4 Solid Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website

So, you've got a website up for your business. Go you!

Whether you DIYed the perfect site or hired that sucker out because ain't nobody got time for that, I applaud you. Publishing a website is a lot of work even in the best-case scenario.

But how do you actually get people to visit your website? Let's talk about that.

1.) Pinterest marketing

Ideal for introverts but works for everyone

Before starting my own business, I was never a big fan of Pinterest. But now? I'm super into it.

Pinterest marketing is behind about half of the visits to all of my websites. And out of every method I've ever used to get traffic to my sites, it's either the least time-intensive method or close to it.

That sounds kinda crazy, but I think it's because most business owners aren't aware that they can get website traffic from Pinterest. Or if they do know it's possible, they don't know how to do it. But there's tons of info out there on Pinterest marketing! (Start with this ultimate guide if you're not sure how Pinterest can help you drive traffic to your website.)

Pinterest is a search engine a lot more than it is a social media platform. And it's hundreds of millions of monthly users use Pinterest to search for answers to questions they have or ideas to solve a problem they've encountered. Whether it's a recipe, an event location, or a marketing question, Pinterest is the place they go to get answers, ideas, and product suggestions.

One really interesting thing about Pinterest is that more users on Pinterest are browsing with the intent to buy something compared to Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. Around 80% of Pinterest users have purchased something they found on Pinterest. Cool stuff, right?

This is a rough outline of how to get traffic from Pinterest:

• Build out your Pinterest business profile, apply for rich pins, and connect your website
• Start creating boards related to your content. So, if you're a photographer create boards related to venues, posing ideas, outfit ideas for photoshoots, tips for brides/seniors/whatever your market is, etc. Fill out the description of each board with a keyword-rich paragraph that explains what the board is about.
• Start making pins for your content. I recommend 2-3 pins for each blog post, product, and sales page that you have. The more pins per post/product, the better, though.
• Pin those pins to the most relevant board. Try not to spam pin a bunch of pins that link to the same post or product all in a row, though. Pinterest may flag your account as spam if you do that. Mix it up by pinning a variety of your content along with a good mix of other peoples' pins. On Pinterest, it's truly community over competition. Pin your own stuff often, but pinning other peoples' pins doesn't take away from your reach. In a lot of cases, it can boost your reach.

2.) SEO

Ideal for introverts but works for everyone

Yes, the dreaded SEO. Unfortunately, it works. So we gotta talk about it!

SEO, or search engine optimization, is essentially a giant list of tasks that you can do to boost your website in searches and get more traffic to your site. The better your SEO, the more likely people will be to find you when they search for the thing you do on Google and other search engines. This is an oversimplification of course, but that's what SEO is at the end of the day.

If you're afraid of SEO, it's usually because you think it's too technical or you don't know where to start. (I was in the "I don't know where to start" camp.)

The good news is that only a little bit of SEO is technical and you can totally do this. There are tons of great free and paid resources out there to help you get a handle on SEO and feel like you've got things under control.

Here's some recommended resources to get started with SEO:

• The She Can SEO Podcast (Quick, actionable, and to the point!)
• Free SEO courses on HubSpot
• SEO courses on Skillshare

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so, so many SEO courses out there that you can buy or take, and I highly recommend learning more about it because you've heard about it for a reason.

3.) Email marketing

Ideal for both introverts and extroverts

Email marketing is still highly relevant today despite what you might think. there's a reason that almost every website or blog you visit wants your email address!

Emails are great for warming your audience up to your brand and getting them used to hearing from you on a regular basis. You can pack your emails full of helpful info, which increases the likelihood that people will open and read your emails. The goal is to be helpful, to connect with your audience, and to sell your products and services to people who will benefit from them.

If someone unsubscribes from your email list, no worries! That's a good thing. You want to make sure that the people on your list are getting something positive and/or helpful from your emails, so if someone unsubs, that's just making room for a new subscriber who will love what you have to say and offer.

Email marketing helps get people over to your site as long as you have something to offer them. Whether that's a new blog post you've published, a freebie you're launching, a service you're starting to offer, or a product going up in your shop, your email list probably wants to hear about it. Because they've literally signed up to hear from you and get updates about what you've got going on!

Just make sure that you write your emails in a voice that matches your brand or blog so that your customers aren't thrown off. Also, re-read every email to be sure that you're truly sending them something valuable. Help them, give them tips, tell them a funny or inspiring story, and link to something relevant on your site to invite them over to take a look and learn more.

Fun facts about email marketing:

• For every $1 that businesses spend on email marketing, they get back on average $42. That ROI is crazy and very high compared to social media marketing.
• Email marketing is one of the quickest ways to reach your audience when you have something to say or a launch going on.
• Open rates for emails are much higher compared to the % of your social media audience who will actually see your posts.
• Using segmentation and triggers (more intermediate/advanced email marketing functions) you can get even better open rates, click-through rates, and return on investment vs. just putting people on an email list.

Email marketing tools for beginners:

There are a million and a half email marketing tools out there that will help you get more traffic to your website, but I have two in mind that are more beginner-friendly and inexpensive. You can get a lot done with both of these tools as a beginner or as an advanced user. I actively use both of these myself.

The first one is Flodesk, which is awesome because you can easily design beautiful emails without coding. It's similar to Canva, but for email marketing! It has some advanced features, like automated workflows, triggers, and segmentation. Flodesk is affordable compared to other professional email marketing tools because it has a flat monthly fee.

Most email marketing tools charge you based on how many subscribers you have and that can add up quickly. With Flodesk, you same the same flat fee of $38 even if you have 100,000 subscribers. I use Flodesk for my web design business's email marketing!

The second email marketing tool recommendation I have for you is MailerLite. It's free to get started, but you do have to start paying monthly once you reach 1,000 subscribers. Your monthly fee will rise based on how many subscribers you have. If you just want to get started with email marketing and don't want to pay until you have gathered some subscribers, then I'd recommend signing up with MailerLite.

It's a solid email marketing tool and even though it's a bit less intuitive than Flodesk, but there are tons of tutorials to follow on their website as well as over on YouTube if you get stuck. I use MailerLite for any smaller blogs that I've started that aren't making money yet and I have no complaints.

Resources for getting started with email marketing:

• HubSpot's free email marketing course and certification
• Amy Porterfield's Podcast, Online Marketing Made Easy.

4.) Social media

Ideal for extroverts but works for everyone

Social media is a little trickier to harness if your main goal is to get people over to your website, but it can definitely help.

If you've got 10k followers on Instagram and have a swipe-up link, you've pretty much got it going on, don't ya! I'm jealous.

If you don't have that yet, there are some other ways to get people over to your website. Let's go through a few different strategies to try.

Getting traffic to your website from Facebook

Facebook is one of the most difficult places to drive traffic from because like most social platforms, Facebook wants its users to stay on Facebook. They do not want you to leave the site. There's a lot of talk about how Facebook allegedly limits the reach of posts that include links. That's how badly they want you to stay on their site.

If you have a Facebook page, you can expect your posts to be seen by about 1-6% of your audience on average. Does that seem like horrible reach? It's actually not, for Facebook pages.

There are certainly lots of business pages who do very well by keeping their Facebook content native to the platform, encouraging debate, asking their audience questions, utilizing photos and videos, and focusing on a longer-term brand awareness goal rather than trying to get people over to your site immediately.

That being said, if you are looking for quicker wins on Facebook, you may want to shift your attention to Facebook groups. More marketers than ever are using groups (both others' and their own) because group members that regularly interact the content in a group are far more likely to see posts from that group. so, you can get a lot more eyes on your posts if you're posting things that are relevant to a group you're in (or a group you have.)

This is how to get traffic from Facebook groups:

• Find groups that are full of your ideal clients, readers, or audience.
• Make sure that each group you join allows links when responding to other people's questions (You don't want to get kicked out!)
• Answer questions that pop up in those groups with a link to the content you have that answers the question for them. Or answer their question fully in the comment and invite them to your website to learn more. As long as you are helping people and not spamming links randomly, you're doing fine.
• Try to give more than you take to any Facebook group you're involved in. It's best to build a reputation as a positive, helpful person rather than someone who only jumps in when they have a link to drop. Facebook groups can get you clients and build your audience, but it's definitely a give and take scenario!

Getting traffic from Instagram

Instagram has the same problem as Facebook - it doesn't want people to leave Instagram. So they make it difficult for you to get people off the platform. But there are a few tips I have for you that'll help encourage people to hop over to your site.

Keep in mind that Instagram strategy is often a longer-term effort. Someone will usually need to see your content 20+ times before deciding to check out your site. That's mainly because of the sheer amount of content on Instagram. Everyone follows a ton of people and they're being served a ton of content.

Your posts will really need to stand out as uniquely valuable in order to entice people to check out your website looking for more.

There are three main ways that I recommend to boost your website traffic from Instagram:

• Using the swipe up link in IG stories if you have 10k followers or more. Most of us don't have this feature!
• Creating a strategic Instagram landing page to add to your "link in bio." Here's a tutorial over on my web design blog for how to do that with WordPress + Elementor. I don't recommend using a service like Linktree for this, just build it out yourself on your site! (Paying for Linktree is unnecessary, you won't be able to make it look EXACTLY how you want to, and it can hurt your SEO.)
• Building your Instagram highlights to serve as a mini sales funnel. Now, this is pretty cool because it WORKS and it's awesome. Be strategic with your Instagram highlights. Keep them fluff-free, helpful to your audience, and mention your link in bio regularly - as well as what they can expect to see over there. Do you have a killer free download for your peeps? Create a highlight for that freebie and then show it off in that highlight. This. Works. Y'all. Start off by creating 5 highlights for your Instagram profile and make sure that at least 2 of them are funneling people over to the link in your bio. This strategy works far better than asking people to visit your link in the captions of your posts.

Getting traffic to your website from YouTube

YouTube is relatively simple to get traffic from as long as your videos are genuinely valuable to your viewers. You just need to give people a reason to head over to your website, mention this in your videos a couple of times, and link to your site in the video description.

Any video you create should stand alone as a great piece of content. But if you can offer a free checklist, cheatsheet, workshop, course, exclusive video series, calendar, planner, or something else that will let your audience get even more value out of the info you're providing, they will sign up for it.

The key is that you have to tell them exactly what they can expect from your freebie, tell them where the link is, ask them to click on that link. So, let them know what your freebie will help them accomplish. Let them know that the link is in the video description. Then, ask them to click on the link and sign up in order to get the freebie.

Mention the freebie at the most natural point in the video and then remind your viewers again at the very end of the video. Don't think you're annoying people by reminding them at the end. Most people on YouTube are used to taking in lots of information in a short amount of time and have limited attention spans while they are on the site. It's helpful to give a second reminder so that people who want your freebie don't miss out.

Getting more traffic to your website: Final thoughts

Wowee, we covered a lot, didn't we?

My favorite way to get more traffic to my site is definitely Pinterest marketing because it feels effortless compared to the other methods here, but all of these can work wonders for your traffic and for your business. I get traffic from Pins I added years ago!

SEO comes in at a close second because it's kind of like a snowball effect - if you pay attention to SEO as you're building content on your website, you'll reap the rewards of that effort for years down the line, which is awesome. Especially when you compare that to the average lifetime of a social media post (just a few hours for most platforms excluding Pinterest.)

Social media is a strong strategy for anyone who enjoys interacting with their audience daily and doesn't feel burnt out by social.

This is sometimes hard for me, but I like Instagram a lot and have gotten good results from it using a combo of the highlight sales funnel + optimized link in bio method. And I'm pretty sure Instagram is the most addictive social platform for me, so there's that. Kind of a guilty pleasure, but I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

So, what do you think? Do you have any questions about how to get more traffic to your website? I'd be happy to help if you drop me a comment.