Has your website traffic hit a plateau?
Let me tell you the story of how websites are built.
You get all excited, you burst out of the starting blocks because finally you have decided to build a new website! Your team buys into the project, everyone is pitching in to get this project live. You are so happy, relieved that it goes live. You tell everyone about it – ‘go take a look at it’. It’s new! It’s sparkling! It’s marketing your business!
Normally at this point you check your website stats and you see a good progression of increased visitors! Its great news!
But as the first visitors to the site leave and the developers stop testing it, you notice your website hits a stage I call, Buy Out.
Six weeks pass and nothing has changed on the website. The news section is now not news at all, it’s old content. People start buying out of the project and the website loses its shine because you start to realise that you need to maintain it and send new people to it.
Essentially, people start buying out of the project. The website is tiring, it’s boring and no one wants to be involved anymore. Now it’s not marketing your business and you have a website traffic problem.
Above is what you want to see with your website traffic. Movement, up or down – preferably up is best. The reason why movement in your traffic is so important is because it is a sign that there is activity. The website is doing something.
1. Write new content – Add some new content about some recent news, a review of a latest trend or even review the content and add to some of your services pages. This will give Google some new content food to eat and hopefully give you another chance to get more traffic.
2. Start search engine marketing – Get yourself on Google and run a little test of Google AdWords. (There’s a free guide at www.StartSearchMarketing.com.au) If you want to take it to another level hire a search engine marketer and do an audit of your website.
3. Send an email – Sending an email to your database with links back to new content on your website will get you instant traffic. People in your database already know who you are and have already shown interest in what you have to offer. Give them another reason to come back and you will see an increase in traffic.
4. Audit where you promote your website – make sure your website address is listed at every promotional opportunity such as :
5. Bonus Tip! – Swap databases with a partner and promote your content in their newsletter. If you are a florist partner with a wedding planning company, for example, you could include a little snippet promoting your article on “How to choose the perfect wedding flowers for your wedding?”
Fred Schebesta’s company Freestyle Media is an established innovative online marketing agency specialising in building search engine friendly corporate websites and running online marketing campaigns.
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If you need some more help putting together your online traffic plan you might be interested in our up coming workshop “Online Traffic Power”. Explode your websites traffic with this quick three hour workshop and get hands on advice from the expert. Hurry only five places remaining!
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