Bloggers, business owners, and even SEO and web design experts are often stumped when it comes to getting users on-site. Most people don’t have a problem with gaining short bursts of traffic (after all, you can pay for that), but developing sustainable traffic and lead generation strategies is another story.
Whether you’ve just launched a website or are looking to revitalize an existing one, you need a healthy dose of patience. However, don’t confuse patience with inactivity. It’s possible to be both patient and engaged at the same time.
Seven Ways to Generate Long-Term Traffic
If you want to build and maintain a sustainable website, you have to be willing to put forth maximum effort. Successful websites aren’t built overnight. Let’s take a look at some of the top strategies for building long-term sources of quality traffic.
1. Start with your site. Before worrying about traffic, you have to focus on your site. You could drive millions of unique visitors to your site, but your efforts would be futile if the site isn’t properly designed and structured. Work through navigation issues, ensure that the site is as lean as possible so page load times are under two seconds, and aim for a crisp, clean layout. A slow, busy, hard-to-navigate site will render your efforts useless.
2. SEO matters. If you’re running a WordPress site, you should install the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. This plugin helps you to write better content, which in turn pleases the search engines, which allows you to attract more leads. It’s one of the best blogging tools for increasing traffic and revenue.
3. Find long tail keywords. New websites aren’t able to compete for basic keywords. There’s just too much competition out there. Instead, you should focus on long tail keywords. Site-wide use of these keywords will get your content noticed and ranked. An example of a long tail keyword for the standard search term, “Used cars” would be, “Best used cars in Houston, Texas.”
4. Invest in social. It takes a long time to build a valuable social media following, so now is the time to start. Spend at least 30 minutes per day curating and posting content, following people, engaging with users, and joining groups. The best ways to get social users to interact with your website are to be personable, to add fresh content continually, and to solve problems and relevant pain points regularly.
5. Understand your audience. You’ll never be able to attract visitors if you don’t understand them. Work on developing two or three different visitor personas, and craft all content and posts around those personas. This will greatly enhance your interactions and allow you to hit the mark (content-wise) much more than you miss it.
6. Build relationships. An occasional guest post may give you a temporary boost in traffic, but it’s not going to do much for you in the long run. Instead of writing a post here and there, invest in lasting relationships with a handful of industry bloggers or reputable publishers. Then, focus all of your effort on supplying those people with quality content that links back to your site. Over time, you’ll build a reputation among their readers and establish your name as the go-to resource for whatever it is you do.
7. Don’t give up. Remember what we said about patience? While each of these tips may sound easy on paper, they come with ups and downs. You have to be willing to ride it out, and keep the end goal in perspective.
Ready, Set, Generate Traffic!
Using these tips, tricks, and techniques, you’ll be able to develop sustainable sources of traffic. It will require a lot work on the frontend, but your patience and hard work will be rewarded on the backend.
