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Stuck working at home? Unemployed due to the economic downturn? It might be time to consider a new project like building a website. Tools for building sites have improved recently, including the new GoDaddy Websites + Marketing builder, the Wix Editor X app for professional coders and designers, and new features in Squarespace that make it easier than ever to add a blog with rich SEO.
I decided to ask some experts about what to do after you build the site and how to promote it effectively. I dug through a mountain of feedback and picked the tips and tricks that stood out for being novel and unique. If you try any of these tips and they work, drop me a note by email and tell me your story.
1. Rely on websites that are getting significant traffic
“Search for your main keywords and click through the top three links that you see on Google. Look at those pages and see how you could get your brand included on them. Is there a broken link in their content that you could fix? Are there statistics or information you could provide that would make their content more valuable? Or, could you offer them a promotional product as a trade for inclusion? If you find a creative way to be on their list, it will add significant traffic back to your own site. This is a great strategy for those who are just starting out and have a limited budget.”
Flynn Zaiger, Social Media Strategist, Optimists in Washington, D.C.
2. Look for offline publicity events
“An example would be for a small bakery. They could donate cupcakes to frontline workers and send a press release to their local media. Companies could also seek out local bloggers and send them product samples. By connecting with local audiences, it will drive brand recognition and lead to higher traffic on your website.”
Link Moser, Windhill Design LLC
3. Utilize social media
“Be active across social media platforms and include the link to your website often on your posts. Also, be sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Consumers will not want to visit a site that is not easy to use on their smartphones.”
Norhanie Pangulima, Content Ambassador, Hernorm
4. Pin relatable images on Pinterest
“Pinterest is used as a search engine nowadays more than a social media platform. Start pinning images that are linked to your website on Pinterest so that more users see them and can click to your site.”
Jessica Rhoades, Owner and Designer, Create IT Web Designs
5. Get active on Quora
“Quora is a question and answer platform where people post questions and wait for experts to answer. Find relevant questions about your market and touch on some of your content. Include your website in your answer to direct them there. With over 300 million monthly active users, this is a great way to provide information and raise traffic.”
Shari Smith, Founder, Shari-Sells
6. Include videos on your website
“Using videos with subtitles on your website is a great way to boost SEO because consumers will likely be attracted to watching the videos. Google sees the person is spending time on the site, the transcription is read by Google for keywords, and if it's embedded from YouTube you can increase your viewership or subscriptions there, too. If done correctly, it's a win-win-win all around.”
Monica Dema, President of Global Content, MDINC
7. Appear as a guest on other social media platforms, websites, and podcasts
“Participating as a guest in blogs, YouTube videos, or other forms of social media is a great way to add validity to your own brand, expand your audience, and gain attention. With a bigger audience comes more traffic to your website.”
Jayson DeMers, CEO, EmailAnalytics
8. Try trendjacking
“As the name suggests, trendjacking is a strategy in which you take advantage of a trending topic to amplify your content. And, this doesn’t necessarily have to be through written content. Take advantage of adding videos, podcasts, and other mediums to showcase the popular topics.”
Shayan Fatani, Digital Marketing Strategist, PureVPN
9. Find out what people think of your competitors
“One strategy we use is being listed on other people’s blogs and social media platforms to gain traffic to your own website. Additionally, you should know which blogs have featured your competitors and what information they have said. By searching in Google ‘intitle:[competitor name] review,’ you will obtain a list of websites that have done blog posts about your competitors. Note all of these down, use a resource like Hunter.io to find an email address for them, and send them a message with a hook as to why their audience would find your website relevant.”
Andy Cabasso, Co-founder, Postaga
10. Find your keyword golden ratio
“This technique includes targeting low volume (under 250), long-tail keywords that have very few ‘allintitle’ results on Google. You can search the exact long-tail keyword into Google through the use of allintitle by searching ‘allintitle: YOUR KEYWORD’ and seeing how many results show up. If you then write an article or blog post specifically about that keyword and have the whole long-tail keyword in your title, you are able to rank very quickly, possibly even showing up on the first or second page within a few hours. The great thing about this technique is you only need to implement it on a few posts for Google to start ranking your pages. It really kickstarts organic traffic and lifts you out of the dreaded sandbox.”
Blake Dan, Founder and Content Creator, GrillSimply
