After last week’s post, you have taken time to create your online brand so how do you now drive traffic to your website?
Well, I believe that the key is to share information and this is where you need to watch what other successful people in your niche are doing – subscribe to their mailing list, read their blogs, follow them on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Remember that it is just as important to listen as it is to be visible. You need to know where people are talking about you and what you know about.
Set up Google Alerts on key words, for example. Start tracking your name, company name, industry leaders and key words for your industry (you can use wordtracker.com to help as it generates keywords for you). This will give you a great overview for your niche as well as loads of info for your blog posts.
You can only use Google Alerts if you have a Google account and this is one tool that you cannot afford to be without – you really must have an account on Google. From there you will be able to take advantage of the dozens of sites Google owns: Gmail (essential!) YouTube, Feedburner, Google Reader, Picassa, etc. Make sure you focus on getting your Google profile set up and complete and then set up your Local Business site. Both of these Google properties give you an opportunity to showcase your business and links to your sites, along with photos and videos.
These Google tools alone will give you a huge presence on the internet.
Another way to drive traffic to your website is article marketing. Why post articles on article sites vs. posting them on your blog? Actually, it’s not one or the other. You must do both. Article marketing gives you the vehicle to share your expertise on sites with massive traffic, and then drive readers back to your blog or web site. Start by posting the article on your blog in order to get ranking and authority for the content from the search engines. Then, repurpose the post into an article and post it one of the online
article directories for example, EzineArticles.com.
Posting a recommendation on LinkedIn is also a great way to boost traffic to your website because LinkedIn recommendations are seen by everyone who is connected to you AND to the person you have recommended as well as those reviewing that person’s profile!
If you are new to social media, you should find that you now have quite a lot of information here to get you started on promoting your website. If you would like to discuss any of what you have read or would like to sign up for our online visibility program, please drop me an email, anne@power-to-change.eu
