Internet Traffic Made Easy

Creating a website is simple nowadays. Many web hosts offer simple to use tools and even templates that look clean and professional. However, starting up a website does come with challenges that you probably haven’t considered.

One of the most common business problems that someone encounters is making their website relevant. You’ve probably heard plenty of times before that a website is a fantastic asset that will help you grow your business. The articles you read might promise double the sales or an exponential rate of growth, but the sad truth is that these are all pipe dreams.

Yes, a website can indeed improve your business. But it’s not going to happen overnight or even within a few weeks. As far as investments go, a website is perhaps one of the slowest in terms of its return on investment. However, that doesn’t mean you have to wait several months or even longer until your website starts to gain traction. As with many business investments, the rate at which you start to make money back depends on many different factors, but for a website, there is only one variable you need to think about: internet traffic.

What is internet traffic?

A technical description of internet traffic would be something along the lines of “a flow of data over the internet.”. In practical terms, it essentially means how many visitors you are getting over a specific period of time. High internet traffic would indicate that you are getting a lot of visitors, and low internet traffic means you don’t get many visitors at all. High and low traffic are, of course, relative to the website itself and it doesn’t actually affect the return on investment in a linear way.

For instance, you have an extremely high amount of traffic because you are a popular portal for different websites. However, your only source of income might be ad revenue and affiliate links because you don’t actually sell products. As a result, your return on investment could be relatively low because your website has a lot of traffic from all those users, but you don’t get that much money from advertising. On the contrary, a website that only gets a couple of viewers but offers products would have a much higher return on investment because the product sale contributes a lot to their profits.

While internet traffic doesn’t necessarily translate into more money, it does give you a good indication of how popular your website is and it’s always something to strive for in the digital world.

Advertising

This is perhaps the most obvious way to get more traffic to your website. By investing in advertising services, you can pay companies for every click your adverts get. These are called paid searches and it’s the most common methods of internet advertising. For instance, you tell Google you have a set budget and you tell them what kind of website you have. When people search for terms that are similar to your website, your website might show up at the top of the search results and for each click that you get, you automatically pay Google a set amount.

Because this is essentially targeted advertising, you’ll have to narrow down the keywords you associate your website with because if you aim for a wide audience, you’ll be paying for a lot of clicks and advertisements, but a very small portion of those clicks will translate into actual paying customers.

Social Media

Every website, whether it’s a blog, a personal home page or a business website, needs to have a social media account associated with it. This is because you need a way for users to communicate with you for instant responses. Emails are slow and email boxes can get filled up relatively easily, creating huge backlogs that take far too much time to go through and people will be waiting a very long time to receive a response from you. On the contrary, social media allows users to communicate with businesses using short and sweet messages that can be replied to in private or in public.

Social media is ideal for short promotions and user interactions, making it one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your website and drive internet traffic.

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is a huge topic that is far too complicated and diverse to discuss in a single paragraph. It essentially refers to the strategies you can use to optimise your website’s visibility on various search engines such as Google and Bing. The more relevant your website is to the user’s search terms, the higher the chance you will appear at the top of the listing. This is usually accomplished with a combination of trendy keywords, external linking from other websites to yours, and your overall popularity. You also get bonus points for making your website mobile-friendly, and internal linking (linking to other things on your website) gives you a nice boost to your search ranking.

With so many international SEO agency businesses around, getting help with SEO is as simple as heading to Google and searching up a reputable agency to use. However, it can be quite costly, but it’s worth the investment if you are serious about marketing your website to the masses. SEO can be accomplished by your own hard work, but it’s recommended that you seek help whether it’s from a company or other online articles.

Original Content

This typically falls under search engine optimisation because creating fresh and original content is one of the ways to get Google to notice you. However, original content also helps with retaining users and keeping their interest. When people say original content, they usually refer to things such as unique blog posts and informative articles that offer unique angles on a subject. This will give you the initial impression that original content doesn’t apply to a business website that sells products. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s use an example. If you are reselling products, then it’s normal for you to use the manufacturer’s description on your website to save time. However, if you take the time to write your own custom product description that’s loaded with relevant keywords and trendy phrases, you’re more likely to get customers visiting your website from Google, and you can impart some of your personality into product reviews on your website that will ultimately be linked to and expose your website to more people.

You can also attach a blog to your business website for the sake of attracting users, explaining your working process and to give your regular customers some insight into how your business operates. This type of content is usually completely original and works wonders to improve your search ranking and draw attention.

Final Words

Internet traffic is all about pandering to the user’s experience. If you make a website that consistently provides entertaining and informative content, then you are more likely to have a successful website on your hands. However, if you steal content, if you don’t optimise it for Google and you generally leave it untouched and stop caring, then it’s never going to bring in as much traffic as you’d like. Unlike some investments, a website takes a lot of effort before it starts becoming a profitable asset to your business. If you’re going to start one up, make sure you have time to dedicate towards it or hire a dedicated member of staff to manage your website and keep it constantly updated with new content so that it doesn’t get stale and continues to be a relevant part of your business.