One of the most important factors for a company is that you need to be able to be found. However, when you are a small or fledgling business, it’s unlikely that you’ll have a large amount of money to spend on marketing – whether traditional, for example purchasing database information to send out letters or hiring a telemarketing firm to cold call people, or alternatively by using digital marketing and buying Google Adwords or Facebook advertising space aimed at your target demographic. These methods can be extremely costly so alternative methods need to be sought involving little or no expense.

How to Boost Traffic

The three following tips are marketing strategies focused around search, social and content; all linked together to help boost the traffic you receive.

Keep up with search engines

When a potential client is searching online, the two ways in which you can be found are either through targeted advertising (Google Adwords) or from the organic search results. Appearing higher up in the search results is achieved by the optimisation of your website for search engines.

Last decade, it was very common to hire SEO consultants that would play the system by creating domains with specific keywords, building up backlinks and various other methods to get a website onto page one of Google.

With the “Penguin” update Google released earlier this year, many firms using these old SEO methods that don’t rely on creating original content have seen a significant drop in page rank, resulting in less business.

The search engines are changing to put more weight into unique and original content, as well as the use of social media such as Facebook likes, re-tweets or ‘+1s’.

SEO relies more on content

With the recent update to Google’s search algorithms, it is much more beneficial to create more unique, original and interesting content on your website; be it a video, blog post or any other media based content.

When creating content, it is important to plan out how it is going to be visually displayed to your viewers. Capturing the audience by using an interesting image or catchy headline with well laid out content is more likely to be shared across social networks such as Twitter and Facebook compared to a bland wall of text.

Do not simply copy articles from another website however as Google will pick this up and rank you down. It’s important that content is completely unique.

Social networks and media are vital

A powerful way of increasing the discovery of your website is through the social sharing of content. By designing your content specifically with easy sharing in mind across social media and networking platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc.), there is a great potential to drive a significant amount of traffic to your website.

Previously, content would be shared privately through email attachments or even simply hard copies of articles. Presentations and images can be converted into online slideshows and press releases can be turned into blog articles or even videos discussing information, all of which are designed to be published online and spread publicly across the internet.

Social networks are also now being linked in to search engines. Google+ is using data from social responses to shared content that allow it to appear within search results.

Summary

Online marketing strategies should now involve linking many methods together and no longer needs to rely on buying advertising space. Creating unique and interesting content will boost traffic by allowing it to be shared across social networks; both of which should boost your search engine results, leading to more brand awareness and leads for your business.

At Nexus Websites, our Wigan web design team offers SEO services to help clients get the most out of their website.

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Established in 2010, Nexus Websites are a creative digital agency based in Wigan working with clients all over the UK. With a vast range of experience and a proven track record we have everything you need to take your business to the next level.