The Essential Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Site in 2021

Whether you’re just starting with your website or managing an already well-established one, the challenge to increase traffic to your site is relentless. You will find yourself constantly on the lookout for new strategies and sources of traffic, as well as continually evaluating your existing practices for improvement.

Going further into 2021, we can only expect to see new developments and trends in the digital space— different kinds of shareable content, changing algorithms for search engines, and SEO hacks, among others. It’s vital to keep abreast of all these techniques and figure out what works for you to drive meaningful traffic to your site. 

Why is traffic so important?

Website traffic, which tells you how many visitors your site receives, translates to opportunities to establish and grow awareness about your brand, build relationships with potential customers, and—if targeted enough—generate lead conversion. You might think that more traffic = more leads, but it’s not always that simple. Your site should aim for quality traffic. While organic traffic is a high priority, diversification through multiple channels can also attract quality traffic. At the same time, you want to make sure that the methods you employ don’t negatively impact each other.

Here, we list a few tips that might help you achieve this.

Boost your visibility

Visibility should be your website’s most basic goal—it’s the best way to catch potential consumers who are actively looking for information or shopping for products and services. You can start with an efficient SEO strategy. With the right SEO tools, you’ll be able to improve your site’s search ranking and direct more search traffic to your site. We’ll discuss this and more SEO tips below.

Apart from rankings, visibility also means building and maintaining a robust online presence. There are many ways to do this, from successful social media campaigns to paid advertising. Then, there’s the website itself. A website that is user-friendly, easily navigable and fast may be your best asset. Quality user experience design can contribute to your business’s credibility, improve the user journey, and eventually lead to customer satisfaction.

Create and promote impactful content

Content marketing is indeed a powerful tool for websites to leverage. With the amount of content getting produced and published online, your site will inevitably perform better with fresh content that stands out and brings value. These days, content marketing goes far beyond creating relevant, keyword-stuffed posts targeting buyer personas and answering their questions.

An informed strategy identifies types of content that do well, such as educational content. You can also try relevant hacks, like re-purposing your content assets, to keep them from becoming stale. Then, there’s the second half of your strategy—content promotion. Influencer marketing relies on promotion from key industry figures. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 90% of the respondents believe it to be a highly effective marketing technique.

Prioritize keyword research

Keyword research is an essential step when it comes to driving traffic to your site. According to Ahrefs, a typical mistake site owners tend to make is creating content that no one is searching for. Exhaustive keyword research involves having expert knowledge of your niche, learning about competitor strategies, and using keyword research tools.

Pay attention to intent

Being attuned to user or search intent helps inform a more specific strategy. It will allow you to develop more intent-based content that leads to organic traffic and, hopefully, conversions. While context is always important when doing your keyword research, you can rely on search result pages or conducting surveys to determine what your users are looking for. Look into long-tail keywords that are unique and specific.

Diversify your channels

Marketing across multiple channels reduces your dependency on a single traffic source. With the wide range of platforms available to users nowadays, you’ll be freer to experiment on different content to put out.

Beyond social media, you can explore sites like Pinterest or Snapchat. A particular form of advertising that has been growing is podcasting. Creative and engaging audio content can help you reach your target audience and promote your site. It’s a cost-effective option that might surprise you.

Collaborate

While this strategy may not be new at all, it is always relevant. Connecting with other bloggers is an effective way to drive traffic to your site. Make sure to target bloggers and content within the same niche and industry. Remember that this is a two-way deal—prospects are more likely to respond to your outreach if they believe the connection will also bring them value.

Build quality backlinks

Quality backlinks not only bring more traffic to your site, but they also build your credibility. The more links your site receives, the more search engines view it as trustworthy. High-authority blogs or websites linking back to your site improves its ranking and drives referral traffic or traffic from links from other websites.

Essentially, quantity and quality should both be taken into consideration when it comes to backlinks. Backlinks should be genuine and relevant to both the referrer and referral.

Don’t forget email

Lastly, there’s email marketing—which remains to be among the most effective marketing forms. Leveraging email marketing to drive traffic to your site involves establishing genuine connections with your potential customers. These aren’t just addresses on a list—every email you send out is an invitation to touch base. The key is to aim for a seamless experience. Be direct and provide incentives (such as a piece of helpful content) so customers would respond to your outreach.

The Takeaway

In 2021, as the world grows increasingly online, there are more opportunities than ever to direct traffic to your site. The challenge is to find ways to forge valuable connections continually—whether it takes updating your strategies or going back to basics—that will help you stand out amid the noise.