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So, your website is all up and running. And it’s pretty good, even if you do say so yourself. But where is everyone?
Why aren’t you suddenly seeing hundreds of visitors flocking to your site and hopping around from page to page?
Well, unfortunately for every website owner out there, this isn’t simply a case of ‘build it and they will come’. You need to drive them there.
But how do you do it?
That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s not always clear what you’re supposed to do. And it can leave you feeling directionless. It can even get to the point where you’re so lost that you can lose focus on your core business goals, and struggle to build the organisation you’re dreaming of.
At Lumin, we don’t want that to happen.
The good news is that there are loads of ways to start pulling potential customers towards your website. Our advice is to start with the #1 contributor to increased site traffic: blogging.
The power of great content
The reason why blogging is so important in terms of traffic is because it works in two ways:
1. Blogs provide a very simple way to keep adding new content to your site.
And to Google, that matters. Google’s ranking algorithm is complex – and somewhat secretive – but what we do know is that it likes content that’s fresh.
It’s been reported that Google ‘favours recently published or updated content’, rewarding pages with a higher rank and greater visibility. And as we all know, links closer to the top of the results pages have higher clickthrough rates.
This is tightly coupled with the first article we published on getting more website traffic using SEO.
2. Blogs keep previous visitors coming back.
Imagine you never add new content to your website; you just keep it exactly the same. Why would anyone come back after they’ve already listened to everything you have to say?
When you’ve always got something new to share, you’re giving visitors a reason to return. And the more they interact with your website, the more they’re connecting with your brand… and the more likely they are to take action.
They don’t say ‘Content is King’ for nothing!
Avoiding common pitfalls
So content can be massively effective at increasing traffic. But it’s also one of those things that can be really easy to get wrong. Over the years, we’ve seen businesses make what appear on the surface to be smart moves, but have turned out to have the opposite effect to what they wanted.
Here’s what we’ve learned about content marketing:
Plan around topics, not keywords
Keywords are hugely important when it comes to content marketing & traffic. When Google sees that its users are searching for this keyword, and that keyword also features in your content, it’s easy to match your site with those looking for it.
But planning content around keywords can limit your reach. Imagine you sell tomato seeds. Focusing on ‘buy tomato seeds’ eliminates a whole group of potential buyers who want to know when to plant the seeds, or how to harvest.
Plan around broader topics, and your keywords will naturally fall into them.
You don’t always have to be different
We can’t tell you how many times businesses have told us they struggle to blog because they can’t come up with anything unique to talk about; that everything’s already been done. Why should that matter?
Even if a topic has been covered a million times before, blogging about it yourself is a way to (a) improve your SEO for Google visibility, and (b) share your own opinions and expertise about a particular subject.
Your perspective is great and unique; let people see that and they’ll connect with you. And if you really do want to be ‘out there’, you can cover well-discussed topics in a different way: infographics, tutorials, videos etc.
Just show up
If you wait around for the ‘perfect’ topic, or ‘perfect’ time to publish, you’ll never get anything out there. The truth is that there’s never a perfect time. And that’s OK. If you want people to start listening, you have to start talking.
It’s far, far less important to show up with an ideal article than it is to simply show up. When you’re publishing new stuff regularly – even if it’s not groundbreaking – you’re giving your audience something to keep coming back for.
Plus, Google will be happy you’re posting regularly, and may give you a bit of a boost.
It all sounds like a lot of hard work…
Let’s be 100% honest. It can be a bit of an effort. Especially as you’ll need to ensure you’re publishing new content regularly to meet Google’s ‘recency criteria’ for SERPs ranking. Of course, the results are worth it.
But embracing content usually means you’ll need to do one of two things:
- add more work to your already massive pile
- or hire a dedicated content team.
For smaller businesses in particular, neither is a particularly attractive or viable option.
In this instance, what we suggest is working with content experts who can handle it all for you. If you’re on one of our growth & support plans, it’s really easy to add content writing services onto the package, giving you the benefits of regular, fresh, unique content, without the burden.
Get in touch to find out more.
This is part of a series of articles all about bringing more traffic to your website. After all, what’s the point of having an engaging, exciting and effective website if there are no eyes on it?
You can find the other articles in this series, but also sign up to our mailing list, The Lumin Letter, to get alerted about when the next article drops so you can start getting more leads through your website. In each letter, you also get 1 strategic insight, 1 quick website tip and 1 bit of visual website inspiration.
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