Business owners know that just having a website isn’t good enough. If no one is going to your website, you might as well not have one. You need to drive traffic to your website. Business owners have a number of avenues they can try to increase the number of visitors to their website. But, beware. Not everything you try will work and not everything that you try that works will be allowed by Google. The search engine does penalize website owners. Here are some tricks to get traffic without getting penalized by the giant search engine.

#1. Advertise

It is as old as products themselves. In the Middle Ages, town criers would get people to buy tonics and elixirs by standing in the center of the village and advertising their wares through words or songs. Several hundred years later, the printing press allowed for printed advertisements. Check old newspapers, you will be able to see so many advertisements. Today, digital advertising is the way to go. Advertise on social media, on Google, on news sites and more. You also can do display ads on digital outlets. Each method to advertise online has it advantages and disadvantages. Do your research before beginning a campaign.

#2. Use Social Networks

Make sure you promote your website through your social media networks. First, be sure to fill out the profile correctly and completely. Second, post a link to your blog on your website on your social media sites. Give people reasons to go to your website, such as new promotion, new blog, new content, etc., and post on your sites. Engage with potential customers on social media. Hold contests and get people to sign up for future promotions.

#3. Try Different Strategies

Don’t believe everything everyone will tell you about your content. Vary content length, format and topics to appeal to the most readers in your target market. Some blogs will appeal to some people while others will bring in different clients. Keep trying different marketing strategies periodically.

#4. Use Strong Headlines

Most people fail to understand the power of the headline. Readers will read a headline and nothing else. If you have weak headlines, they will move onto another blog on another website. If you use strong, engaging and tantalizing headlines, you will have more people reading your words than other business owners. Without a strong headline, even the best blog will not be opened and read. This means they won’t be visiting your website.

#5. Know Your SEO

Business owners usually hire search engine optimization experts, but it is good to know what they are doing. Know what SEO is on your page and whether it is working. Ask your SEO expert for regular reports. Optimizing your content for the search engines is still a valuable skill. Check your meta tags, your usage of keywords and relevancy of content. It shouldn’t take you long, especially if you hire an expert, to make sure your page is optimized.

#6. Target Long-Tail Keywords

Because people want to get information as quickly as possible, they are being more specific these days. For example, they might ask for a restaurant on 34th Street in St. Petersburg selling tacos. This phrase is long but specific. It would return a few choices instead of thousands. You want your product or service to be found in a similar situation. After you have covered the short keywords, go after these long phrases so more people see your website over your competition.

#7. Try Guest Blogging

Although most experts will tell you that guest blogging is a good way to increase your online presence and drive traffic to your site, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Simply put, you write a blog that is submitted to publications and they post your blog with your website link in it. However, editors are picky. They get thousands of requests and won’t post everyone. You shouldn’t let go this option to drive people to your website, just know that you might not be successful due to factors not in your control.

#8. Allow Guest Blogging

Ask people to write blogs on your site. They would post their link on their social media and to their circle of influence. This would drive additional people to your website, which also might drive sales. However, make sure you are clear on the guest blogging guidelines and they are targeting your audience instead of theirs.

#9. Post on LinkedIn

Although we covered social media networks, LinkedIn is special because you can generate content directly on the site beyond a post. You can write an article and post it there and share it. You can create a page and post your article to your page. You also can post your article in LinkedIn groups. You can put a link to the blog on your website and a link to the article you write on LinkedIn, so you market yourself twice.

This article is contributed by Usman Raza, co-founder of Christian Marketing Experts, and marketing specialist at Los Angeles Digital Agency.

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