50 Website Traffic Ideas To Attract More Online Visitors

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The internet is a lot like your local mall. Like the websites on internet, the mall has a wide variety of stores to visit.

Not everyone who visits the mall will visit the jean store the same way not everyone will visit the ecommerce store selling artisanal ketchup. But that doesn’t mean the jean store can’t take initiative to attract window shoppers. The store could redesign their window display or bring in new displays.

Website traffic is gained and lost in much the same way.

In this massive article we’ll give you 50 website traffic ideas to attract more online visitors. We’ve used these strategies ourselves to reliably generate more than 500,000 monthly website visitors, and you can do the same.


1. Run Co-promotions with Influencers

Promotions are a great way to incentivize engagement with a new audience and drive traffic to your site. A co-promotion is even better, as you have a mutually-beneficial relationship where both parties are invested in the success. Co-promoting with an influencer not only enables you to tap into the power of their reputation, but also their audience.

My recommendation would be to host the promotion, have the prize be yours, and then bring on the influencer for name recognition and a bit of “oomph”.

To Learn More…

To see an example of a recently-run promotion we ran with influencer and thought-leader Sujan Patel and The Growth Conference, click here.


2. Advertise Content on Facebook

You might think that paying for people to visit a low-converting page (like a blog article) would be a waste of ad budget, and, normally, you’d be right.

But smart marketers know that adding an email-gated content upgrade to a very valuable, very long, resource article can improve a blog article’s lead generation conversion rate to the point where it’s profitable. Wishpond, for instance, improved our article conversion rates from .52% to 6% with the addition of content upgrades.

To Learn More…

Learn more about how content upgrades and advertising work together in “How we Used Content Upgrades to Increase Email Opt-ins 16X.”


3. Advertise to a Lookalike Audience on Facebook

A lookalike audience is created from an imported “custom” audience on the Facebook Ad platform. Facebook matches the profile information of your custom audience (your subscribers, perhaps) and finds users who match very specifically (1% specificity) or more broadly (5% specificity) to give you an ad audience made up of people similar to your existing customers or subscribers.

Hit those people with a lead generating piece of content, webinar or promotion and you’ll find better click-through-rates than if you use standard Facebook Ad targeting.

To Learn More…

For guidance on advertising your brand on Facebook, check out Wishpond’s totally free “Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Ads.”


4. Create Skyscraper and “10x” Content

10x, Skyscraper content is loosely defined as content which goes above and beyond what’s been written previously on a subject. For instance, there are many “How to Drive Traffic” articles out there. There are very few which offer more than 50 actionable strategies and give relevant links on each so readers can take that strategy, learn more about it, and act on it immediately to grow their business.

Content like what you’re reading now is an investment. It takes me (the author) several days to create, nonstop. It takes a designer to add a back-end style and me (again) to add in-line CSS.

And that’s just the creation of the content. To ensure this article does well I need to devote as much time on promotion and outreach as I do to its creation.

However, if I get it right…

  • if I provide serious value in a way readers can understand and immediately take action on
  • If I approach the right influencers in the right way
  • If I promote on the right platforms in a genuine way
  • If I implement a few of the other content-related strategies in this article such as syndication, guest post linking, social media, etc

IF I do all those things well (yes, it’s a big “IF”) there’s a possibility I can get this article to rank well for the search term “How to Drive Traffic” on Google.

To Learn More…

For the complete breakdown of the Skyscraper Technique”, check out Brian Dean’s walkthrough (I linked the term, rather than the word “walkthrough” there, cause I’m nice iike that and wouldn’t mind Brian sharing this article). For a look at Rand Fishkin’s 10x content theory, check out his Whiteboard Friday presentation on the subject.


5. Answer Questions with Content on Quora

Q&A sites (notably, Quora.com) are a great resource for you to not only do market research, but also drive traffic. Although the links are now no-follow (didn’t use to be in the good ol’ days) you can still drive serious referral traffic from the site.

Create an account and do a quick keyword search for questions related to your platform, service or brand (Wishpond, for instance, answers questions related to lead generation, lead nurturing, marketing automation, conversion rate optimization, etc) and answer those questions. Develop a reputation for being a well-spoken, educational and non-spammy responder and see what happens.

Remember, answering questions on Quora (and sites like it) is an investment. Don’t assume you’ll find success immediately.

To Learn More…

Check out our guide “How We Answer Quora Questions to Drive Traffic to our Website” for a complete walkthrough on how to use Quora.


6. Syndicate Content to Aggregate Sites

Aggregate sites allow submission of content links with varying standards. Essentially, aggregated content sites allow you to reach new audiences (of, again, varying quality).

Technically, any site which compiles many different pieces of content into one space is an aggregate site. Hell, Google search results or Twitter’s hashtag search is an aggregated content page. But, of course, that’s not what we mean here.

To Learn More…

A few of the top content aggregate sites (which you can submit to) are:

  • Alltop
  • BizSugar
  • BlogEngage (paid)
  • BloKube (paid)

7. Repost Non-Original Content

Sites like StumbleUpon, Medium, Scoop.it, SocialMediaToday and others will allow you to post previously-published articles. Just check that each one gives you a canonical link (meaning the reposted content is labelled as non-original to search engine crawlers). Otherwise you can get hit with SEO penalties.

To Learn More…

Check out my colleague Jordan’s article “6 Places to Syndicate Your Content” for a complete guide to reposting (or syndicating) non-original content.


8. Guest Post and Include Links

Guest posting is a long game. It’s about building brand reputation from the bottom up. Start contributing to the smaller blogs and move your way to the larger ones (build that blogging resume). Eventually, provided you don’t suck, you’ll find yourself contributing to sites with millions of monthly readers and mailing lists that would fill sport stadiums.

But even then you’re not going to drive thousands of readers to your site with the link in your bio. Instead, you’re driving brand awareness, name recognition and the potential for co-marketing.

Top Tip for Guest Blogging:

You’ll be allowed a couple links within any guest post you contribute. Get the most out of the people who click on that link by creating a site (or even post)-specific landing page within your site welcoming that article’s traffic and with a relevant CTA.

To Learn More…

Check out Peter Sandeen’s article on Problogger “Why You Suck at Guest Blogging (and What The Pros Do Differently).


9. Post on Communities like GrowthHackers.com and Inbound.org

Both these communities are (like Reddit) dependent on upvotes for visibility, so your content can’t suck. However, if you’re an engaged member of the community (comment, ask good questions and reply to the questions of others) sharing an occasional piece of quality content can drive serious traffic to that article as well as boost your reputation on the site.

To Learn More…

See an example of a very successful post from last year by my colleague Cara Tarbaj on Inbound.org with “How We Answer Quora Questions to Drive Traffic to Our Website.”


10. Approach Popular Blog Contributors and Ask Them to Write and Promote

There are a million freelance content creators out there who need exposure. They’re an excellent source of quality content, but it’s rare they’ll be able to help you actually promote or drive traffic. As a result, spend some time researching the most popular contributors who have some social media following or (even) a mailing list of their own.

My advice for finding blog contributors would be to sign up for a free social media management platform (like StatusBrew) and search for accounts with “contributor + [your industry].” Check the size of their Twitter following (and as many other “influence” metrics as you can find, and reach out.

Alternatively, keep a close eye on the authors of a competitor’s blog articles. See a name you don’t recognize? Check to see if they’re a guest contributor and reach out.


11. Promote on a Slack Group

Slack is a well-known messaging app which many businesses (including Wishpond) use for inter-office communication. However, it’s fast-becoming a way for digital marketers to connect, share content and get advice with other like-minded marketers.

To Learn More…

Check out Slack’s list of their top groups to find the one that’s right for you and your brand.


12. Mention or Quote Influencers in Content, then @Mention them on Twitter

This is one of the most reliable strategies for building readership, not just because it’s an effective way to do influencer outreach, but the quotes, stats, mentions or citations of an influencer are also a great way to backup your content’s assertions. Hell, you’re nobody. But if Seth Godin once said something? You become so much more trustworthy, so quickly.

If you’re not sure of the influencers in your industry, use a service like BuzzStream or Klout to uncover them.

To Learn More…

Check out our article “6 Growth Strategies to Maximize Your Influencer Marketing Efforts for more on this strategy.


13. Run Ad Campaigns on Google Adwords

This is pretty straightforward. And I won’t dwell on it overmuch, as it’s likely that in a 55-item list of ways to drive traffic, “Use Google Adwords” is the least novel.

Nonetheless, Google Adwords remains an essential part of driving traffic to your site. Just be sure you’re not overspending. Many brands dive into Adwords (as it’s one of the first thing you hear when you start in digital marketing) without doing their homework.

Top Adwords Tip:

When you see an expensive keyword you desperately want to rank for, run it through an SEO tool to see the competition for organic ranking. It’s possible that an investment of a week or so on an awesome article could get you to rank, organically, for a keyword which you might have to pay Adwords $20 for per click. Make sure you can’t get there without content marketing before emptying your pockets!


14. Co-Create Content with Brands with Similar Target Markets

Mutually-beneficial brand co-operation is one of my favorite things in digital marketing. You make a new connection (through cold outreach, social media or even blog commenting) and create something, together, which is more than it would have been apart.

Wishpond, for instance, is currently working with Sujan Patel to create an awesome “Lead Nurturing Playbook.” Sujan writes a couple of the sections, Wishpond writes the others, and we split the cost of having it graphically designed by an outsourced company. We both promote and we both link to the playbook whenever possible. It ranks, generates leads (through a content upgrade and we share the benefits.

And it’s perfect, because we have the same target market and only invested half the resources.

To Learn More…

Check out an example of a co-created webinar we’ve run with Aweber.


15. Use Social Media Platforms that are Right for your Business

Of course social media can drive traffic to your website. That’s a no-brainer. But which one will drive the most, is the quality of traffic worth it, and how much time do you have to devote?

These questions are the most important part of social media marketing, not “how do I maximize the reach of my Facebook Post?” or “how do I increase likes?”

Sure, the number of Facebook Likes your Page has is an element of your brand’s online footprint, and there’s some reputation stuff there as well. But at the heart of it, it’s a vanity metric and unless you’re turning those fans into leads and customers, the whole thing isn’t effecting your business’ bottom line whatsoever.

But before you can even get to that question, you need to ask yourself if Facebook even makes sense for your business. How much time will you have to devote to grow on the platform, and what’s the reach of your Facebook posts, anyway?

In short, social media marketing isn’t (and shouldn’t be) so simple as “throw everything we have at all the platforms and hope something sticks.” Despite the assumption that Tweeting 140 characters every few hours is all there is to it, you’d be wrong. Do your homework before diving into social, or you’ll regret it before you get a single Like.

To Learn More…

Check out my article “Which Social Media Platform is Right for Your Business” for a complete walkthrough of platform demographics and my recommendations for which industry should be where.


16. Engage and Share on Reddit

Reddit is a fickle platform, but, if you play your cards right, it also has the potential to crash your server with traffic.

We found that the best way to succeed on Reddit is to share incredibly actionable, long list posts (exclusively on relevant subreddits) but only include a selection of the total list with a “For the other 10/25/50 tips, click [link].”

To Learn More…

For an example of a successfully-applied Reddit strategy, see our post “100 Growth Hacks Learned from 5 Years as a SaaS Startup” on Reddit.


17. Publish Content on LinkedIn with Backlinks

Similarly to Medium (#7 above), publishing on LinkedIn places your content writer in front of an entirely new audience, and if you’re a brand who struggles to drive new visitors (with content, it’s easy to get tied to your subscriber list), it’s a good idea to branch out.

Anything you publish on LinkedIn is owned by you but, of course, LinkedIn can advertise and use it however they like.

There’s also Pulse, which is a similar content aggregate to StumbleUpon or SocialMediaToday. You can either publish original content on Pulse or link to existing articles.

And no matter what, remember to link back to your site. Not in every line, but enough to drive traffic without sounding spammy or salesy.


18. Respond to Every Blog Comment to Drive Return Traffic

Blog comment sections aren’t just a great way to get a conversation going or improve SEO on your blog. They’re also a driver of traffic.

Try to respond to each comment with more than just “thanks for reading!” Instead, ask follow-up questions, even if it’s just “did you have a favorite part?” Keep the dialogue going and you’ll create not just return visits but engaged readers and more lively discussions.

The other element, of course, is that a responded-to comment increases the likelihood of another being left.

To Learn More…

Check out our article “Blog SEO: How to Easily Optimize your Blog for Search.”


19. Create a WordPress Plugin or App

Creating a new component of your software and placing it on such massive platforms as WordPress, the Play Store or the App Store opens you up to millions of prospective site visitors.

Of course, far more importantly than visitors, creating a plugin or app gives you users, but a nice side effect is brand recognition and traffic.

Wishpond, for instance, has individual WordPress Plugins for our Landing Page Builder, popups and social promotions tools and has created plans relevant to WordPress-specific users.

They drive about 500 website visits a month, which isn’t a needle-moving number, but it’s pretty damn valuable traffic.

To Learn More…

Check out WordPress’ substantial resource and walkthrough on creating a plugin for their platform.”


20. Create Original Content Which Begets Referral Links

Original reporting, such as industry reports or “10 Things we Learned from Analyzing 100 Website Popups“-type articles are a great way to drive referral links and people to your site from others.

Being the original publisher of something people will regurgitate (90% of content marketing is regurgitation, sorry everyone), means that every time someone writes an article and cites their source, they link to you.

And every time they link to you, your site gains SEO link-juice as well as the possibility of someone clicking on that link and becoming website traffic.

Top Tip:

Interestingly, people absolutely love to link to infographics. If you don’t have the resources or access for “Benchmark Conversion Rates from 13,734 Social Promotions,” try collecting data and creating an infographic instead.

To Learn More…

Check out your business’ Google Webmaster Tools account and click on “search traffic” then “links to your site” on the left side. This will show you what pages or pieces of content within your website are currently being linked to, how frequently and from where. Creation of content similar to that is a good call to drive external links and website traffic.


21. Do a Content Trade with Brands with Similar Target Markets

Similarly to co-created content, a content trade can be a great way to start a relationship with another brand. We’ve done many content trades – in which you contribute to their blog and they to yours – and have always found them to be mutually beneficial campaigns.

The crux of a content trade is in the mailout – giving your brand exposure to an entirely new audience. That, coupled with links in your article and the possibility of a more sales-oriented article than a normal contribution, gives you a winning strategy.


22. Prompt a Share through Keyword-Targeted Outreach

Every inbound marketer has a different assessment of the right ratio for how much time you should be investing in promotion. Some say equal parts promotion and equal parts creation, some as much as 80% promotion. For me, it’s a dumb argument…

Well considered, targeted outreach to the right people who have shown interest in your content’s subject matter before, shared other creator’s content and are accessible – that’s worth 10 random email addresses you bought from some sleazy website.

There are a few strategies for doing this. The three that work for me the best are these…

  1. Use a social media management tool like StatusBrew to search through your existing Twitter or Facebook Page Followers for a keyword relevant to your content. These are the people who will probably recognize your name. I have as much success DMing my Followers with personalized outreach messages than I do cold-emailing them.
  2. Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find people who have shared content similar to yours. Find them on Twitter and Follow them. If they follow back, do a DM.
  3. If they don’t follow-back or the first strategy doesn’t get a response, try a follow-up email. A tool like EmailHunter will help you to find the email addreses of specific thought-leaders or previous sharers of awesome content (like yours).

23. Run a Referral Contest and Incentivize Sharing

I’m a big fan of this type of online promotion, as a referral promotion incentivizes entrants to share the promotion (also known as “your website”) with friends, family and colleagues. It means that the entrants themselves are doing the heavy lifting of contest promotion.

Now many people will fight against running a social or online promotion as they say, “Sure it’ll drive traffic. But what is that traffic really worth?” and it’s a legitimate concern.

But this is my response: How much less valuable is a friend of someone interested in winning a year’s subscription to your platform than someone who clicks on a Facebook post that same person shared? How much less valuable are they than someone who meant to hit the “new tab” button but accidentally clicked on your display banner ad?

No, not all traffic is created equally. But the traffic you get from a referral promotion is no worse than many other strategies you invest in every month. And, if you go with referral promotion best practices, it might even be better.

To Learn More…

Check out a few of our articles related to running a social promotion or referral contest…


24. Create and Use a Blog Subscriber List

This one’s a no-brainer as well. A scroll-bar, exit, or website popup which prompts your readers, after a certain amount of an article being read, is an excellent way to generate prospective users.

It’s also an excellent way to generate reliable website traffic. If you have a subscriber list of, say, 10,000, and an average open and click-through rate, and you’re doing three mailouts a week, you’re talking about driving at least 1,000 people to your content or website.

No, those people aren’t new traffic, but they are prospective and existing users. These are the people you want to impress the most. What’s more impressive than your blog (says the editor of the blog you’re reading…)

To Learn More…

Check out my article, “How to Monetize Your Blog,” for a complete walkthrough to creating and getting the most out of your subscriber list.


25. Pay to be Featured in Newsletter Ads

The most well-known paid newsletter would be SocialMediaExaminer’s, which offers a sponsored spot on their 500,000-person daily mailout. Though SME requires a $5,000 minimum budget for consideration there are many sponsored newsletters which offer a range of pricing. Getting in touch with a brand with a sizable audience made up of your target market is a great way to reach a totally new audience.


26. Ensure You’re Mentioned in Industry Directories

This should be a no-brainer, but it’s so simple it’s often overlooked.

There are thousands of “top software companies in [X City]” lists. They’re used by businesses looking to start a conference, arrange an industry meetup, or (particularly if you’re an agency) prospective customers who care if their next chosen business is local.

Many of these lists will have something like “Is your business an [X]? Submit your details by clicking this button.” It’s well worth doing. And if they don’t have an option for that, it’s well worth finding contact details and reaching out with an email.

And don’t forget Wikipedia!

To Learn More…

For an example of industry-centric lists, check out this one in San Francisco, this one in Vancouver, or this one in Seattle


27. Identify Opportunities with “Keyword Fishing” and Create Content in Response

SEO tools like Moz, SEMRush and Long Tail Pro allow you to see how competitive a target keyword is. Knowing this (in conjunction with the keyword’s popularity) informs your decision about whether you should invest time and energy into competing for it.

The goal of this is to identify those keyword opportunities where your competitors haven’t quite noticed how valuable a keyword is (ie. how many people are searching for it) or a keyword where what’s ranking could be “beaten” by your team with a bit of effort.

To Learn More…

For a look at keyword fishing, check out (again) Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique walkthrough. He covers it pretty clearly in step 1.


28. Intelligently Comment and Link to Relevant Content

I mentioned earlier the strategy of responding to your own blog’s comments to drive traffic, but the comment sections of other, high-traffic blogs can also be a great way to reach your target market and drive them towards your site.

If you read the entire article and respond intelligently on it with a question, informed and valuable addition or an entirely new thought, many blogs won’t begrudge you an occasional “I actually went in-depth into this concept in my article (available [here]).”

But even if you don’t link back to your site, an intelligent comment on a high-traffic article will encourage people to click on your name, which can drive them to your site anyway.

This kind of strategy overlaps a bit with the “be active on discussion boards and forums” strategy in Strategy #9. Wishpond has recently invested in a “social content marketer” position (held by Carlo Pacis). His role encompasses not just social media outreach, but engaging and building a network on forums, niche community sites and intelligently commenting on high-visibility content.

To Learn More…

Check out Brian Dean’s video (and video transcript) on Quicksprout “How to Drive Targeted Traffic with Blog Commenting.” It’s a great guide to the power of blog commenting.


29. Run Co-Webinars with Brands with Similar Target Markets

Co-run webinars differ from co-created content as they can be far (far) more salesy. Rather than doing a “half-and-half” deal, I recommend you host a brand and then get hosted by them (so two webinars).

Each webinar should focus on how your businesses work together. For instance, if your platform focuses primarily on lead generation (as Wishpond does), teaming up with ConstantContact was a good idea for us. They do email marketing software, and our platforms aren’t just integrated, but fit together like a puzzle-piece.

In other words, we like their email list, and they like ours.


30. Target Specific Verticals with Content

Going niche is a dangerous game. Are you alienating other industries if you start writing only for real estate? Are you so severely limiting the number of possible visitors that the investment isn’t worth the return.

These are good questions, but the fact remains – if your brand can become a recognized authority for any niche whatsoever, you’d be amazed at the passion and loyalty you’ll see.

Just be sure you know what you’re getting into. If you’re going to ingratiate your brand into an industry you’re not familiar with, tread carefully. Not all verticals call leads “leads” or a user a “user.” Don’t make the mistake of presuming anything and you won’t put your foot in it and have your target reader recognize you’re stumbling in the dark stabbing at shadows.

Top Tip:

We’ve found that, although we have created a lot of vertical/industry-centric blog content, it’s the ebooks and webinars which give us the best return on investment. Email-gated vertical content (like ebooks and webinars) allows you to segment and advertise, not to mention the possibility of niche community outreach.


31. Link Back to Your Site Whenever Possible on Social Media

You never know which social media post is going to get picked up by an industry influencer. It can come out of nowhere, and if you haven’t accurately linked to your website you’ll be kicking yourself until the end of time.

And it’s not just your own posts. Responding to the posted questions of thought-leaders or successful brands (Buffer has their #bufferchats on a monthly basis) and posting a relevant link is an excellent way to reach new prospective website traffic.

Don’t forget your social media bios either. Keep them updated and create campaign-specific landing pages to collect social media traffic. This is especially relevant on Instagram and Twitter.

To Learn More…

Check out our article “The Top 30 Social Media Marketing Articles You Need to Read” for 30 of the best articles related to social media best practice by some of the leading social thought-leaders.


32. Attend Conferences

Conferences are one of those things which you, as a startup, might think you don’t have the time or budget to attend. Let me tell you in no uncertain terms: You have no idea how the right conference might affect your brand’s success.

  • You might meet the right person over drinks one evening and start a relationship which skyrockets your success.
  • You might listen to the right speech and completely change the way you structure your business.
  • You might learn about a passionate, skilled senior developer who will work for free and redesign your platform’s backend (okay that one’s kinda far-fetched…).

The point is, you don’t know. Conferences, at the very least, put your name out there. You meet potential employees, potential co-marketing opportunities, potential… potential!


33. Start a Community

This one’s tough, and it didn’t use to be that way. Back in the good ol’ days when LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ were babes in their baskets, creating social media communities was simple and could launch your brand into the stratosphere. No more.

And that’s why I didn’t say “start a social media community.” It’s almost impossible to get a social media community up and running these days, and even the huge ones set up in 2013 have a limited reach and are just places people go to spam. As a result, it’d likely be a waste of your valuable time to try. I mean, feel free, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

What I would still recommend, though, is investing some time into creating your own community on sites like Slack, Reddit, HackerNews and Quibb.

To Learn More…

Check out “Chapter 1” of QuickSprout’s Guide to Building a Blog Audience for the best synopsis of the strength and strategies of online community building.


34. Run a Social Promotion Giving Away a Relevant Prize

When in doubt about how to drive website traffic, run a social promotion.

Give people an opportunity to win something related to your business (like a product giveaway, gift-card or year’s subscription) and you incentivize your target market to visit your site – easy as that.

Wishpond has been running social promotions since 2012, both for ourselves and for well over 50,000 clients. Here are a few things we’ve learned:

  • Exclusively offer something related to your brand. I’m not a big stickler for “fully qualified traffic” but even I recognize there’s no point in getting entrants or visitors who only want you for your random iPad prize.
  • Use Facebook Ads to drive targeted traffic (Facebook Ad targeting is unparalleled). Unless your product price point is baller as hell, don’t pay more than a dollar per entrant. Track Cost-Per-Action.
  • Use extra entry incentives to encourage entrants to share your promotion. This comes standard with Wishpond’s online promotion tool.
  • Though “Like-gating” your promotion has been made illegal under Facebook’s contest regulations, you can still “Like-prompt” if you use a third-party tool. This adds an entry popup to your promotion prompting visitors to like your Facebook Page (but doesn’t require it).


35. Host Meetups with Other Marketers in Your Area

For the past two years, Wishpond has hosted a foosball tournament with other Vancouver startups. Each year we have about 100 people crammed into our office, music, food and enough alcohol to satisfy even the hardiest of programmers.

It’s a fantastic way for our business (and yours, if you so choose) to generate connections in our city and our sector. Let alone the buzz generated by 40 internet startups talking about it in the weeks beforehand.

Give it a shot. You never know who you’ll meet!

To Learn More…

Check out our article “5 B2B Lead Generation Strategies We Use Ourselves.”


36. Enter to Win Industry Awards

There are dozens of industry awards available to your business, no matter the industry. From “Top Startup Vancouver” to “Entrepreneur of the Year” to “Winner of the Newark Sandwich Place 2011” – it doesn’t matter. Awards put your business on the map. There is inevitable press releases and whoever is organizing the award has a vested interest in spreading the word (driving traffic to your website).

The other awesome part of winning awards is the trust it creates with your website visitors. Seeing a “Top [X] 2016” logo on your landing pages or homepage drives belief in your legitimacy and increases your website conversion rate.

To Learn More…

Check out this list of “Top North American Awards for Entrepreneurs.”


37. Reshare Old Content

Think the lifecycle of your articles maxes out at 5 days?

This is a persistent rumor that I’m happy to see die. The shelf life of good content is eternity.

A few ways we keep old content alive:

  • Reshare on Twitter and Facebook with different messaging. Tweak and [Repost](https://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675438382/how-to-repost-on-instagram).
  • Update old articles with new content or information.
  • Re-write portions of old, high-ranking articles but keep the keywords and keyword density (Brian Dean does this to his Skyscraper Article about once every couple months).
  • Re-promote your article to influencers as you find them and as their interests develop to become relevant.

38. Include Tools and Influencers in Content and Inform them of Inclusion

A few times in this massive list I’ve mentioned BuzzSumo and other tools. This isn’t just because they’re, genuinely, extremely useful when creating and brainstorming content or doing outreach. An element of creating 10x content which you want to be shared all over the web is mentioning your favorite tools in your article and then informing them of their being mentioned.

It works the same as if I were to do something like give you a quotes on this subject from a top thought-leader…

“Adding influencers to your content initiatives in the form of quotes, callouts, and short interviews help validate your own good content while helping to promote the influencers in your industry. It’s a win-win- win — for you, the influencers and, ultimately, your audience.” Jason Miller – Manager of Content, LinkedIn

Now I simply inform him of his inclusion in this article and, hopefully, he shares it. But even if he doesn’t, I’ve still validated my own point with the words of someone who knows what they’re talking about.

To Learn More…

Check out “50 Influencers Speak out on Influencer Marketing.”


39. Create a Content Mailout Group with Brands with Similar Target Markets

This is something I really want to try, though haven’t quite gotten off the ground quite yet. Essentially, this would be a group of four or five companies (plus your own) who come together to do a monthly mailout of “Top Content We Think You’ll Like.”

You’d find a few other businesses like yours (though not competitors) who have a similar target market. You’d choose one piece of content per month (not promotional, as it’d be a harder sell) and say…

“I (and these four other companies with me) will share one of yours if you share one of ours. You quadruple your article’s email reach and it only costs you the price of sharing awesome content to your list.”

The exact structure would be up to your business, but it’s worth thinking about. And I’ll update this post if we try it and find success (or failure).


40. Optimize for SEO

Of course optimizing your site for SEO deserves more than a single paragraph in this article but, like Google Adwords above, this isn’t exactly a revolutionary strategy (and I’d like to provide as much “new” ideas as possible).

Nonetheless, optimizing your site and content for SEO is probably the single most effective strategy for driving website traffic. SEO is what determines whether you have to pay for your target keywords. It’s the definitive factor in creating organic traffic to our site and the basis for inbound marketing.

Don’t underestimate the importance of SEO in your business’ success.

To Learn More…

Check out “Moz’ Beginner’s Guide to SEO, as it’s pretty much the most definitive free guide out there. I’d also recommend you pick up the “SEO for Dummies” book (Yes, a hardcopy book. Breathe. It’s okay.)


41. Outreach to Get your Platform or Service Reviewed

There are thousands of review websites out there, and (though some more reputable than others) they all provide value.

At Wishpond, one of my colleagues spends a couple days each month searching for and reaching out to bloggers or reviewers asking them to feature Wishpond. Sometimes it costs, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some of them are competitor comparison sites, and some are straight down the line price point.

For all of these reviewers, we give limited-time, complete access to our Pro version as well as a discount once it’s expired. This costs us nothing, but can result in serious returns.

At the very least, we get an external link.

To Learn More…

There are a few main review and comparison sites out there. Some of the top include…


42. Integrate with Relevant Brands

This won’t be applicable to every business out there. But if integration is feasible for your brand, I highly recommend you push it – and not just because it increases the value of your platform or service.

Every integration you have should get its own landing page and feature release on your blog. And you should be pushing your integrator hard to promote the integration to their own audience.

Integrations are a great way to (like co-promotions or co-webinars) reach the audience of businesses related to you.

To Learn More…

Check out an example of an integration write-up on the Wishpond blog: [Feature Release] The Last Integration You’ll Ever Need


43. Use an RSS Feed to Syndicate Content

You might say, “But James, RSS feeds are sooo 2011!” and I’d say “Fair.”

So I’m not going to recommend that you make the main CTA on your blog “Subscribe to our RSS Feed” like you did a few years ago. That is pretty much covered by the much superior subscriber list. But the sites which aggregate RSS feeds still exist, and without an existing feed, you’ll lose out on the traffic which is visiting those sites.

Business2Community, Feedly, Feedreader, Google Reader – these RSS aggregators have hundreds of thousands of visitors every day. Even if you’re not actively promoting subscription to your RSS feed, you’ll still be losing out on the prospective website visitors by dropping it completely.

To Learn More…

Check out a few of my recommended RSS management tools or creators


44. Offer up Free Marketing Tools

Each one of these are examples of free marketing tools provided by software companies. And you might be wondering why they do it. Why offer for free an element of your business you charge for?

Because these tools are useful and searchable in their own right. I, for instance, actually heard about CoSchedule because of this tool, and now it’s on the tip of my tongue whenever someone asks me if I have a recommended content calendar tool.

Free tools like this provide another element of your business to draw traffic, and if (like CoSchedule’s) they’re only relevant to your target market, that traffic is qualified.

Top Tip:

If you can brainstorm a way to offer a part of your service in a free tool (see SEMRush or even Buffer for a good example of this) to deliver value to your target market and showcase how valuable a full version of the service would be, then you’re winning.


45. Create Video Content on YouTube

Video content is more and more valuable as the inbound world gets more saturated. Content which is different stands out, and a well-made video does just that. Not to mention the fact that YouTube is an audience of one billion people…

The difficulty, of course, is that YouTube itself is a saturated content platform. In 2014 (the last year I could easily find stats for this) 300 hours were uploaded to YouTube every minute. I imagine it’s substantially more today.

So how do you stand out on YouTube and drive website visitors in the process?

  • Invest in high-quality video. A DSLR, tripod, greenscreen and (most importantly) a lapel mic go a long way to making your business one of the few out there creating genuinely professional video content.
  • Don’t skimp on the script. Edit your script as much as you edit any of the content you create.
  • Don’t skimp on the editing. It’s far more important (and time-consuming) than the actual recording of your video. Think about intro music, intro graphics, transitions, screen capture overlays, coinciding audio and video, and more. We use FinalCut and would recommend it.
  • Speak about half as fast as you think you should. It’s wild, but you’ll be 100% more understandable and you’ll thank me down the line.

To Learn More…

Check out an example of a popular and high-quality Wishpond case study uploaded to YouTube.

And check out Wistia and their incredible library of video-creation resources (may I particularly recommend their moving musical tribute to their old DSLR).


46. Repurpose Successful Content Into Infographics, Videos and SlideShares

Not every one of your articles will suit repurposing, but those that can be, should be.

Repurposing gives you the most bang for your content-creation buck. It expands your content’s reach to multiple platforms and increases link-backs, SEO, and overall engagement – not to mention website traffic.

Content ideal for repurposing should…

  • Be made up of bite-sized pieces of content, which suits visual content such as infographics and slidedecks.
  • Have high traffic beyond the standard 5-day lifespan of an article – this means that creating “value-add” pieces of repurposed content was even more valuable. Adding “value-adds” to low-traffic content rarely results in a positive ROI.
  • Be of high value – making people want to download, keep it around and keep referring to it over time.

Top Tip:

When you link your original article or website within a slidedeck, be sure to put it at the top of the slide. Slideshare places a nav bar over the bottom 30 or so pixels of every slidedeck so you can navigate between slides. This nav bar will overwrite any links you have at the bottom.

To Learn More…

For an impressive example of repurposed content (into both an infographic, slideshare and ebook), check out our article “100 Growth Hacks We Learned from 5 Years as a Startup” as well as its corresponding slideshare and ebook.

For a walkthrough on how to do it, check out “How You Can Repurpose Content into Powerful Lead Generation Incentives.”


47. Use Offline Marketing to Drive People Online

Have a brick-and-mortar? Have a website that doesn’t suck? (Those things aren’t always equally true, unfortunately). If so, you’re missing a beat if you’re not encouraging your business real-world walk-in traffic to become website visitors.

A few ways you can do this…

  • Incentivize a social Share (this works particularly well with a business-centric Instagram hashtag) by giving away something small in return.
  • Prompt email subscription by talking about the benefits.
  • Offer online-only discount or coupon codes.
  • Prompt people to enter your social promotion with hard-copy messaging.
  • Make it a policy to remind people (who seem to have had a good time) to leave a review.

48. Create and Maintain an Affiliate Marketing Strategy

Similarly to our outreach/review strategy (#41 above), one of the members of our marketing team invests a couple days a month in maintaining and growing our affiliate marketing strategy. Once it’s set up, it doesn’t require much more than that.

Essentially, affiliate marketing is simply the giving of a cut (Wishpond offers 30% of lifetime value) for anyone who refers a user to your platform, software or service.

Setting up an affiliate marketing strategy:

  • Create an affiliate-specific landing page (that link is to an example, not just a link to our landing page tool, by the way).
  • Create deliverables: banner images, tracking links, logos, etc, and send them in an auto-response email upon signup.
  • Register with an affiliate-specific dashboard (we use GetAmbassador) to give your affiliates a dashboard showing their revenue as well as amount of clicks and conversions from their tracking link.
  • Create a step-by-step course on how affiliate marketers can best sell your platform.
  • Follow up periodically with your most successful affiliates, especially regarding platform and feature updates.

Affiliate marketing accounts for about 5% of Wishpond’s monthly revenue. Not too shabby for a couple days of work a month (one we got it set up, of course…)


49. Engage in Cold-Email Outreach

This one is a bit controversial, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

There are many businesses out there (Salesforce’s Data.com, Insideview and Hoovers to name a few) who, for a fee, will provide your business with segmented lists of professionals based on industry, job title and any number of other criteria.

Combining those email lists with a platform like Salesfolk (which automates emails as well as follow-up based on recipient behavior) gives you a seriously automated and, in many ways, optimized strategy for reaching new businesses.

All of this requires serious prep work. You need to determine which of your service’s targeted industries would respond best. You need to create (though many cold email services will help) the emails. You need to create the content and the case studies required for sales-oriented emails

But in many ways it’s not all that different from how I recommend you nurture a lead into a sale with email – it’s just the first point of contact is cold, rather than a warm opt-in.

And no matter how you look at it or what you think of cold email campaigns, they work for many businesses – both to drive traffic and sales.

Up to you!


50. Have and Maintain a PR Strategy

Every time your business does something cool (CSR, award won, feature release, integration, foosball tournament), you need to spread the word.

Whether you have a PR professional in-house, outsource it to an agency or have one of your content writers do a 6-week PR course at the local community college is entirely up to you. But no matter what, good PR can be a huge driver of website traffic – so don’t neglect it!

Conclusion

These are the 50 strategies we use to drive more than 350,000 readers to our site and 250,000 to our blog, every month .

If you have any questions about any of them, don’t hesitate to ask in the comment section and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Hope you find value here!

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