When it comes to marketing your business online and generating traffic to your website, the search engines should be a primary driver of traffic. After all, when people are looking for a product, service, or information that is typically the first place that they turn to which is why an SEO program is so important today. However, even as an SEO firm we will be the first to admit that the search engines shouldn’t be the only source of traffic to your website. Putting all of your eggs in one basket like that can be risky which is why it’s best to have a presence in many places across the web that can generate traffic to your website.
It’s important to consider where your target audience is spending time on the web (outside of the search engines) and seek out opportunities to build a brand presence (and a link) on those sites. Typically these sites are sites that are in some way related to the products or services that you sell. If you sell computer software, it might be a popular computer software industry blog. There could be advertising opportunities on the blog, or even better- guest blog posting opportunities. Getting a guest blog post published on an industry blog is ideal because it’s a way to share your expertise and gain attention in the industry. Niche sites like these can be the best source of traffic because the visitors are highly targeted and it’s likely that what your site offers correlates with their needs. In addition to industry blogs, industry forums, directories, and message boards are also great spots.
Social media is another important outlet to build up a brand presence today. People are visiting social media sites for a variety of reasons. Like the search engines, the major social networking sites all include search features. Those that are social media savvy might be more likely to conduct a search in social media as opposed to the search engines, to get insights from users or to find additional content outside of the static pages that exist on your site. For B2Bs, LinkedIn can be a great source of referral traffic as long as you are using the medium correctly. It’s important to join groups that attract likeminded people and share any informational content that you create with these groups. It’s a significant source of traffic and again, these visitors are highly targeted. There are many opportunities within social media to share links that will deliver traffic back to your site.
Building links on industry sites and within social media is going to improve your SEO, but that is really just an added benefit. The main benefit is that these links will generate traffic to your site from those that are most interested in what you have to offer. The search engines are an important source of traffic, but the search engines are also unpredictable. You never know when an algorithm change could affect your placement for certain keywords. That’s why it’s important to build traffic from a variety of sources. If for some reason your SEO takes a hit, your business will still be able to survive because targeted traffic is still finding your site in other ways.
