You’ve finally got your website up and open for business, but instead of people knocking down the virtual door, you’ve got crickets chirping. How do you get people to see it if you don’t want to pay a bundle in paid search ads?
Just putting up a great tech business website isn’t enough to make it magically show up in front of the right customers. But there are several ways of driving traffic to your website without having to pay a dime. All it takes it a little know-how and digital elbow grease.
93% of people never go past the first page of a search result.
While it can seem daunting to try to compete for that page one Google space in the organic search listings, if you have a little patience and follow the right strategies, it is possible to get your website in front of buyers without having to buy those paid Google ads.
If you’re trying to keep overhead down but need to generate more website visitors and sales, read on for our best tips to get your website noticed and visited regularly by more people.
Get More Traffic to Your IT Business Website for Free
Using good website marketing strategies can be the difference between your site being on the equivalent of a dead-end street down a dark alley or on Main street with tons of foot traffic.
In the digital age, websites are your virtual storefront that’s just as important as your physical one, and in many cases,f they can generate more business. Many businesses operate “virtually” without a physical location at all.
So how can you get yourself on that virtual Main street being seen by potential customers? Follow these time-tested strategies.
Ensure Your Site is Search Engine Optimized
Playing well with Google can make all the difference in where your website shows up on a keyword search. SEO simply means using the proper tagging, best practices, and meta descriptors when building your website pages that will let Google know what topics and keywords your site should come up for in a search.
While there are many nuances to SEO, here are some of the key things you can do to increase your organic search rankings:
- Decide which specific keyword(s) you’re using for each page and add them into the title and URL of the page and the text (Naturally! Google doesn’t like keyword stuffing)
- Use your keywords in ALT image tags and image names
- Use your keywords in the page meta description
- If you have a WordPress site, get the free Yoast SEO plugin that will help guide you to good search engine optimization practices
Use Content Marketing (i.e. Blogs)
B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those that don’t. Blogs give you a number of ways to attract website visitors and give clients a reason to come back to your website regularly (keeping your company fresh in their mind).
Posting regular blogs on topics of interest to your clientele helps with your SEO best practices, gives you content to leverage for social media and email newsletters, and adds to your company’s reputation as a trusted source in your industry.
Social Media Marketing
There are multi-million-dollar businesses that used nothing but social media to gain followers, build their brand, and bring in business. And while you might not have a dream of being an Instagram Influencer, you can still use social media to drive website visitors and sales.
Engaging with users interested in IT services or the tech industry gives you an opportunity to not only join in a conversation but also promote your business.
Some social media tips you can use:
- Follow #Hashtags pertinent to your industry and answer user questions that come up.
- Use LinkedIn to build an “online rolodex” of business clients, and re-post your blog content there tagged to your personal and/or company profile.
- Start a Facebook Group for “IT Tips and Tricks in (Your City)” or something with a similar local topic to get noticed locally and gain followers.
- Follow companies you’d like to work with and users in your key client demographic (many social media users follow back!).
Use the Power of Video
Video is becoming an important marketing tool for all types of businesses. People love visual content. YouTube offers a way to share your content broadly, gain followers, and add a call to action at the end of your videos to drive users to your website.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a video topic, use your blog as a jumping-off point. You can also do an ever-popular “How To” video, which are among the most popular.
One of the newer and fairly easy to use video editing tools out there is Adobe Premier Rush CC. IT uses drag-and-drop editing that makes it quick to learn and it publishes videos right to YouTube (or another platform) for you.
Create a Google My Business Account
You know those listings that come up on the right-hand side of the screen sometimes when you’re searching for a particular business? Google uses those business listings as a way to make their search results stand out and give users pertinent information about local companies.
Google business pages are free to create and they not only allow you to list pertinent information, like your hours and location, but you can also make content posts (similar to a social media post) that will show on your page and allow you to add call to action buttons to drive traffic to your site.
Send Out Press Releases Locally and on Free PR Newswires
A “secret” traffic driver and SEO boost that not many IT businesses know about is to write a press release for your business and then send it out over free online PR services and submit it to your local news outlets. This helps you get links back to your site spidering out from different sources and could get you PR locally too.
Many local news outlets have press release upload features right on their website, making it quick and easy to submit news.
Press release ideas you could write about include:
- A new certification you or a team member has earned
- A new service you’re offering
- If you’ve just become a certified partner with a specific software platform
- Opening a new office
- Announcing your employee of the month
- Educational classes or webinars you’re offering
There are lots of free press release templates online you can use for proper formatting, and once you’ve got it ready, here are a few services you can use:
- PRLog.org
- Free-Press-Release.com
- NewswireToday.com
- PR.com
- OnlinePRNews.com
Offer a Weekly or Monthly Webinar
Choose a popular topic, like “Office 365 Tips for Businesses” or “5 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer” and create a 30-minute webinar. Advertise it on social media, using the PR services, and even locally by dropping off cards at nearby businesses.
Webinar services like ezTalks, GoToWebinar or ClickWebinar offer a signup page that will gather pertinent registrant information, including their email address. They also offer free trials, and ezTalks has an all free non-trial plan.
Before you think that there is no way you have time to host a weekly webinar, there is a way you can do it once, and then have it available as a website traffic driver ever after. Record your webinar, then have it available on “auto-pilot” 24/7 by posting the webinar video on services like YouTube and Vimeo.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing has one of the best ROIs of any marketing method because it can be done at a very low cost, or even free, and brings people back to your tech business website time and time again. Even six months to 3 or 6 years later!
Think of those emails you get from your favorite retailers, especially around the holidays. One pops up in your inbox and you stop what you’re doing to look at that sale they’re having because you might want something (and who can turn down a good deal!). You can cause that same engagement and drive people back to your site for repeat business.
Sending out a regular email newsletter lets you highlight sales on refurbished computers you may have, offer a 1st month discount on a new service, or advertise a webinar or new blog you just put up. The possibilities are endless.
One of the most popular services to use to design and send out email newsletters that is also free to up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails/month is Mailchimp.
How do you start gathering those emails? Here are a few ideas:
- Use a newsletter sign up exit popup (you can design one in Mailchimp)
- Put a checkbox on your contact form
- Create a Free IT Security Checklist PDF and ask for email sign up in order to download
- Place a signup form on an iPad at your front desk inviting visitors to join
Answer IT Questions on Quora
The popular Q&A website, Quora, gets about 300 million monthly users on its site looking for answers to questions on multiple topics. You can boost your visibility and drive website traffic by answering a few IT questions now and then.
While you can post a link to your website in your answer, you want to be sure its relevant, not spammy. Such as a link to a blog you might have that goes into detail about solid-state-drives, you could answer an SSD question with a “link to more detail” back to you blog. You can also post your website link in your Quora profile.
Use Google Analytics to Review Lead Sources
Google analytics is free and all it takes to start using it is to sign up and add some code to your website. It will give you all types of insights about who is coming to your site and where they’re coming from. This allows you to drill down deeper into the referral methods that are driving the most traffic to your site.
For example, you may see that you’re getting decent traffic from your LinkedIn posts and decide to add more of them. Or notice that bounce rates on a certain page are high and rework the page content or load time to help with page “stickiness.”
What’s your favorite way to generate free website traffic? Share your thoughts below!
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