The moment your site goes live is an exciting and monumental milestone in your business but now you’re probably thinking, “how do I get more people to visit it?”

That’s where digital marketers come into play but you don’t have to shell out a fortune to hire one to strategize and implement a marketing plan. There are many things you can do on your own that doesn’t require the expertise of a skilled digital marketer.

One. Content is King.

Content has always and will forever be the number one ranking factor for search engines. They use content to determine your relevancy for a particular search. But content alone isn’t enough. It has to be of high quality that engages with the user and keeps them on your page for more than a few seconds. With our attention span so high, you want to ensure your content is captivating enough to ensure your visitor doesn’t immediately click back to peruse through your competitors and contributing to your bounce rate, which Google uses as a factor as well.

What is quality content?

Content is a way for you to express your voice and provide real, unique value. This content should be different enough that visitors won’t find anywhere else. Content not only serves as value to the reader, but also to the search engine crawler, who crawls the page to determine its level of ranking to a search conducted. This is why it’s crucial to implement strategic keywords throughout your content. By strategic, I mean, keywords that a user would type into the search bar. For instance, if you’re a personal injury attorney with experience in medical malpractice and just wrote a blog post about cataract surgery and dealing with an ophthalmic insurance carrier, you should not be implementing “ophthalmic insurance” or “cataract surgery” as your keywords. The likelihood of someone searching for that is very low. Instead, you may consider using keywords such as “eye surgery malpractice”.

With your keyword in mind, make sure to add it to the appropriate header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc), HTML title tag and meta description tag. A search engine crawler weighs the header tags a lot more than the body paragraphs.

Two. Get Social.

Social media is a form of digital ranking for consumers and visitors. If you are not on social media, you will not be taken serious or be considered legitimate. Over 80% of shoppers research companies online before making a purchase. If you only have your website from which visitors can research upon, you lose the legitimacy a visitor is expecting.

But not all social media platforms are the same. You need to conduct very thorough research to identify where your ideal customer persona is “hanging out” in the digital world. For example, millennials spend more time on Facebook and Instagram whereas Gen-Z spends a lot of time on YouTube. Once you identify where the majority of your customers are, you can leverage content on those mediums. But it’s not enough to just post on social media. You must actively engage on these platforms. You must be “social” within these social media platforms. By engaging with your audience, you’ll also be able to know more of the content they want, which helps devise your content strategy.

Additional Social Media Hacks

• Add social media links to your email signature
• Create a branding hashtag which could be used for strategic campaigns and marketing initiatives
• Like and comment on accounts similar to yours
• Promote your social media accounts on your other channels

Three. Guest Blog and Invite Others To Guest Blog.

Guest posts serve multiple functions but ultimately, the core aim behind guest blogging is to increase your page authority. This can be best achieved through a strategic backlink initiative. There is really only two ways to get backlinks: 1) create compelling content that users would naturally want to link to or 2) ask for it.

By creating compelling and interesting content, your site will gain more popularity over time. Once you gain popularity with increasing daily traffic, people will naturally link to your content. Then, they will begin asking you to either be a guest blog on their site or guest blog on yours. Invite industry experts and other people in your niche to post an article on your own site. Though be sure you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links. Google will rank you lower for low-quality guest blogging.

Four. Leverage Influencers.

Depending on your target audience, influencer marketing can make or break your business. In fact, 92% of customers value word-of-mouth recommendations from people they trust over any other form of advertising. Regardless of your industry, there is no denying the importance Gen Z plays for the future of businesses. With over $44 billion direct purchasing power and now representing 25% of the population, businesses and marketers must find ways to reach out to Gen Z. Influencers is the best way in doing such.

Influencer marketing is the process of building relationships with influencers to get your online store in front of their audiences. It is a crucial part in your distribution strategy. Just like high-profile publishers, leveraging influencers is another shortcut to reach a new audience you wouldn’t have been able to do on your own.

Crawl through social media and see who your audience is already following. From there, begin fostering a relationship but do not ask for something from them immediately! Usually, high-end influencers will charge extreme prices to post your product or rave about your services. If you can afford to do so, then you can immediately ask them in return for some compensation. But if you’re a new business and strapped for cash, work on building a rapport and begin sharing their work, ask them questions and show genuine interest in their work.

From there, they might want to share your content on their own or you could interview them for a mutual benefit. People LOVE to talk about themselves so you’d be amazed at how many people will be willing to talk to you if you just ask them.  Send out emails requesting an interview to thought leadings or industry experts and publish these interviews on your blog. This will not only boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website, the interviewee will probably share the content too.

Five. Use Data.

We’ve stressed how important data is for crafting an agile and lean approach to success but many small businesses are overwhelmed with what it all means.  Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data on nearly every aspect of your website.  It not only shows data on your overall site and page performance, but drills it down to visitor demographics. If you’re well versed with Google Analytics, you can add custom tracking events for even further insight.

Make sure to keep a close eye on your analytics data and use this information to feed your promotional and content strategies. Look at visitor data to see when, where and how your site is getting traffic.  Pay attention to what posts and most popular and create further content based on that.

In Conclusion.

Remember that “fast” traffic isn’t always good traffic. When it comes to long-term return, SEO and content marketing are always a better alternative than paid advertising. Getting more website visitors to your site does not happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work and commitment but by applying various techniques, you can begin building your page authority and website traffic organically, without the need of hiring an expensive digital marketer.