketing team provides them with keywords – build those in properly, so when people search for say “tooth ache”, your dentisry’s URL comes out on top of the page. A word of advice here; no matter how skilled your web developers are, if you don’t provide them with the right keywords their work will more or less be in vein.

Paid Search Ads

With a little investment into Google AdWords of Microsoft Bing, your rankings can be propelled to the very top of the page. The “usual suspect” here is AdWords, as most people use Google for their web searches.

You can start testing your way around with a daily budget of $5 or $10 and increase that gradually as you get the hang of things. A daily budget of $30 or $50 will of course produce great results, and you could expect an impressive number of unique visitors if you chose the right keywords for your ads.

Tip: When running Google AdWords, you should definitely make sure you have a Google Analytics code built into your website and linked to your campaign. Even if you’re not paying for ads though, having an Analytics code embedded in your website is an absolute must as you gain access to a wealth in reports and data to analyze your website’s performance.

Paid Social Media Ads

Advertising on Facebook doesn’t mean your ad has to link to your Facebook page. Ideally, you would have multiple ads running that appeal to different target groups, and then direct those to multiple landing pages that display content that appeals to each.

So for example, you could have one ad to promote your teeth whitening services that links to a landing page which described the service in more detail (and offers a free consultation session), while another ad that promotes periodic checkups leads to a page that has some content about the benefits of preventive care. And since Facebook offers a wealth in user information, you can build your campaign to target very specific groups for each ad.

During one particular campaign we ran for a client a while ago, we had four different ads that lead to four different landing pages. Using Google Analytics to understand the flow of traffic and various points of interactions and conversions, the results were tremendous.

Cross-links

Exchanging and reciprocating links with relevant sites is a good way to generate traffic as well. In the past, this tactic helped in increasing search engines’ indexing of sites, but this has leveled off when the engines figured out that that exchanges weren’t always honest.

Nonetheless, if the URL to your dentistry is listed for example on the “our partners” page of a general hospital, people will most likely give this some weight and click on your link if they need the services you offer. You will of course need to reciprocate and have that hospital’s link also listed on your “our partners” page to make the effort worth their while.

Directories

Public directories, yellow pages, and members’ list of business association are a great source for referrals and click-throughs. If you’re a member of a professional or business association, make sure your contact details and URL are listed there.

Not only are these directories visited frequently and popularly, but they are also indexed more frequently by search engines due to the nature of the content they share.

A word of advice though, make sure these directories do not include your email address in a readable format, otherwise it will be picked up by these nasty crawlers that collect email addresses to build mailing lists for unsolicited messages.

Publish Articles

You should create a branded blog and populate that with content frequently. A WordPress with a unique URL for as little as $10 per year will display many of your articles on page one of your search results.

Use your URL in all your Publications

This is a no-brainer, but nonetheless worth mentioning; your URL needs to go into your email signature, and onto your stationary, business cards, and pretty much anything else you print. This also includes your templates for word processors, spreadsheets, and PowerPoints. In short, if your company name and logo appear on anything, your URL needs to be right there at all times.

There are of course tons of additional strategies and tactics to get the word out and bring in those precious visitors. And the better of a job you do with your SEO and all these other tools, the less you have to invest in paid ads.

If there’s a particular approach you’ve tried and found successful, drop us a line and leave a comment in the box below to share the love 🙂

---

 About the Author

Pinnacle Business & Marketing Consulting is a results-driven boutique consulting firm that specializes in providing clients with practical and pragmatic solutions to their business and marketing challenges.

Website | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

---

Legal Note

This article has been written and posted by Pinnacle Business & Marketing Consulting, LLC. Distribution, copying, and sharing is only authorized and permissible if no changes/ alterations are made to the content and appearance of this publication. Credit must be given to the publisher at all times by including this paragraph in any distribution. For additional articles, visit our website. To request an article about a specific topic you are interested in, please contact us with your request.