Even the most well-designed website is useless if nobody sees it. To address this issue, a major focus of Web marketing is to bring people to your site. A reader asked me last week for tips on building followers for websites, so I thought I’d post here about some of the most common methods I use to drive traffic for myself and my clients. With the right strategies, you can use these techniques to grow your followers exponentially.
Add Dynamic Content Frequently
People have no reason to return to your website if you don’t add content periodically. Static websites provide information, but they don’t give a reader a reason to keep returning. Therefore, you might lose out on potential clients when readers have forgotten about your website weeks or months after viewing it. By adding dynamic content to your website frequently, you give readers a reason to come back. If readers come back, they’re more likely to think of your website, and utilize your product or services when they need it. Adding dynamic content regularly also enables you to broaden the keyword search terms by which people find your website, thereby expanding your potential audience.
Utilize Social Network Marketing
Social networking is the new buzzword, and it’s here to stay. Savvy companies are beginning to realize that they can leverage social media to spread word about their services or products, and to elicit responses and discussion from customers. This provides companies with an opportunity to reach consumers directly, and to respond to feedback, positive comments and negative criticism. Utilizing social networking enables you to grow your customer base organically through word of mouth and viral marketing with a minimum of effort, and simultaneously gives you an opportunity to influence how clients perceive your company.
Create Guest Blogging Opportunities
One valuable tool that can help you build followers for your website is guest blogging. Guest blogging has a few variations, but the most common technique for guest blogging is to invite someone to write an entry on your blog, and/or offer to write an entry for their blog. In this way, you reach out to the other blogger’s audience by showing them your content and a link to your website, and vice versa. If you trade guest blogging opportunities with a popular blogger, you can grow your audience by hundreds or thousands of people with one well-written post.
Exchange Links with Related Blogs
You can practice a similar strategy to grow your readership in conjunction with guest blogging, or independently: initiate a link exchange with related blogs. This is important: look for related blogs to trade links. By exchanging links with related blogs, you ensure that you have something to offer readers, and you gain a qualified audience that is interested in what you have to say. If you trade links with unrelated blogs, you won’t necessarily have anything to offer readers and your chances to increase conversion are low.
When it comes to establishing related blogs, look for blogs whose readers might be interested in your product or services, but aren’t directly competing. For example, if you have a personal injury law firm, you might want to exchange links with a motorcycle website. Motorcyclists might need your services, and you can provide them with important information about motorcycle injury statistics and how to deal with a motorcycle injury case. You wouldn’t want to exchange links with another personal injury attorney, because there is little value in reaching out to your competitor’s audience via your competitor’s page. (It’s much more useful to reach out to your competitor’s audience in other ways, where you can subtly establish why readers should choose you over competitors.)
Post to Article Directories
Finally, if you want to reach out to a wider audience and build followers for your website, consider reaching out to an audience via a large, well-established website. Article directories are a great way to reach potential clients who wouldn’t find you otherwise. When you post to an article directory, you gain the additional leverage of their weighty SEO. You can then post a resource box with a link back to your website, which is especially effective if you create a call to action in your article.
At the very least, posting to article directories gives you a chance to establish your expertise. At best, someone who is interested in your products or services can learn about what you have to offer and reach out to you directly through your website.
