You’ve just launched your business online and have a shiny new website. That’s fantastic, but how are you going to make sure that you get plenty of traffic? When you don’t have a huge budget to throw into flashy marketing campaigns, you can feel as though no matter what you try, your traffic won’t increase. But don’t worry because we’ve got that sorted. Check out our handy tips and hints about how you can gain more traffic to your newly-launched website without needing a bottomless pit of cash.

There tend to be two main reasons a new website won’t get a great deal of traffic. The first is that marketing needs to be improved over a long term period. Most tactics take six months or longer before you begin to see results. The second reason is that marketing tactics need to be implemented correctly. If they’re not, then you simply won’t have results to see.

Fortunately, there are some easy short-teen tactics that you can start doing straight away, and they won’t cost you a penny.

Comment on Other People’s Blog Posts

One method that is worth trying is to start commenting on other people’s blog posts. As you do this, it is important to make sure that you are not spamming, as this is likely to annoy people and cause them to ignore your brand. However, contributing relevant comments on other people’s blog posts in the same sector as your business can help to raise your profile. Writing thoughtful comments that add value to the article is likely to provide more value than writing simple standard comments.

When you leave your comment, you are asked to put in your name and your URL. A very small percentage of people will click on your name, but this should raise the level of referral traffic to your website. Although it’s only a small percentage of people, some of the most popular blogs receive millions of visitors each week, so this is an effective way to increase traffic.

Make Use of Social Media Platforms

Another fantastic marketing tool is social media. Most people use some form of social media on a daily basis. This could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of the other social media platforms out there. 

Using Twitter, you can promote your business by posting links to your website, but a more effective strategy is to post helpful advice and tips about aspects of your sector. People who are interested in this sector are then more likely to start following you because you are giving them something of value. They will therefore be more likely to think favorably of your business. 

You can also use Facebook to search for groups that are related to your business sector. It is best to focus on groups that have between 1000 and 17000 members. This means that the group is big enough to generate traffic but small enough that you will get noticed. Join a selection of these groups and make some engaging and relevant posts. Simply posting links to your website will look like spam and will, at best, get ignored and, at worst, get you removed from the group. But you can insert links within the context of a comment or post. The key thing is to engage people, get them to interact with your posts, and create a high number of comments and replies. This will lead to increased traffic for your website.

Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks. Influencer marketing on Instagram is a very effective way of promoting a business or product. People who have a large number of followers can promote businesses and this generates a large amount of traffic. It is best to ask an influencer with around 10,000 followers, in particular those whose followers may be potential customers for your business. However, anyone with more than 10,000 followers is likely to charge too much to promote your business to make it worthwhile at this stage. 

Creating YouTube videos is another great way to direct traffic to your website. Create videos that your potential customers will find useful or entertaining. Depending on your business, you could create how-to videos or tutorials using products relevant to your sector.

Maintain Communication with Website Visitors

Make sure that it is easy for visitors to your website to contact you. You could include a contact form link on your webpage. This is a good way to start building relationships with customers and increase traffic. 

Most visitors to your website will only visit once. This means that it is vital that you get their email address during that visit so that you have a way to communicate with them in the future. Building an email list is a great way to do this. When visitors fill in the contact form, asking them for their email address so that you can reply could be a good way to build your email list. 

Make sure that it is clear why you are collecting their data, how it will be stored and what you are planning to do with it. Once you have an email list for a customer base, email marketing is a cheap and reliable way to communicate with your website visitors.

Optimize for Search Engines

A major source of traffic for websites is search engines, such as Google. There are many things that you can do to optimize your website for search engines. This is known as Search Engine Optimization, often referred to as SEO. There are some guidelines for SEO that can help you make your website more search engine friendly. It is generally not difficult to do and is something that you should be able to do yourself. 

To start with, ensure that your product titles are descriptive and include the keywords that people are likely to search for. Use H1 heading tags and whatever is wrapped in those tags should match your product titles. For images, name the files with something that describes the product, similar to the product titles. This will ensure that the image is included in Google Image searches.

You can also use the Google Search Console to submit your sitemap as soon as your website goes live. This prompts Google to crawl your site. You will then receive a notification when your site has been indexed. You can use this tool to see what keywords your site is ranking for, if there are any bad links on your site that need fixing, and how many links there are to your site, as well as plenty of other useful information. It may take a few months before you see results from SEO, but this will pay off once your website starts ranking on Google.

Keep Visitors Engaged with Content

Of course, when you get increased traffic to your website, you need to ensure that you have engaging and relevant content to build an audience of loyal customers. Customers who find your website interesting and useful are more likely to keep returning and to recommend your business to others. A content marketing strategy is a way to plan useful and relevant content to add to your website.

One way of keeping your website content fresh is to add a blog. You can find out keywords that your potential website visitors may be looking for and include these in your blog posts. This makes it more likely that visitors will find your website, thus increasing your traffic. Google Keyword Planner is a useful tool for this. Make your blog posts relevant to your business and geared towards an audience of potential customers. It can be time consuming to write blog posts, but content marketing is a very effective strategy to use on a budget.

You may also want to consider inviting guest bloggers to write a post for your website. It is likely that you will need to pay your guest bloggers, but if you choose the right person, it can be done within a budget. It is a great way to increase your traffic and create backlinks, which then make you rank higher in Google searches.

Consider Investing in Paid Advertising

Even though you don’t have huge amounts of money to spend on increasing traffic to your website, sometimes it can be beneficial to spend a small amount on paid advertising. It is possible to run Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns on a relatively tight budget. Pay-Per-Click advertising means that you only need to pay for your ad when someone clicks on it, views your video, or calls your business. Programs like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads allow you to set your own pricing, target keywords, and audience.

Optimize the Website

Make sure that your website is performing perfectly. When people visit your website, you have only a short amount of time, literally seconds, to catch their attention and convince them to stay on your website. A recent study found that a 1 second delay in page load time can lead to 11% fewer page views. This means that it is essential that you optimize your website to make sure it is fast and can perform well, even when there is high traffic.

Enjoy Increased Website Traffic

You don’t need to try and implement all of these ideas at once. Perhaps start with one or two and then add others in each week. Some of these ideas will take a little while before you start to see results, but they should all pay off in the end. You will have increased traffic flowing to your website and, crucially, you won’t have needed to spend a fortune getting there.