Some people think that if they have a website it will make more business for themselves. That the instant they launch their website it will generate a new lead. This is not always the case; it is heavily pending on the type of site you have. If your website is just a way of people to contact you digitally, then the website its self may not draw much attention. You need to have marketing into advertising your website. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a key in this but does not do all the work to draw new people to your website. Here are ten ways to draw more traffic to your website:

1)      Keywords: Are specifically selected words that you would use to explain, describe or relate to your website. Example – your website is to sell the fact that you make website. Key words to use could be, ‘Website, design, develop, development, HTML, CSS, C#, asp.net, your first name, your last name, and your city’. All of these will help google pick-up on that these words when searched should help point to your site when they are setup on your website in meta tags.

2)      Social Media:  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more have become huge tools for business owners. You can post about company events happening or about event that the company is involved. Business will post about sales and promotions happening for limited time. I have even seen companies post about their employee’s babies and saying that the newest team members have arrived. Anything and everything that companies post on social media can spread like wild fire. The more likes, retweets and shares you get on the post means there are more eyes on your business.

3)      Blogging: Many companies have started to blog, they will blog how to’s or top 10, 20’s and 30’s. Because blogging is another form of social media. It can draw a lot of attention and spread your business name around. I have even dabbled in this as you can tell which I am not the best at it but I still try.

4)      Backlinks: Is a hyperlink that links from a Web page, back to your own Web page or Web site. Also called an Inbound Link (IBL) these links are important in determining the popularity of your Web site in search engines. Try and get affiliate companies to post a link on their website for your own. It draws some of their traffic to your website, but you can offer to do the same for their website.

5)      Post on Listing Sites: By listing site, I refer to Kijiji or Craig’s List and the many others out there. Many people spend hours a day looking through these sites in pursue of something. That something could be related to your business and if you do not have a listing then you are missing on potential sales.

6)      SiteMap.xml: Are important most search engines will look for this file by default when looking through you site. A SiteMap.xml file is essentially a file that contains all the links with in your website.

7)      Submit your Site Map to Search Engines: Using search engine Sites such as Google. They have a Search Engine Console tool that can be use by website owners. You can submit your website sitemap.xml file, this not only speeds up Google listing your website within the results them selves but they analyze all the links and provide feed back if there are any errors or concerns that would prevent your website from preforming its best.

8)      Sign Up as Business on Google: Whether your business has its own location or it is ran out of your home. You can sign up on Google as Business. Which you can setup information such as hours of operations, contact information and a link to your website. This also allows clients to leave reviews about your business and the service you provide them. I know some business owners run out of home but do not want people randomly to show up to there home. I get it, I have the same deal for my web development I do. While setting up on Google there is an option to show address. Which I selected to hide my address on my business listing. If Google does not know about your business yet, they will send you out a pin to verify you are a real business and not a bot. This pin took about 3 weeks to show up for myself.

9)      Google AdWords: I personally do not use this one. Only because I run my web development as a side job. However, I have helped others set this up for their business. You do have to watch because this can get expensive. Thankfully, there are options to set a limit per day.  The nice thing about this you can target your audience better with this system. Because you can type individual city names and create a list of place, you are willing to travel for your clients. Also with this since you are paying for an ad your business will show up in the top sections of the first page on Google when a keyword you have selected is searched.

10)  SSL Certificate: Stands for Secure Socket Layer. This certificate allows for secure transmission between your web server and your clients browser. It encrypts the data sent to your website, so that people cannot read the data going to your server. Also as of recent Google has been giving ranking benefits to websites that have this certificate. If you business is to sell cars and in Google a user searches 'car lots'. If you your website is setup to use these keywords and so are another four business websites. If these four other business have the SSL setup, they will show up on the search before yours.

There are more ways out there to advertise your business. To get the notice you are looking for on the web. However, the above will help you get on your way to ranking your company higher on Google. Also, note that Google does take its time to change things on the web if you have started to do any of the above it may take a few weeks to notice if your efforts are helping.