How to Increase Traffic to Your Website

6 Ways You Can Get More Leads: How to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Does this sound familiar? Your small business has invested a lot of time, effort, and expense in developing a killer website but you’re just not getting the volume of visitors you need to succeed. You’re left trying to figure out how to increase traffic to your website without breaking your budget, and you’re not sure where to turn. We’ve got some small business marketing tips that can help! We’ve identified 6 easy, affordable offline and online marketing strategies you can use to drive an increase in traffic to your website. Most of these tips require an investment of time, not cash, making them perfect for small businesses operating on a tight budget. Put them into effect and get ready for the virtual crowds!

SEO marketing

SEO marketing is the most essential step to increasing traffic to your small business website.  Research has shown that 90% of consumers now search online for information about businesses, products, and services before making a purchase. If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of search results, you’re virtually invisible to the vast majority of these prospective customers.

To gain a higher visibility in search and generate more traffic for your website, you will need to perform on-page SEO throughout your website.  Research and incorporate the latest trending keywords and longer keyword phrases used in verbal searches in these key places on your website:

• In your page titles
• 3-4 times in the content of each webpage
• In the ALT tags of all images
• In the META descriptions

Content marketing (blogging)

An interesting, well-written weekly or bi-weekly blog is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Blogging is an effective content marketing strategy that allows you to add fresh new content to your website on a regular basis, which helps to attract new visitors while giving your site a boost with Google. Blogging helps you build inbound links and gives you a way to keep your website continually up to date with the latest keywords, which will improve your website’s position in search results. And as you continue blogging, you will build up a content bank that will help your website become the go-to source for information about your industry, which will raise your search position higher and encourage even more visitors.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing strategies work hand in hand with content marketing to help you generate more website traffic. Every time you publish a blog, you should create teaser posts that link back to the blog for all the social media platforms on which you maintain a presence. The posts don’t have to be long or involved; in fact, you can often just use the Meta description from the blog as your lead line. Adjust your headline and content to match the tone of each of the social platform and be sure to include appropriate #hashtags with your Twitter and Google+ posts.

Email marketing

Encourage your email subscribers to visit your website by including enticing snippets from your latest blogs in your monthly newsletters. To maximize your emails’ impact on your website traffic, you can send out time-dependent offers that link back to your website.

Analytics

Once you’ve put these online marketing strategies to work increasing traffic to your website for a month or so, you can use analytics to refine the strategies and make them even more effective. Use Google Analytics to track how visitors are getting to your website and see what actions they take once they get there. You’ll be able to determine which blog topics are most popular, which social strategies are generating the most traffic, and which emails garnered the most click-throughs. Apply that information to make your online strategies more effective and you’ll be able to increase your website traffic at an accelerated rate!

Offline advertising

Don’t forget to continue your traffic building activities offline! Make sure your website address figures prominently in all your branding materials, promotional items, and offline advertising. Direct customers to your website for more in-depth information on the services or products your small business provides, and offer an incentive for visiting your site.  The incentive doesn’t have to be large to inspire a great response; often a minor discount of 5% or 10% is sufficient to increase website traffic in a major way.

For more small business marketing tips and full support for all your offline and online marketing strategies, you can always turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated marketers can provide you with a responsive web design, SEO services, expert SEO content writing services, monthly social marketing packages, and more to make sure your small business gains the website traffic you need to succeed.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for a full range of offline and online marketing strategies to gain your small business website the traffic it deserves!

Re-Energize Your Small Business Marketing Efforts by Optimizing Existing Content

How to breathe new marketing life into your old content

Looking for a way to rev up your small business marketing efforts without having to spend hours writing additional new content? There’s no question that publishing interesting, relevant content is the best way to supercharge your online marketing strategies to make them more effective.

But if you’re like most small business owners, you already have your hands full running your company. You simply don’t have enough free time to produce more content than the weekly or bi-weekly blog you already author.

We’ve got good news! If your company has already produced enough content that you have a sizable content bank built up, you can re-energize your small business marketing efforts simply by optimizing your existing content. Updating and republishing your renewed content can actually help you achieve a much greater marketing reach than you can generate using only new content.

All it takes to optimize your existing content and renew your small business marketing strategies is just 7 easy steps:

Step 1: Analyze your content bank

Before you can start enjoying a re-energized online marketing strategy, you need to analyze your existing content to find blogs that will help you gain the most marketing reach. Don’t be surprised to find that your older posts are actually doing a better job of generating new leads than your newer posts, particularly if you have a large list of subscribers.

There’s a very logical reason for this: your subscribers are already “in the loop,” as established customers so you need new visitors to see your posts to generate new leads.  And that depends on search.

Older posts that have generated a significant amount of traffic have already proved their relevance, which gives them a leg up on search engine positioning, which in turn helps them generate more organic search traffic. Time to capitalize on that cycle.

Step 2: Identify high-potential postsYou’re looking for two specific types of blog content:

• Past posts that are getting a lot of traffic but not converting well
• Posts that still generate a high number of conversions even though they aren't getting a lot of search traffic

Once you’ve identified these high potential posts, you can start optimizing them.

Step 3: Make your posts more attractive to search enginesThere are several actions you can take to re-energize your existing content by making it more attractive to Google and the other search engines.

• Identify the keywords visitors are using to reach your blogs, and then incorporate them throughout your content in the text, title, and images of your posts
• Keep the same URL that’s generating visits, but add relevant keywords into your title
• Update your links to include internal links as well as outbound links with authority

Step 4: Update posts to make them more appealing to visitors

Renovate your older posts to improve their quality and make them more attractive to visitors.

• Add some eye-catching visuals
• Re-format text into short, easy-to-read sections
• Update facts and figures with current information

Step 5: Pair your content with offers that are highly relevant and targetedUpgrade your posts with offers that are tightly targeted and directly relevant to their content. For example, if you’re a realtor with a blog about obtaining commercial property mortgages, you shouldn’t pair it with a call to action that offers an e-book on readying your home for sale because that won’t appeal to the readers of that post. Pairing that content with an offer for a checklist for buying commercial properties will generate a much greater response.

Step 6: Optimize your CTAs

When you adjust your calls to action to provide the best possible user experience, they end up generating more responses. Use smart CTAs that are personalized so that any known visitor information is already filled in, and adjust the form parameters so it only appears to new traffic instead of annoying repeat visitors.

Experiment with the placement of your CTAs to see what generates the best response. Try p your CTAs in a popup window across the screen or through anchor text directly within your blogs, as well as at the bottom of your blog.

Step 7: Republish your renewed content

Change the publish date on your refreshed content to bring it current and republish on the web. Promote it across the full array of your online marketing strategies as if it were brand new, using social media, email, and SEO strategies to put it in front of a large pool of interested visitors.

Optimizing your existing content through these steps should re-energize your small business marketing efforts and give you a significant boost in conversion rates. For more content marketing tips along with complete support for your small business marketing strategies, you can always turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated team of marketers can provide you with everything you need to re-energize your content marketing strategies including responsive web design, professional content creation services, interactive marketing strategies, monthly social marketing packages, and more.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for help in re-energizing your small business content marketing strategy to extend your marketing reach!

Email Marketing Tips: Successful Email Marketing

6 tips to create a winning email marketing strategy

If you’re looking for affordable, effective marketing ideas for small business, email should definitely top the list. Email marketing offers some definite advantages that can make it one of the most valuable forms of online marketing that small businesses can pursue. It can be easily personalized to rev up its appeal, is extremely affordable, and gives you the opportunity to market your business directly to your customers without having to wait until they stop by your website or social media pages. Simply sending out emails and hoping for the best isn’t going to get you very far, though. Just like with the rest of your online marketing strategies, there are certain guidelines you should follow to get the best return for your emails.  To help you on your way, here are our top 6 email marketing tips to ensure your email marketing efforts succeed.

Tip #1: Make your emails mobile-ready

The majority of customers now access their email using a smartphone or other mobile device, and Litmus reports that a whopping 71% of these on-the-go subscribers will delete an email if it isn’t mobile-friendly.  Choose a responsive email design to ensure your emails perform perfectly no matter how they’re accessed – there are a number of free templates available online to show you how.

 Tip #2: Create winning subject linesA killer subject line is the key to successful email marketing. Create interesting subject lines using these tips will help entice recipients to open your emails:

• Keep it short - 28-39 characters is optimum
• Make sure your subject lines are directly relevant to the contents of your emails - “bait and switch” tactics are just going to annoy your readers
• Motivate recipients by including a call to action
• Create a sense of urgency
• Include a specific offer or discount

 Tip #3: Provide meaningful calls to action

Crafting meaningful calls to action is the best way to boost the click-through rates on your emails, according to Ascend2’s benchmark email marketing trends report. Make your CTA stand out on your email by using contrasting colors and bold, clear language. Motivate your customers with dynamic CTAs that urge them to directly take action such as “Join the conversation”

 Tip #4: Choose a simple, clear layout

You only have a small window of opportunity to grab your recipients’ attention with email marketing. Don’t overwhelm them with a cluttered layout design that features so many graphics, flashing gifs, and decorative fonts that your message gets lost. Trust in the strength of your message and go with a simple, clean layout with information divided into two or three sections. That will offer just enough visual stimulation to provide interest and capture your readers’ attention without distracting them from your message.

Tip #5: Use short, succinct wording

Don’t make the mistake of overloading recipients with so much text that it puts them off from reading your email. The purpose of your email is to get readers to click through, so present information in a few easy to scan sections that readers can take in at a glance. Positioning CTAs strategically throughout text will entice recipients into taking a desired action to discover more information.

Tip #6: Choose your graphics carefully

It can be tempting to use big, showy graphics to catch readers’ attention, but loading down your email with too many images or ones that are too big can cause your messages to load slowly or appear distorted in email. Some email clients even gray out images, leaving only broken-link symbols. Recipients aren’t going to wait for your email to load; they’re going to trash it unread and move on. Consider sending out emails that are primarily text-based, using contrasting colors and just a few well-chosen images to enhance the message. This approach will help your message to come through clearly and quickly, which can help increase your open and click through rates.

For more email marketing tips and complete support services for all your online marketing efforts, turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated team of marketers can provide you with a comprehensive list of small business marketing services that includes responsive web design services for websites and emails, email content creation, subscriber list acquisition and management services, monthly social marketing packages, and much more.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for more information on implementing effective email marketing strategies to help your small business succeed!