SEO is the best way to rank high for organic search traffic.
However, if you look at the bigger picture, SEO itself is a means to an end. Knowing how to drive traffic to your site is the primary goal here. It's the foundation.
Once you have a steady following and a decent amount of traffic on your site, you can then focus on retaining that traffic and converting it to sales. Without traffic, you won't be going anywhere ? whether in terms of growth, SEO, or sales.
In this post, we will be looking at a couple of marketing strategies and tactics that will boost your site's traffic even without SEO:
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is only a small portion of your inbound marketing strategy but is vital in terms of building relationships and discovering new audiences.
This tactic is helpful, especially when you're just starting out and you don't have a lot of website visitors to start with.
In blogging, you're looking for qualified and regular traffic, engagement, authority in your niche, leads that are highly motivated, and a lot more. However, you couldn't achieve that if you don't have an established following.
Therefore, you have to look for blogs that have the same niche as you, reach out to them and tell them how you enjoy their content, then ask them if you could do a guest post for them.
Now, is link exchange is good or not? Well, if you already have some following, then it's much better to pick a blog that will likely swap with you. Meaning, both of you are exchanging audiences, introducing relevant content to them.
The challenge here is to produce high-quality and engaging content, something that will compel your audience to stay on your site and get to know you better.
Email Marketing
Email remains to be one of the most effective ways of driving traffic on a website. Still, there are important points in email marketing that you should take note of.
First, you need to ask the user's permission before sending any emails. Afterwards, you will have to clearly explain the purpose of getting their emails. You could also let them know that signing up would give them exclusive content and offers.
Your main goal here is to make sure that they will not view the emails you wish to send as spam.
Once you have an email list, make sure that you keep your word. Make your content fresh and interesting. That way, your readers will be more than happy to receive an email from you.
You could also use it to promote the product or service that you have. In the promotion, you could add a link as well. That way, it will be much easier on their part to look up your site.
Social Media
If you're not on social media, then you're missing out, a lot.
But just like any other marketing channel, it takes time and consistency. Brands and businesses who have won over the followers' affection have already been there for quite some time. It takes patience for your efforts to pay off.
So go out there and establish yourself as a valuable presence in your industry. Treat your audience as people and take the time to actually appreciate them.
Provide them with value and something that's entertaining and educating at the same time. If people enjoy your content, they would enjoy your offerings as well. It will also be just a matter of time before they fall in love with your brand. It also helps that you use a social media management tool that streamlines your team’s workflow and makes collaboration a lot easier.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are a group of people on social media that has an astounding number of followers. Also, their followers trust and care about what they have to say.
In fact, most users these days trust an influencer's endorsement. Therefore, a lot of them are in the perfect position to spread awareness and help promote your site.
Referral Marketing
Referral marketing in the online world could be done effectively on social media. After all, people are two times more likely to pay attention if it is a recommendation made by their friends.
Just make sure that you have enough tools, to begin with. This could be in the form of an email template or a hashtag on social media that you can use when sharing your content.
Moreover, do not forget to throw in a couple of attractive incentives. This could be in the form of store credit, a free trial, a discount coupon, or a free product. You will be amazed by how successful this kind of marketing could be.
Video Marketing
In today's highly digital landscape, videos are extremely popular. More and more users turn to them as a source of entertainment and information.
What's great about it is that it is highly auditory and visual. Not to mention that a visual content is easier to recall than text.
Video marketing could be approached in a variety of ways. First off, you could upload a video on popular video sites online such as YouTube to drive traffic to your site.
You could also consider incorporating them into your own content. In fact, a whopping 90 percent of customers say that watching product videos had helped them make purchasing decisions.
Therefore, you could probably boost your site's conversions if you place videos on your product page. It is also a more enjoyable way to educate your customers all about your product.
Final Thoughts
Keep in mind that this post is not to undermine the importance of SEO. It's still a vital marketing tactic ? something that you should consider adding to the mix above.
Still, you need to know how to diversify the traffic that comes from your site, and you don't want to rely so much on a single tactic.
Let's say, there are changes in Google's algorithm, and SEO is one of your main sources of traffic, then this could potentially mean it's the end of your business.
So, don't try to put all your eggs in one basket. By implementing a mix of marketing tactics, you'll be more at peace knowing that your site's traffic is here to stay.