1) SET UP YOUR REPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE

Kids don’t learn to swim without floaties. So why would anyone launch a website without quality control measures in place? Before anything else, you have to set up your reporting infrastructure.

Setting up the reporting backend helps you determine potential problems, but it also allows you to track your marketing goals. We love using Google’s Data Studio, which helps you track important metrics in dashboards that visualize the information for easy digestibility.

That set up takes a bit of time. Make sure you know what goals to track from the beginning, including key performance indicators like:

• Decrease website bounce rate
• Increase website load speed
• Increase total traffic by X%
• Increase traffic sources by X%
• and more.

Once you know your core website performance goals, you can set up a suite like Data Studio to track them on an ongoing basis.

2) BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Next, start thinking about your sources. The most obvious match there is social media; it accounts for about 4% of total web traffic, and you can control it instantly. If you don’t already have a well-oiled social media machine, now is the time to start building it.

That starts with selecting the right network. Match up the average demographics of top networkswith your ideal customers, and choose the best overlap(s). Then, build a strategy tailored to that network.

Speaking to business buying agents on LinkedIn, for instance, will be very different from reaching young adults on Instagram. Build an active presence with regular posts that don’t just promote your website, but subtly build that promotion into content that provides actual relevance to your audience.

As you build your own presence, you can also branch out. Find a social media influencer within your target audience and work with them directly to spread the word, brand recognition, and your website among their followers.

Engage with a social media influencer to help spread brand recognition to their followers.

3) OPTIMIZE YOUR TECHNICAL BACKEND

Traffic only matters if your website can actually stand up to it. While you begin to build awareness on social media make sure that your technical backend will hold up as that traffic increases. That includes:

• Keeping your website loading speed at 3 seconds or less, even on mobile devices. Test it regularly with a site like webpagetest.org.
• Monitoring and removing 404 errors, using an application like Screaming Frog.
• Making sure your website is not just mobile-friendly, but optimized for every device and screen size. Google can help.
• Using an SEO audit tool like Alexa to make sure you avoid any search engine optimization issues.

Some of these steps are natural. Others will take more time to fix. All of them are absolutely vital in making sure that you rank well on search engines, and your audience actually enjoys their experience on your website.

4) PERFORM A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Don’t be afraid to look beyond what’s right in front of you. Yes, building your own traffic sources matters. But why not put some external context behind it?

That means performing a competitive analysis. Identify businesses closest to you, not just in terms of the product or services but also in the type of audience they tend to attract. Then, find their online presence, and begin your sleuthing.

Tools like SEMRush and Moz are invaluable for this type of analysis. To get their full value, make sure you don’t just scratch the surface.

Instead, dive in deep to actually analyze the report details including their exact traffic sources, keywords used, and more. That way, you don’t just duplicate their efforts, but draw unique insights that help you stay one step ahead of them and crush your competition.

5) BUILD YOUR BACKLINK STRATEGY

Link building is a delicate balance. You can’t just spam your website link everywhere and hope to get clicks. In fact, doing that actually crushes your rankings on search engines. Put simply, Google sees through the crap of unethical SEO practices.

To avoid that problem, you can take more strategic steps to make sure that your backlink strategy actively increases your web traffic. Some options include:

• Exploring your backlink opportunities with a SEO-optimized tool like ahrefs.
• Analyze your competition’s backlinks, and draw your own conclusions on where to target your efforts.
• Find external opportunities to publish relevant and valuable content where you can include a link back to your website.
• Regularly disavow bad backlinks to avoid inadvertent ranking penalties.

You can start on an even simpler level. Perform Google searches for your company and set up Google alerts for any media mentions. Then, reach out to anyone who mentions your business but doesn’t actually link to you to get that backlink.

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6) START BLOGGING TODAY

You might have heard about the importance of business blogging. Almost half of B2B marketersactually consider it to be the single most important marketing tool, and consumer-based companies are not far behind. You need to find the right keywords. Then, you need to publish content your audience actually wants to read. Now, you have a reliable traffic generator on your hand.

At the same time, blogging is also a long-term strategy. Generally speaking, content marketing doesn’t start activating for at least six months. And that’s only if you publish regularly, at least four times per month.

The lesson is clear: start blogging as soon as you have the opportunity to do so. Build a strategy that accounts for the typical questions your target audience may have about your product category or industry. Then, promote that content on your owned channels, especially email and social media. If the blog posts are valuable and relevant enough, the traffic will come.

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7) ENGAGE IN VIDEO MARKETING

Never ever underestimate the power of video marketing, even (and especially) when it comes to traffic generation. Did you know that YouTube is actually the second largest search engine in the world? Together, we watch more than 1 billion hours of videos on the site every single day.

If you post the right videos, you will get your share of those views. And if you are just strategic enough, those views can turn into valuable web traffic. Here’s how you do that:

• Look for video topics the same way you look for blog topics: answer customer questions and pain points, at every level of the sales funnel.
• Create real-life and animated videos designed to draw in your audience from the first moment until the last second.
• Optimize your videos for search results, using items like tagging, headlines, and descriptions strategically.
• Leverage your description and in-video text boxes for relevant links to your website.

9) ANSWER QUESTIONS ON QUORA

You might have heard of Quora. At the very least, you’ve seen it in Google search results. The popular website gets more than 300 million monthly unique visitors, thanks in large part to its straightforward Q&A mechanism.

It’s almost too simple: someone asks a question on almost any imaginable topic, and anyone with an account submits an answer. Users then vote for the most relevant answer, which immediately gets immense viewership. If you happen to have that answer, and the question is popular, traffic to your website is almost guaranteed. The process consists of steps like these:

• Sign up and complete your Quora profile in a way that makes you seem like the thought and industry leader you are.
• Find relevant questions in your area of interest, product category, and industry.
• Write an answer like you would a blog post, except with a personal touch that makes it seem like you’re not just promoting your company.
• Include visuals, especially images, which make your answer stand out to potential readers.
• Stop at a strategic spot. Provide some value in your answer, but reserve the best parts for your blog and website. Then, link to it.

Then, keep going. Perseverance is absolute key. The more high-volume questions you answer, the more upvotes you’ll get, and the more those votes translate into views and web traffic.

10) DEVELOP YOUR ADVERTISING PLAN

Many of the above initiatives require little more than planning, some expertise, and a lot of time. That doesn’t mean you can’t spend money to increase your web traffic. In fact, it should be one of your major marketing budget items. After all, more than 2/3 (68%) of all web traffic comes from digital ads.

In other words, you have to develop a comprehensive advertising campaign. Start with a Google search campaign, exploring keywords that are relevant to your audience and will generate enough traffic in the Keyword Planner tool. Then, start spreading your net. Fish in as many ponds as possible.

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and a variety of other platforms offer comprehensive advertising solutions that you should at least explore. Target ads specifically to your audience, drawing on their interests, demographics, pain points, and behaviors. Start spending small amounts on a large amount of channels. Measure your efforts to understand what works, focus your budget there, and optimize your messaging over time.

Building a comprehensive, multi-channel advertising campaign like this can be complex. Develop a marketing campaigns calendar that gives you an overview of what ads are running where and when. A project management app like Asana can also help you track your efforts in building, measuring, and adjusting these campaigns on an ongoing basis.

BONUS: A LIGHTNING ROUND OF 6 QUICK TRAFFIC GENERATORS

Through the above tips, you can build a sustainable strategy that actually gets traffic to your website. But all of them take time, and some of them will require budget. So why not supplement these tactics with some quick hitters that further build your traffic generation? Consider:

1. Tapping into friends and family. Let them know you have a website, and ask them to share it. You can create an email list in a tool like MailChimp, sending regular personalized messages that ask them to promote your new site via social and word of mouth.
2. Leveraging your current customers. They already know you, so they’ll be much more likely to share your website. Let them know it’s launched, and what they can expect. Bonus points if you can build a referral program that drives consistent traffic through current customers.
3. Adding your website to your email signature. If you are like most of us and send countless emails every day, use that to your advantage. Simply add your website to your email signature. This HubSpot tool helps you build a professional signature that you can paste right into your messages.
4. Monitoring social conversations. Don’t just rely on your own content. Monitor networks like Reddit and Twitter for relevant keywords and hashtags, and join the conversation where appropriate.
5. Joining the right Slack groups. Slack has quickly become one of the largest messaging platforms online, thanks to more than 8 million daily active users. The casualness of this platform makes it an ideal fit. Find public communities in your industry, and join the conversation.
6. Claiming Your Google My Business Page. When customers Google your business, what do they see? Claiming your Google My Business listing can help you control the answer. Strategic links, news posts, and events don’t just increase awareness but also redirect traffic from the search results page to your site.