The amount of traffic visiting a website is crucial for the success of a business. In the majority of cases, the amount of traffic a site gets is directly proportional to the organization’s sales as the company has a greater number of its audience going through the conversion funnel.

Webmasters agree on the fact that it is crucial to diversify the number of traffic sources. Even though there is no conflict in this regard, the real question remains: how can you do this? You will find some helpful tips in this article.

• Why You Need Multiple Traffic Sources for Your Website
• How can Multiple Content Streams Help your Business?
• 10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic Without Google
• What are the most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies?

Why You Need Multiple Traffic Sources for Your Website

Before we dive into the various other sources that can be used to gain web traffic, it is important to figure out whether or not your online presence has become too reliant on Google.

While someone at some point would have encouraged you to make sure that your website shows up in Google’s search results, to which you would have responded by investing considerable resources in securing a decent place in Google’s SERPs.

Read Also: Why Ad Relevancy is Important in Boosting Your Website Revenue

Even though Google – being the most commonly used search engine – can (and does) direct streams of traffic to a business’s website, a site that is too reliant on Google is actually in the risk zone. How?

Well, a single update in Google’s algorithm or a change in the way Google ranks websites can have devastating effects on a website, as has happened to many websites that were previously heavily using keywords for ranking purposes (Google has shifted from excessive keyword usage as a ranking factor).

Change is imminent. In the year 2013, Google forked out over 15 updates, many of which had negative effects on the traffic of many online businesses. Losing all or most traffic from Google is a very real scenario, and this is one of the most crucial reasons that make it necessary for you to have multiple traffic sources for your website.

1. Paid Advertising

One of the most obvious ways of getting web traffic is through paid advertising. If you have not looked into investing in other websites to have them direct traffic to your site, then it is about time that you do so. A well-laid out paid advertising strategy can do wonders for your online presence and it should be implemented as a permanent part of any online business’s marketing plan.

2. Email Marketing

There is no other way of getting traffic to your website that is quicker and cheaper than email marketing. Any online business that is not building its email database is wasting a lot of opportunities – and possible customers.

You can include a link to your site in the signature of the email. A well-planned email marketing campaign can do a wonderful job of drawing more and more people to your website. Increase the chances of conversion by offering a freebie – people simply love free things that are of a certain value.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media is undoubtedly among one of the most effective and tested ways of directing traffic to a certain website. Social media platforms are brimming with users – and the numbers simply continue to increase at unprecedented rates. Even the lesser known networks can generate significant amounts of traffic to a website.

The best way to utilize social media channels is to establish your presence on different platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. A lot of businesses operate accounts on a number of social media platforms, keeping in touch with their audience by providing latest updates and quality content.

Today, businesses need to be more interactive with consumers as the latter demand a more personalized service. Social media networks enable just that by providing a platform for direct communication.
You can post links to articles/blogs and other interesting content that may be hosted on your website. This will lead the user to your website when they click the link.

4. Link Building

Link building is yet another way of drawing website traffic without depending on Google. You can request your partners & vendors to link to your website. Also, enter marketplaces to showcase your range of products and services and include a link to your website in the description area.

Another way of building links is to develop other websites that provide information related to your industry. For instance, you can create an informative website to educate people about your industry. Links can then lead visitors to your main website.

5. Online and Offline PR

‘Any form of publicity is good’ definitely holds true when traffic generation is concerned. Nevertheless, because you are interested in growing your business, it is imperative that you use only positive PR techniques. When done correctly, this marketing technique can yield long term results.

Whenever you launch a new product or a service, or if you expand your outreach, have a professional PR developed for both online and offline publishing. However, with PRs, it is important that they are newsworthy and interesting if they are to draw attention. Such PRs can be submitted online on websites such as PRWeb.

Meetups can also be hosted to draw attention to your company’s activities. Make sure the visitors have a great time – there is nothing more memorable than something that people enjoyed doing. For instance, offer games for children, free food or giveaways with your company logo and website printed on them.

The Internet has become an integral part of our lives. Scores of people get online to search for products, services, and information to digest. The internet offers businesses and marketers immense opportunities to maximize their productivity as well as profits. With so much competition in almost every other industry, it is important that you utilize every possible method for drawing traffic to your website.

How can Multiple Content Streams Help your Business?

Having just one or two platforms to market your business is no longer enough. Companies must adopt a multi-platform marketing and promotion approach to grow their business in a sustainable manner.  Not only are people spending more time online, but they are also using more types of devices to do so – from tablets and mobile phones to smart TVs and laptops.

Brands have to try harder to grab and maintain the attention of their potential customers – even if it is by offering live website support. A strong online presence allows a brand to roll out a wide range of digital marketing strategies all the while maintaining consistent messaging across all platforms.

Maximize the Brand’s Audience Reach

Multiple content streams to deliver a brand’s message helps increase the brand’s reach to a larger audience. Reaching out via SnapChat, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other digital marketing platform simultaneously will place the ad in front of the potential customer who might have missed out on an earlier promotional post simply because their eyes (and their attention) was elsewhere!

Brush Up Existing SEO Strategy

Having the company’s name as well as relevant keywords on various websites will help your brand’s name appear in searches more often. Search engine optimization can boost search rankings of your own website or account pages while also drawing more eyeballs to linked online websites.  Another benefit of improved SEO rankings is an uptick in website traffic due to word-of-mouth referrals.

Build Better Customer Experiences

In the era where just about anything can go viral within seconds- it is important to be aware of your company’s online reputation. This includes managing the perception consumers have about the brand, especially when there has been some damaging feedback about a particular product or service. 

Reputations can be made or broken by being responsive when dealing with customers – so make sure you facilitate your customers and address their queries proactively through multiple content streams.

Top Priority: Consistent Brand Messaging

Your company’s branding must be consistent throughout a particular campaign, even if the marketing strategy is a mix of both traditional and digital marketing. 

Though it may take some time before a brand builds a sustainable flow of engaged visitors for their social media accounts, it always pays off to promote the brand where the potential customers spend most of their time.

10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic Without Google

Rather than worry about losing or never having Google organic search traffic, plan for it. You can’t rely on a single traffic source for business. You need multiple streams of traffic as insurance against the inevitable search algorithm changes.

Having a mix of trophy and long-tail phrases ranking in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) is the equivalent of manna from heaven to any online business. There’s nothing better, if you have it, and nothing worse if you lose it.

More than one business has suffered collateral (sometimes fatal) damage in the wake of a Google algorithm update. Thousands more are certain to suffer a similar fate in the future.

The reality is that most small companies will never rank well in Google and are wasting their time focusing on SERPs alone. The days of David beating Goliath in organic search are numbered, at best, and in most cases, nothing but a memory.

If you don’t have the budget to create content and build backlinks better than your competitors, you will not outrank them. If you’re a new entry in a crowded niche, it will be a long time, if ever, before you achieve any meaningful SERPs.

Rather than worry about losing or never having Google organic search traffic, plan for it. No one can afford to rely upon a single traffic source for business. You need multiple streams of traffic as insurance against the inevitable changes in search algorithms.

Here are the 10 best ways to generate traffic without Google.

1. Blog Commenting

There are several top blogs in your niche (like this one) that get hundreds if not thousands of visitors on a daily basis. The proper way to do blog commenting is to thoroughly read the post and if you have something useful or meaningful to add to the conversation, then leave a comment.

The purpose of commenting isn’t to drop a link, but to add value to the conversation and to grow your network. Use your real name as the commenter and a percentage of readers will click through to learn more about you.

If you have content on your site related to the post, use that URL as a link rather than the home page. Those who do click through will then have an even better user experience.

2. Content Aggregators

Just create great content and Google will reward you with traffic, right? Maybe, if you have an established website with lots of trust and authority. Not so much, if you have a new blog or website. The workaround for this is getting your content listed on popular content aggregators, where lots of people will see it.

Some popular aggregators include:

• Alltop bills itself as the “online magazine rack” of the Web.
• BizSugar.com is a community of small business owners and entrepreneurs.
• Growth Hackers is a community sharing online marketing techniques.
• Hacker News is a social news website that caters to programmers and entrepreneurs.
• Inbound.org is a community sharing and discussing content and online marketing ideas.

Pay attention to the rules and don’t submit to unrelated aggregator sites. Make sure the content is useful, original, high-quality, and not just self-promotional.

3. Forum Commenting

As you are reading this, there are probably dozens of conversations happening around the Web that are related to your niche. Joining or starting a forum conversation can result in instant traffic.

As with blog commenting, this isn’t about dropping a link, but rather about engaging a conversation and adding value to that conversation. Forum commenting reminds me of the show American Pickers, where they discuss finding the honey hole. When we find a forum where the client really “clicks” with the community, it can drive thousands of visits over time.

Find related forums using the Google search operator “Keyword inurl:forum.” Join the forum, pay attention to the rules, participate, and become a real member of that community. Avoid blatant self-promotion – it isn’t necessary and will backfire. If you’re providing useful information in the forum, users will seek you out.

4. Guest Blogging

Matt Cutts’ manifesto, “The Decay and Fall of Guest Blogging for SEO,” has been widely misunderstood as meaning that guest blogging is dead. It isn’t. What Cutts said was this: “If you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

Guest blogging done properly has nothing to do with links – it’s all about leveraging traffic. If your content appears on a popular blog, you accomplish two things:

1. You establish yourself as an authority in the niche.
2. A certain percentage of the blog readers will look into your product or service and become customers.

Read “Power Guest Posting for SEO” by Eric Enge and follow his instructions on the proper way to guest post heading forward.

5. Q&A

Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers offer another great opportunity to generate highly targeted traffic. If you can provide a genuine solution to a real problem, you may have a customer for life. At the very least, you’ll build up good karma.

Don’t spam these sites by asking, then answering your own questions. Once again, the purpose of this exercise is to provide useful information and to drive traffic.

6. Reddit

If you can find a relevant niche or subreddit with a decent number of subscribers (thousands) and traffic, then Reddit is an option worth exploring. The key is to create useful content relevant to the subreddit. A percentage of Reddit users will read your content, click through to your site, and buy your product or service, if it is a good fit.

There are unique rules for every subreddit, which you should know and follow. Generally speaking, links to your own site are allowed, but linking exclusively to your own site is not.

Participating in the community is important, so remember to leave comments for others. Reddit has a voting system, so the more you post the better your chance to increase your score. Conversely, if your content stinks and gets down voted, your score will go down. Over time, you should build up a good reputation.

Research the subreddit to see what types of posts historically get upvoted to the front page. Once you know the pattern, create a unique version that matches the model of past success. Page one is never guaranteed, but after some trial and error, the odds for success will improve.

7. Social Media

Bet you saw this one coming. For most people, Facebook offers the best opportunity for traffic. The formula for success is pretty simple: Optimize your Facebook profile and link back to your website. Provide useful and fun content on a regular basis. Make it easy to share your website content on Facebook by using a share button.

Depending on the niche, Twitter, Vine, and Instagram have all proven to be successful in driving significant traffic. If you have the resources, test these out as well.

8. YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Web, processing more than 3 billion searches a month. To put this in perspective, it’s bigger than Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL combined and should not be ignored.

In my experience, the best performing videos for many e-commerce websites are how-tos and tutorials. Niche videos can drive tons of traffic.

You may not have heard of the Honda Ruckus – it’s a small scooter. If you have a Honda repair shop, you might want to consider producing a video on how to change the oil – this one has generated more than 25,000 views.

Check out Brian dean’s post on 5 Advanced YouTube SEO Tactics to Drive More Traffic to Your Videos & Website

9. Email

The number one message delivered by top affiliate marketers is “the money is in the list.” In reality, every business can benefit from a mailing list. With robust and easy-to-use email services like Mailchimp to manage lists and campaigns, there’s no excuse for missing out on this opportunity.

Another reason to love email is the conversion rate of 3.34 percent. Compare this to search at 1.94 percent and social at 0.79 percent and you can see just how productive this form of marketing can be.

A/B test your emails. A simple variation in the subject line can vastly affect the open rate.

What are the most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies?

There are so many digital marketing strategies, and sometimes it can be overwhelming when you’re trying to decide which one to prioritize. Marketers looking for the ultimate digital marketing strategy need to have a clear understanding of their business, product, and demographics before choosing a digital marketing strategy that will be effective for their needs.

In new research, 200+ global marketing leaders were interviewed to find out what they thought the future held for digital marketing, and interestingly enough, digital strategy and planning ranked one of the top four skills they consider ‘extremely important’.

When it comes to your digital marketing campaigns, you don’t want to waste your time by choosing the wrong one, and you need to stay on top of your lead generation activities as well.

Here’s a comprehensive how-to guide that can help you drive customer engagement, raise brand awareness, and generate leads in 2020 and beyond.

The Most Effective Strategies

According to Smart Insights, the most effective strategy in 2019 was social media marketing, followed by content marketing, and the least was data management, with SEO being somewhere in the middle of it all.

While this is by no means cut and dry (some strategies will work better than others, depending on a number of variables), it does offer an interesting glimpse as to the most probable methods of lead generation.

Email and video each constantly stand out as effective ways to market almost any product through any industry, though in the chart listed with Smart Insights, it’s not as powerful as content or social media marketing.

What matters more than the type of marketing you are doing is whether or not your all-around approach is well-matched with your brand and message. To that end, the following are some considerations for creating an effective campaign in the context of your business.

Stay Nimble

Here’s the thing about digital marketing: it’s a bit of a trial and error process. So while you absolutely want to make a plan, you also have to be flexible with:

• Shifting SEO patterns
• Upcoming trends
• Your content calendar and timeline
• One or two social channels only (the ones that perform best)
• Which KPIs to focus on
• When to get progress reports, where you can discuss and regroup

A successful strategy will always need some tweaking and as such needs careful and continual monitoring and adjusting. If you’re working alone or in a small company, don’t be afraid to hire outside consultants to help you dig through your metrics and redefine goals if something doesn’t seem to be working the way it was planned.

Deeply Understand Your Customer

No digital marketing strategy will be effective if you don’t first have a clear understanding of who buys your product and why they buy it. Where and how they buy it may or may not be relevant as well. Dig deep and explore various demographics in order to not only understand what they want to buy but also understand what they’re concerned with culturally, socially, and politically.

An example of customer awareness is Airbnb’s success with #weaccept, initially a Super Bowl ad that came out after President Trump’s travel ban. It had 5 million views in a month on YouTube, plus the well-received hashtag gained plenty of celebrity attention. That is not to say that you should take the risk of being political, but being culturally sensitive, especially when on-brand, is never a bad thing.

Mercedes’ #MBPhotoPa ss campaign is just one of many examples of campaigns that used a combination of technology, authenticity, and a simple message with an influencer partnership to capture the attention of animal- and adventure-lovers. 

This video was part of the campaign. It offers a 360-degree VR view of a canine Instagram star, Loki, and his owner Kelly Lund driving through snowy mountains in a Mercedes. The campaign featured a variety of real people having real adventures, which made it go viral.

Form a robust profile of your audience and inform your tactics by:

• Defining the channels that fit key demographics best
• Speaking their language, considering that “language” isn’t just words
• Understanding their pain points and how to switch on emotions
• Creating useful personas for each of your demographics to help you visualize their lives and predict buying patterns
• Being culturally aware
• Considering unique partnerships such as with influencers
• Focusing on action-oriented experiences and results rather than the product itself
• Using well-developed automation tools for highly detailed segmentation and targeting

Focus on the End Result

In marketing and product development, there is often so much emphasis placed on the product and the “numbers” surrounding it (profits) that sometimes people lose sight of the need that the product fulfils.

What truly matters is who you are marketing to, and why. You need to understand their pain points in order to get what they’re ultimately doing with your product. In other words, when you demonstrate the post-buying moments, they’ll then remember why they need it in the first place.

Use Content for Lead Generation

There are many ways of generating leads, but one tried and tested method is by providing valuable written content and distributing it appropriately. When you tie your blogs and articles to a specific offer via a landing page, you boost your conversion potential.

According to Entrepreneur, bloggers are 13 times more likely to have a positive ROI, and companies have the same type of results.

Go Live and Use Audio

When you take the lead on organizing and hosting in-person events, including live webinars that can also be distributed to valued contacts later or used as a special offer, you’re establishing authority and connectivity in the field. And the best part is that these events don’t even have to be formal. If you know that a few peers in your field are in the same city as you, you can plan a meetup night to connect.

Anything that you record in high-quality or that you do to facilitate education and connection will stick in people’s minds.

Focus on Mobile

According to Statistica, some 4.78 billion people worldwide will be connected to mobile phones as of 2020. And Convince & Convert claims that 40% of shoppers consult at least one social or search channel as they shop and that 4 out of 5 shoppers use their smartphones as part of their regular consuming habits.

If you think about it, this is truly becoming the norm. Whether you’re looking up reviews for a popular video game, checking restaurant ratings on Yelp or simply seeing if your local store has the right item in stock, you’re using mobile a lot for basic consumer needs.

Read Also: Choosing the Right Monetization Partner

With that in mind, here are a few ways you can ensure that your mobile marketing strategy stays on track:

• Optimize your website for both desktops and smartphones
• Use clickable phone numbers, addresses, and CTAs (calls to action)
• Make sure your contact details are connected to a map app
• Ensure a quickly loading website
• Always review ads for social media or other types of mobile-friendly platforms

Use Content to Show Authority & Authenticity

Don’t just use social to “post” – you want to share your own company’s values and mission no matter what channel or method you’re using.

A few tips on this:

• Get personal with live videos. Provide interactive elements and behind-the-scenes looks at the company or product whenever possible.
• Offer ongoing learning and education as a part of your brand’s mission, whether it’s about the brand itself or about a cause it’s close to.
• Use podcasting and written interviews to generate content on a conversational level and ensure that you have SEO-optimized, authoritative content out there on the web.
• Post your live and other videos to your website and even embed them in ads. Video is one of the top-converters, and it doesn’t require a high budget to use well.

And don’t forget the emotion-based storylines. Stories that appeal to the real people behind your company can be beneficial. They make your company appear more personable and approachable, building trust. Consumers are looking for more meaning behind their purchasing habits. Give them a good reason to continue choosing you.

Review and Refine

When you first develop your marketing plan, it’s imperative that you include key performance indicators (KPIs) that fit with crucial business goals. You need to have a plan in place in order to understand your goals and objectives. Then, once you understand these, you can monitor the metrics giving you information about the KPIs that matter.

So, you’ll need to:

• Step away from vanity metrics – that is, don’t pay attention to the numbers that aren’t absolutely crucial parts of your long-term success
• Use KPIs to measure success, but don’t have them set in stone (i.e., be flexible)
• Set up continuous intervals for analyzing, understanding, measuring, and then reporting
• Understand how to isolate critical metrics if it looks like something is not working

The bottom line with any digital marketing campaign or tactic is to stay aligned with your core purpose, not just your product. Focus on benefits, address customer’s real needs, and understand what makes them tick.

As well, stay on top of which social trends are affecting various demographics. Remember that it’s really your job to “follow” the customer and not the other way around.