Owning a website is one thing, but getting website traffic is something else. Check out our handy tips to get a lot of new visitors and how to build your brand faster online! Via the menu below you can easily jump into the topics that appeal to you the most.

On-website

1. SEO, your new bestie!

Search engines need to become your best friend, so make your content easier to read for Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. Here is a small summary of the things that we as a Bold team think are the most important:

The abbreviation of SEO is “Search Engine Optimization“, which basically means that you’ll try to optimize your website by using techniques, content and authority to become more visible in Google. SEO is something you can do yourself, completely free of charge, but it takes practice to master this skill!

Long-tail keywords

It often happens that the keyword that matters to your website is already covered by your competition. In that case, long-tail keywords will definitely be something you’ll need to explore. To create long-tail keywords, you  can type in a certain word and Google will already come up with a list of suggestions that might be relevant to you. For example, “marketing” is extremely generic and many people are using it. But a slightly longer keyword like “marketing automation” or “digital marketing” is already a lot more specific.

Internal & external linking

In order for your website to be viewed as highly credible by Google, it’s important to show authority, i.e. you know your own topic. A great way to gain authority in Google is through internal (you link to URLs to relevant content posts you published on your own website) and external linking (you link to URLs to relevant content posts of other people/websites).

LSI keywords

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are related to your target keywords. So, for example say you are writing an article about “cars”, then LSI keywords would be things like “Audi”, “BMW”, “vehicle”, “automobile” and so on. When Google reads your content, it will see you’re writing about cars, not just because there’s the word “car” in it, but because of all the LSI keywords in it too!

How to find LSI keywords? lsigraph.com

For more information about SEO, be sure to check out websites like: WiSEO.

2. Let’s get technical!

Website speed

Your website visitor will decide in the first few seconds whether he/she wants to stay on your website. Which means… if your website takes too long to load, your visitor will leave immediately! Think of your website kind of like a Formula 1: you want to be faster than your competitors and win all the trophies (leads).

Here are a few basics to help you make your website speed better:

• Compress your pictures, CSS, HTML and JavaScript-elements. Make heavy objects easier to load on your website by making them smaller.
• Don’t just compress your pictures, but also optimize them. For example, if your picture is 3000 x 3000 pixels, then resize it first before compressing it.
• Use tools to leverage your browser caching, so when a visitor comes back to your website, the entire website doesn’t need to be reloaded.

Test your website speed with tools like: Pingdom, Google,…

Responsiveness

People will no longer check your website exclusively from their desktop computer. We now have laptops with all kinds of resolutions, different smartphones, tablets,…

It’s perfect if your website looks good on one of these devices, but if it looks bad on all the others… that’s an issue! One of the most important improvement that you’ll have to make, is optimizing your website for a smartphone. Around 50% of websites are now browsed via smartphone, so not making your website responsive to a mobile environment… on your own head be it!

Reduce your bounce-rate

Your bounce-rate is the percentage of people who visit only one page of your website before they leave the site. Ideally, you’d want to make sure that it stays as low as possible, because a high bounce-rate could mean that your content isn’t enticing at all! By offering exciting content, you can improve your bounce rate.

Check out some best practices:

• Improve your content’s readability: easy-to-read paragraphs, clear headlines, bulletpoints… don’t make people search for the information they want to find!
• Compelling CTAs to make your visitors think about clicking that magical button, like your “Buy now” button, for example.
• Pick valuable keywords, meta descriptions… that are relevant to your business. If not, you’ll attract the wrong visitors.
• As I mentioned before, speed up that website. Make your website accelerate like a Bugatti and don’t let your visitor wait for your content to become visible.
• Mobile-friendly website/responsiveness, because it’s not 1999 anymore.
• Show credibility: if your website looks shady AF, then why would anyone stay?

3. Analytics/Search Console

Analyze your website traffic

The easiest way to increase your website traffic is to analyze your own website. If your website doesn’t work at all, there must be a reason for that. Try to find the things that just don’t work for your website. Is the design bad? Is your content boring? Are your CTAs not in the right place? Can people not find your website?

There’s a ton of insightful information to be found on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. For example, what your most popular pages are, how much time people spend on your website, what search terms people type to find your website… take a look and understand your visitors!

Steal your competitor’s traffic

Use tools like SEMrush, aHrefs to search for the keywords that your competitor uses. In doing so, you can view the estimated number of searches for these keywords and the pages that get the traffic. With this information, you can make content for those same keywords, but content that’ll be even better than your competitor’s. With better-ranking content, you can increase your domain authority! Simply check if you’re getting higher than your competitor with a tool like the Moz toolbar.

If your competitor is getting high-quality links, try to reach out to those websites with even better content. Maybe they’ll want to start linking to your website too. You can check those links with a tool like aHrefs.

Use paid promotion: if you use Facebook ads, you can even target your people who like your competitor. It’s a pretty nifty little trick!

Advertising, yeah nothing new right?

I think this one is quite obvious. With paid search (SEA) or social media advertising, you simply pay to get more traffic. It’s a really good way to increase your website traffic, but we know that it can become expensive, especially if you’re not well-informed how it works. So let’s remedy the situation, shall we?

Social Media, #socialaddict

1. Add Enticing Content To Social Media Posts

Simply posting a link, an article or a picture won’t really appeal to people. You need to convince your audience to click or interact with your content. Make it fun by lifting the veil on your content a little bit, but without giving anything away!

“This service is going to change your life!”
“Want to win 4h extra on a day?”

These examples are a bit extreme, but I hope you’re getting an idea of what I mean.. They are really clickable!

2. Share your content on social media

Each platform has its own kind of audience. Find out which platform works best for your audience – test it!

LinkedIn is getting more and more users and has become one of the coolest platforms lately to share ideas and talk about business. If you share interesting content and talk to people related to your business, then people will start clicking on your profile and perhaps check the links to your website. You’re giving them a reason to want to know more about you as person and as a business.

Want to make it even easier to share your content? If people like your (blog-) posts, you can easily persuade them to share it on social media by integrating share buttons on your website. And when they share your content, suddenly your message will reach a wider network of people who might want to click on it too! It’s a great way to be seen as an authoritative website and people who share your content might turn out to be real brand ambassadors.

3. Podcasts & vlogging

Vlogging is when you film what happens in your life, when you talk about a certain subject, and you basically do it all the time. While it may sound weird, it can be a great way to boost your business! Stay relevant by making business-related vlogs, like showing your visitors what a day in the life of one of your employees looks like. People that we as Be Bold team like to follow: Casey Neistat, Gary Vaynerchuck,…

Another great way to share ideas and knowledge is through podcasts. They’re a safe way to drive traffic to your site, as long as you are consistent about your podcast frequency and you promote your content appropriately. People that we as Be Bold team like to follow: Joe Rogan, Neil Patel,…

Blogging, your life in words

1. Just start blogging!

It can be time consuming and take a lot of effort, but blogging is definitely worth it! Just make sure you talk about subjects that are close to your business/interests. And make your blogs easy to read and amusing, because if people find your articles and enjoy the read, they will me more tempted to stay on that page. And if they like something, chances increase for them to come back later.

Now, of course there’s already millions of blogs online. But don’t be afraid, because you can easily stand out and get noticed. Blogs are such an easy way to share information with people and as you become more experienced at it, you’ll also become a better writer.

Best blogging practices

• Use relevant keywords to improve the SEO of your website
• Use social sharing buttons to increase your reach
• Become a reliable source of information to your audience and/or industry. In doing so, people will get to know you and start trusting you as an authority.
• By being a trustworthy source, potential prospects might find their way into your customer journey through forms or CTAs that can help nurture them into customers.
• Let all of your employees blog, as this will turn your employees into brand ambassadors. Kind of like the Bold Team is doing over here! By letting different people speak about their expertise, passions, interests… your blog will become a source of varied information related to your business. And it gives your team a chance to talk about items they feel are important.

2. Make your headlines sexier!

When it comes to blogging, the first thing that someone will see is your headline. So it’s crucial to capture the attention of people with a catching headline, which will induce people to click on your post. It therefore stands to reason that an original headline will garner much more attention than something generic. Don’t be boring: stand out from the crowd instead! But be sure not to create clickbait, because that will annoy your visitors (especially if your article sucks). It’s important to first appeal to your audience and then provide good value for them to make it worth their while.

Examples:

‘The best way to…’
The common web searches, best used for your SEO

‘Make your life easier with…’ or ‘the easiest way to…’
When people really have a problem, they just want to know the easiest way to fix it.

‘The fastest/quickest way to…’
When people are panicking, they want the fastest solution.

‘What we did when…’
Personal experience, transparency

Make sure that your headline offers insight into what your blogpost is about, use strong keywords, and perhaps A/B test to see which type of headline works best…

3. Guest blogging

If you started a blog and want to get more traffic, then try out guest blogging! Invite a well-known blogger that talks about relevant topics, closely related to your business. People that like that blogger will visit your website specifically for him/her. And it’s just great if some of those visitors remain on your website to take a look around, isn’t it?

4. What about your old blogs?

Improve old blog posts

Already have a lot of old blog posts? Make a newer version of them and use another approach when compiling those posts. By dusting off forgotten tales, you make sure that your best posts aren’t forgotten. Your efforts of bygone days shouldn’t be in vain, so re-use your posts and make some small changes to ensure they’ll attract your audience anew. Try out some of these tactics:

• Upload past webinars to YouTube or convert it to a blogpost
• You can convert blog posts to guides or checklists.
• Made a slideshow? Try to remake it into an infographic.
• Turn your blogposts into a newsletter.
  

Relaunch old blog posts

Another great idea is to completely relaunch your old blog posts, by making it look like they’re new. It’s a great way to make sure your most interesting and most popular posts get some more lovin’ from your audience!

Email Marketing – say NO to spam

Of course, one of the most important ways to gather new leads and something the Bold team preaches on a daily basis is email marketing!

If you want to see other successful cases where we implemented the use of email marketing or marketing automation, then check out this page.

1. Lead generation/nurturing

Generating new leads is crucial to grow your business. Using the inbound method, you bring in leads who are interested in what you have to offer them. By nurturing them next – sometimes even without them noticing – you’ll take them on an entire customer journey where you’ll try to convert them into becoming customers. A great way to generate leads and nurture them is email marketing: it’s pretty much the Gold Medallist of the marketing automation Olympics. Find out why below!

2. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a powerful method to run omni-channel campaigns and boost your marketing ROI. There’s lots of different tools on the market, but you’ll want to look for one that matches your business needs. If you’d like to know more, check out our services page.

Cheers!

That’s it for the basics of increasing your website traffic. You probably noticed that it is a work in progress to increase your website traffic. So no, you can’t increase your traffic in 1, 2, 3! Congratulations for reading this whole article – at least, if you made it to this paragraph. 😉