Driving traffic to my website - blog header image by SiteBites

Like the roses need the rain and a poet needs the pain your website needs traffic! Traffic being a regular flow of visitors that may be interested in your product or service. However, if you are like a lot of people, you’ll find that knowing where to start with traffic generation can be frustrating and confusing. After all the wrong kind of people visiting your website is almost as bad as nobody visiting at all. So as a guide we have put together some key things to consider when thinking about driving traffic to your website.

Time versus Money

The first thing to consider is that traffic costs money! Either you have to pay for it with your hard earned cash or pay for it with your valuable time. So in the beginning, deciding whether you have money to pay for traffic or time to generate traffic is important. If you want quicker results the money option will be far more effective and quantifiable so we’ll focus more on that in this article.

What method should you use?

The kind of methods you use to promote your business online will depend on your budget and the type of customer you require. Let me explain in more detail.

Are you Business to Business?

If your product or service is business to business you’ll probably be better spending your money on things such as Google or Bing Adwords. Here you can target people who are specifically interested and looking for what you provide. The caveat to this is that it can be a fairly expensive process to get right, so you’d want to promote a product with a reasonably high price to make sure you get a good return on your investment.

Do you trade locally?

If your business is predominantly local you may want to look at Google plus. A well optimised Google Plus page will show up if someone is searching for your kind of business in a particular area. An example of this might be plumber in Bracknell or Dentist in Reading.

Do you sell to consumers, are you in retail?

If you sell a product directly to the public that is not available in the shops then social media, in particular Facebook, could be a good place to go. You’ll need to set up a business page, add content and information daily and then use Facebook’s paid advertising. It’s fairly easy to use with a bit of training and knowledge.

If your products are not particularly expensive you may want to consider using blogging or forum marketing where you interact with people on forums linked to your products. LinkedIn can also be useful for business though it does take time and effort to grow and establish connections and authority.

This is by no means a definitive list of suggestions but it should hopefully get you thinking about who you want to visit your website, where they congregate online and how much it may cost to attract them to your website.

Make sure you get a return

Finally the key thing is to make sure any activity pays for itself. If you spend £1 you need to make £2 worth of profit. If in doubt ask or employ an expert, in the long run it will probably save you a lot of time and money.


About The Author

Photo of Ben HarringtonBen Harrington, founder of Wrap Digital. He has a 15-year corporate background in sales and business development, and began working in online marketing in 2011. Ben lives in West Berkshire with his wife and two young children. When he’s working he can be found in the park with his children, cooking something tasty in the kitchen, playing on his much loved drum kit or digging the veg patch!

I began Wrap Digital to provide small and medium sized organisations with a good quality and effective online marketing service. I love helping people, not only as a marketer, but also by developing strategies for businesses and maximising their return on investment. I recognise that small and medium sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, therefore helping them grow and succeed is very exciting.

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Unit 23 Space Business Centre, Molly Millars Lane, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG41 2PQ, UK.

Unit 23 Space Business Centre, Molly Millars Lane, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG41 2PQ, UK.