Want to learn how to drive traffic to a new website, gain new customers and beat competition? Fasten your seat belt! It is possible, but it takes work.
Did you know that every day more than 5 million WordPress websites (mostly blogs) see the light of day? (Source: Worldometers)
More and more people like us dream of a new lifestyle, a different pace and of course more money. So, for someone that is building a new site today, it is very difficult to break into and generate enough traffic on their website to make the investment worth the effort.
In this article, I’ll share with you 7 easy-to-implement tips to make sure you’re driving traffic to your new site as quickly as possible.
I am an entrepreneur and for almost 2 years now and thanks to these techniques, I have been able to quit my job and dedicate myself to my company.
Here are the tips to help you do the same.
1. Learn from others
Read, watch YouTube videos! The helpful information that can be is inexhaustible.
Many have been thru this and listening to what they have to say allows you to avoid many pitfalls and take certain shortcuts. The information is there, you might as well benefit from it.
However, in the overabundance of information, one can read everything and its opposite. Read, study, ask yourself questions, but also go instinctively. Trust yourself.
It’s important to know the rules, tips, etc., but it’s just as important to have your own style.
Personally, I have learned a lot from Will Coombe as well as from Neil Patel. These 2 experts are speaking to beginners and share a ton of tips and practical tools.
2. Have a strategy
In fact, first of all it starts with a vision. It doesn’t have to be perfectly detailed, because let’s be honest, a business isn’t just a destination. A business is a journey that begins as soon as you take the first action. It must be flexible and malleable according to lived experiences, the demands encountered, the strengths that we discover, etc.
I’ve read a few books recently on the “psycho-pop / entrepreneurial motivation” style which state that in order to make something happen, we must imagine it and feel it in a degree of detail bordering on reality. It’s all well and good, but for me it’s more of a drag than anything else.
Still, to drive traffic to a new website, it’s much easier to start with a vision and a plan. I find it very useful to break down this plan in stages. In this way, we clarify our goals and the path to get there.
With this simple guide in hand and in mind, our actions are more focused and this can also encourage us to continue our efforts by meeting small victories along the way.
3. Don’t invest too much in social media
What? Yes I said that! To clarify, I’m talking more specifically about not investing too much of your time in order to get more organic traffic. That is especially thru at the beginning.
It is important to build social media pages and post content frequently. However, the usefulness of this job isn’t to get a ton of followers and likes. The goal is to be able to create links between these pages and our site. Having active pages on social media sends a positive signal to Google.
So the ideal is to post frequently on multiple social media pages, without investing all of our time in it. In the beginning, there is no added value for your business to go into incredible designing or researching hashtags for hours.
My advice is to kill two birds with one stone and use the content on your site, more specifically your blog, to post to your social media. More on this in point 6.
4. Start with the local market
This is not a hard and fast rule here. I am sharing with you what has worked for me and many others.
Starting local allows you to get results early. The web and the infinite audience it reaches is at first, only a beautiful promise. It actually takes months before you can carve out a place in the competition, stand out in potential customer searches, and drive traffic to a new website.
Don’t snub the local market. You probably need it, at least in the beginning. Print beautiful posters and business cards, and go spread the word around local businesses, friends and family.
This approach has in my opinion only benefits. It will bring visibility to your new site, money, contacts, a portfolio to display on your site and very importantly, it will bring you reviews.
Just as Google likes to see activity on your site and social media pages, Google likes you to have “reviews.” It legitimizes your business in it’s eyes.
Small parenthesis; Why do we want to please Google? Because the vast majority of searches that potential customers do on the internet start on Google. If Google likes your site, it will appear higher in Internet searches. And that…we like!
5. Bet on SEO
SEO = Search Engine Optimization. Still not clear? SEO is simply a strategy to make your site stand out in web searches.
A website that forgets about this aspect is unlikely to attract customers. Who is looking at the twentieth page of Google?
Having a good SEO strategy is therefore essential. That being said, many will make great promises of instant or near-instant results that they won’t be able to keep. Let’s be honest on 2 points::
It will take you months to actually see results (say around 6).
It will take about 6 months if and only if you work on your site, blog and social media pages consistently.
An agency like ours can help you by targeting your market and precisely what they are looking for. This includes an approach strategy, extensive keyword research, tips and tricks to continue these efforts on your own and include SEO in all of your posts.
However, this is a long-term effort. An effort that certainly pays off, but not immediately. To drive traffic to a new website is difficult. This is why I advise you to target in parallel on the local market.
You can do it entirely yourself
Between you and me, you don’t have to be a genius to do SEO. There is a plethora of YouTube tutorials, books, and WordPress plugins to help you out.
Doing business with an agency allows you to focus on other important aspects of your company. SEO experts also have access to paid tools that can take SEO strategy a little further. In addition, an agency like ours is aware of the latest trends and takes care to neglect nothing (large checklist to support it).
That being said, if you’re interested in SEO and feel up to it. Go ahead!
You think you need a little help, explore our affordable SEO services.
6. Include a blog page in your new website
Including a blog is one of the best practices to adopt. Will your articles be tweeted thousands of times? Surely not! Certainly not at first!
A blog allows you to create visibility, movement on your site and links between your different pages and social media pages. All are important things for SEO (and therefore for Google). This is how the traffic to a new website and the audience gradually grows.
Stats of Interest: The return on investment (ROI) for businesses that blog regularly is 13 times higher compared to those that don’t. (Source: Optinmonster)
Writing posts also allows for deep reflection and research about what your potential clients want to know and see. What interests your audience. What you can I bring them.
These essential questions can be used for your site and your entire organization. The feedback that will result from the exchanges and comments related to the publications can lead you to adjust your approach and even your services.
Writing good articles will encourage you to learn more about the topics covered. You will be in continuous learning mode and you will remain at the cutting edge of developments in your field. Win-Win!
7. Take action!
You’ve read, you have strategized, you’ve done some kind of market research, you’re ready to go. Motivational books have boosted your morale. You can already see yourself buying your big house and spending all your winters with your feet on the sand.
Well…le’ts do it!
This is in my opinion one of the most difficult phases; Take action. It is at this stage that the “strategic plan” is important. We break down the things to do into stages, we give ourselves a deadline for each one.
You shouldn’t be put off by the sheer quantity of things to do. Just go task by task.
Let’s be real! This step is difficult for several reasons. Here are a few :
- It is more fun to dream than to work
- The tasks to be done are for many rather boring and / or repetitive (especially in the beginnings)
- We realizes the size of the workload. Big house, you will have to wait!
- We encounter several barriers to entry and technical problem that make us waste days (ex: I cannot associate my domain name with my site, the prices are higher than expected, the competition is incredible, etc.)
Hang in there. Perseverance pays off!
My tips for surviving the first few months are:
- Do not work until the sun rise. Don’t waste all your energy and motivation in the first few weeks. You won’t see the fruits of your efforts for a long time. So give yourself time to get off the hook and live your life.
- Bet on the local market and your contacts. You will land small contracts and that will help keep you motivated as well as give you practice and reviews.
- Every now and then indulge yourself with a book for new entrepreneurs. These books are always written with a motivational tone and can give another perspective.
For Perfectionists Out There: When you’re feeling 75% ready, it’s time to take the plunge. The rest will adjust and be specified along the way. You have to be prepared to live with a certain degree of uncertainty when building a company.
These are the tips that I have personally used to propel my business and keep my motivation from start to finish. Which of these points do you have or do you plan to use?