How to Increase Your Website Traffic by 55%
The primary goal of any website is to generate traffic. Without visitors to your website, there is no way to get potential customers to learn about your product or service online. With so much attention that is paid to SEO (search engine optimization) and social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, you may have overlooked the one piece of the puzzle that can make the biggest difference of all. A blog.
A survey conducted by HubSpot shows that businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than those that do not have a blog. Wow! The results of this study makes one thing clear, businesses that blog are likely to have far better marketing results online than businesses that don’t.
A blog serves as an online marketing tool that allows you to easily create content that appears on your website. If you’ve ever used a social media tool like Facebook in your personal life, then you can more easily understand a blog. That’s because Facebook has an easy-to-use online interface that allows you to add “posts” that will instantly appear on the web (with your most recent posts always at the top of the page). A blog works the same way.
The most popular blogging program for small business owners is free. It is called, WordPress. In fact, WordPress can be a part of your website as a stand-alone blogging application or can be utilized as an all-in-one solution that combines your website and blog into a single user-friendly content management system.
The biggest question I’m asked by small business owners that want to get started with a blog is, “what should I blog about?” Here are my top recommendations:
Tips that are relevant to your business/industry that will be helpful or of interest to customers and prospects:
A blog doesn’t have to be long. For instance, this blog post is 600 words. That’s just the right bite size for how long you’re likely to hold someone’s attention online. Don’t have 500 words in you? No problem. Your blog post can be a paragraph or two. Just remember the key is to provide something of interest to your customers or visitors.
Links to articles you’ve found online that would be helpful or of interest to your customers and prospects:
Once you begin blogging, you start looking at information about your business from not only your own interest, but of what you think would interest your customers. This is a good thing and provides you great content to put on your blog. Have you read an article or blog post online that you think your customers would appreciate? Write an opening paragraph about it and provide a link to the article. It’s that easy.
Company news and information (including your sales and promotions):
Your blog can also be partly “about you.” Feel free to share what’s happening at your business. Just be sure that no more than 30% of your blog posts are about you. Make the rest more helpful information for your visitors.
Frequently asked questions about your business or industry:
Write down 10 questions you’re most frequently asked by current or potential customers. Your answers will easily provide 10 great blog posts.
Having a website is just a piece of the puzzle toward creating an online presence that will generate more interest in your company. Once you begin incorporating more Internet marketing tools like a blog, your traffic will begin to rise, and so will your bottom line.
