So, you have a website now? Whether you are hosting on a free domain or have purchased your own it is important to have a game plan for what to do next. Sometimes it can be a bit daunting to start customizing a website, and even more frightening to begin adding content to it. Most websites fall into one of a few categories. However, whether it be a blog, personal portfolio, forum, a business site, or a website you sell things on, the process by which you get more people to come to your website and keep coming back is much the same.
While you may think that branding is something that is just for big companies that sell things, you can apply the same idea to any website. A blog? You are “selling” articles A forum? You are “selling” discussion. Not for money, but for traffic. Traffic is valuable for a website because if you can consistently get people to come and keep coming back to your website you are put in a very good position to “sell” your content, whatever it may be. Just like how companies like Nike and Apple use marketing strategies, it is important to try to make your content almost like a product you are selling.
There are four main rules to live by when it comes to getting consistent and quality traffic to your site:
- Produce Great Content: Whether it be interesting articles, eye-catching videos, high quality photos, or something else. It is important produce the best content you possibly can. Would you want to go back to a website with consistently “okay” content? The internet is a big place, and if you aren’t producing the best content you possibly can, someone else is probably doing it instead.
- Easy and Intuitive Navigation: Ease of use is a huge thing on the internet, websites are getting better and better at being easy for everyday people to use. Again, if you create a hard to navigate website, most people will go somewhere else for their content. People will always use whatever is easiest and most appealing both functionally and visually, which leads into the next point.
- Great Web Design: Design is one of the fundamental ideas of the technology industry today. Everything, whether it be a smart phone, laptop, tablet, or even just a website, needs to have an underlying design and style to it. Visually appealing websites keep people coming back time and time again. Look at big websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube. What are they doing that makes their sites so appealing? It is also worth researching which colors work best!
- Use SEO Keywords to Optimize Traffic: If you are unsure how SEO works, or don’t even know what it is, I wholeheartedly suggest doing some research for it. The basic idea behind SEO is that webpages get ranked by search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing based on how relevant they are. You can insert unique keywords into your website to allow for your website to rank higher on a search engine’s list based on what someone searches for, it is definitely worth looking into if you are attempting to get a lot of traffic to your site.
If you need assistance optimizing your website for more traffic and better ease of use from your visitors, please fill free to reach out. We are located in Danbury, Connecticut and are willing to help you get your website exactly how you want it, and increase your traffic.
