An audience or traffic is the lifeblood for any digital platform. Without people visiting your site is, quite simply, useless. It doesn’t matter what the goal is of your site – it could be a brochure site, an e-commerce platform or a publisher site that is monetised through advertising. Whatever the purpose of a site is, it is built and designed to be used and it needs the traffic to justify its existence. But while building a site is one thing, it is quite another to ensure that it is discoverable. So, what can you do to help drive traffic to your site? Here are a few simple tips to help you get where you need to be.

Optimise for search

This is absolutely critical. One of the largest bodies of potential traffic will be derived from search engine referrals and getting your piece of this action is entirely dependent on how well your site is optimised for search. This is not something that you should try to sort yourself, rather enlist the help of a company that does this professionally. A quick Google search for something like ‘SEO services Australia’ should yield the name of the best outfit in the country – if they can get their name to the top of the rankings in a very competitive space then they should be able to do the same for you.Enlist their help and start winning.

Give them a reason

You need to give your users a reason to keep on coming back to your site. If it is not updated regularly then immediately there is no reason to return. So, regardless of what it is – it could be daily specials, fresh content or simply regular calls to action via social media or newsletters, you need to make sure that your audience, once they have engaged with your first time, do not have to be won back again. Rather, win them once and keep them coming back. That way you can grow your traffic rather than just maintain it at a constant level.

Make the experience good

Forget about content for a moment and think about the actual experience that your users will have. You need to make sure that your site is up-to-date and fully functional. Its load times need to be good and it needs to render in an appropriate form for the device that it is being viewed in. All links need to work. And it needs to be designed in keeping with the best industry standards. If it is tatty or has a neglected feel to it, people will simply deem it irrelevant and not engage with it.

Lead

Try to offer a new perspective or insights. In short, be a thought leader. People love to interact and engage with people or platforms that they perceive as leaders, so position yourself as a leader. This might be in terms of the technology you use or the content that you publish. There are many ways in which you can lead and innovate, but always be looking for that angle or opportunity to present yourself as a brand to follow – and soon you will have followers!