Small Business Websites
How To Drive Traffic To A Small Business Website
Written by Trynka Shineman for Gaebler Ventures
You built a great website but don't have site visitors? It's time to start thinking about some of these proven techniques for driving traffic to a small business website.
A great website design means nothing if nobody ever visits your website.
Once you've created a great small business website, you can't rest on your laurels.
After the site goes live and for years to come, your constant focus has to be increasing traffic to the site.
How to Drive Traffic to a Small Business Site
As discussed above, just having a site nowadays isn't enough. You need to embrace your site as a way to generate business and acquire customers.
This is done by driving traffic to your site, which will get your business brand, services, and personality out there.
But how do you actually drive people to your site? For starters, putting the site's address on everything you use to network, like business cards, is important and can be done immediately.
But there is also an opportunity to try your hand at direct marketing. You can announce your Web site with a postcard marketing mailing that offers your customers a special discount when they visit your site - which will encourage response and boost your visibility.
There is also search engine marketing techniques that you can embrace to help drive traffic to your site. You want to show up in search queries, especially locally if you are a local business.
There are a number of options you can embrace, including paid search ads, or organic search methods, which will hopefully increase your search ranking on sites like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.
Every major search engine has tools and guides to how to boost your search capabilities. You can even track success and learn how to effectively modify your SEO efforts.
Essentially, your small business has a unique opportunity to connect with customers that are seeking out your product and marketing message online, rather than ignoring it.
In the ever-growing web landscape, small businesses have to work harder than ever before to be competitive and visible. If your business isn't on the information superhighway, it might never get noticed at all.
So, start working on a website traffic building initiative today. Measure where you are at now and track the growth in traffic over time.
If site traffic growth slows down, it's time to consider using some other site traffic tactics. Good luck!
Trynka Shineman is chief marketing officer of VistaPrint, the small business marketing company. VistaPrint (www.vistaprint.com) is a leading online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers.
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