Hi all, welcome to the sixth episode of Business Sidekick.

Today, I’d like to focus on how to drive traffic to your website as we all know that without traffic there will be no sales. That’s why my today’s guest is Filip Jaskólski, LiveChat’s web developer and marketing specialist who will tell you about a couple of free methods helping to increase traffic on your website.

Before you listen to the interview, I’d like to invite you to one of the previous episodes of Business Sidekick: “Boost your website traffic – SEO for dummies.” I’m explaining there how to do keyword research and how to use long tail keywords to gain organic traffic from Google.

Of course, it takes time so your website goes up in Google rankings, so in the meantime, you can think about other ways of increasing your website traffic.

I think it’s a good moment to listen to the interview with Filip.

Hi Filip, thanks for being here! The first question: how to drive traffic to your website?

Hi Justyna. This is truly a wide question. There are number of ways of increasing web traffic, and they range from easy hacks to elaborate projects. Actually, increasing the traffic is more like choosing the right marketing strategy, evaluated and then exploited the most profitable ones.

OK, so how do I choose the right strategy?

To know which strategies work and which doesn’t, you have to constantly keep an eye on the traffic. The absolute must-have for every website owner is an analytics tool, which allows you to observe and analyze your visitors flow. One of the most widely-used and powerful analytics software is Google Analytics. It is free of charge and extremely easy to implement.

Once you have your metrics ready, you can become a little scientist – you can start experimenting with different approaches, mix them up, be creative. Every industry has its particular needs, so the key to making your website visible is finding the right set of actions to attract visitors.

Let's get to the strategies, can you name few?

Certainly! There is content, email and community marketing, along with several social media strategies. You can also start creating resources like webinars, podcasts, and infographics. You can also start organizing kind of social events (like contests, promotions). Don’t you dare to forget about good old word of mouth. Last, but not least, there are crucial technical aspects that need to be covered and general strategies from the real world, which are also applicable to your website business.

That’s a lot of strategies, so which of them should I choose if I’m just starting a business?

When you are starting a business, you have probably limited financial and time resources, right? So, I would suggest you go for the strategies which are the fastest to implement and to test out. Those would be creating social media profiles, crafting your own business blog and reaching out to influencers from your industry.

So you’re talking about content marketing, right?

Exactly. You have to think like your potential customer: they have a certain problem – an issue they want to solve. Provide them help and knowledge. Research the content that goes well with your product – it may be a piece of advice on growing your own sunflowers or anything related to their interest. As long as your visitors find your content valuable, you are set for a right direction.

Don’t ever forget about allowing your visitors to easily share and interact with your content – implement social media buttons and comments section. You’d be surprised how often people want to say something, but they simply cannot! Facebook remarketing is another way of reaching out to the potential buyers.

You’ve mentioned a little scientist before; is it applicable also to social media?

Sure, it is. There is a lot to discover – analyze and follow your metrics every day, research the channels that bring the most traffic. If it is Linkedin or Facebook, start posting there. Reach out to your audience: ask them questions, provide outstanding customer service, take care of their problems. Be active!

Nice! Another way of getting traffic is promoting your product or blog. It’s kind of pain, right? So, how would you do it?

Not a bad strategy would be to invite influencers and experts from your industry to an interview or a guest post. A well-known name or brand may significantly increase your Internet reputation. Reach out to professionals via email, Twitter or any other social media sites – they will probably react with a pleasure of being noticed.

And how should I know which influencer is right for me?

You have to try everyone out and there is no perfect prescription or something like that. If you see that the person is reactive and can bring more traffic to your website, reach out to them.

So is there something else apart from content marketing?

Don’t forget about returning customers – they are a huge part of your website traffic. You should make sure they will come back to see if there are new products, promotions, and content worth checking out. Try to turn them into your advocates by creating special offers and promotions. You can encourage this by creating special offers, targeted newsletters and drip campaigns – never underestimate the power of email marketing.

You mentioned some magical technical aspects. What are they?

There is nothing magical about keeping your website accessible. Make sure it’s mobile friendly, it’s really important, and optimized in the field of loading speed and easily navigable. When creating your content base, link between your posts, provide signup for a newsletter, enhance social media buttons. I really like your previous podcasts on design and SEO aspects – there were a lot of neat bits of advice worth sticking to!

Thank you so much! Is there anything else can we do to grow your website traffic?

Follow your competitors and always stay active about your strategies. It is never too late to completely switch the directions – if something doesn’t work, don’t give up, there are loads of actions to test out. Join online communities related to your business, answer questions on Quora.com, ask experts on Inbound.org, look for opportunities to share your knowledge.

Keep an eye on the latest trends – the mobile technology market has shaken the whole Internet. I’d say it is crucial to adjust to the new behaviors: you should look up “micro-moment”, which a term introduced by Google. Wrapping your marketing strategies around It may be extremely profitable for your business!

OK, thank you Filip for the chat!

If you want to drive traffic to your website, you need to start with analytics. Google Analytics is a nice, free tool that is easy to implement, but it’s slightly less easy to use. Luckily, there are lots of free online lessons, webinars and courses helping you to master analytics, so you shouldn’t give up. If I can use it, you can definitely use it too.

The second part of bringing website traffic is SEO, but you already know something about it. If not, check out the episode about SEO for Dummies, where Bartosz Góralewicz, CEO of Elephate, reveals the secrets of SEO basics like checking the competitor’s keywords and implementing the SEO strategy.

The third part of bringing traffic is the social presence and content marketing. If you know that your customers are present on Twitter and Facebook, you have to have your accounts there and be active. Make sure that you log in regularly as the worst thing you can do is to create for example a Facebook account and then don’t respond when people make their complaints there. So be aware of the fact that social media is an easy and fun way of gaining website visitors, but remember that great power means great responsibility.

Think about content marketing. You can create a blog or at least write guest posts and make yourself an expert so people trust you more and are more likely to buy from you.

Another way of gathering traffic is making sure that your visitors will want to come back. Sell new products, offer discounts, make sales, stay in touch with them via emails.

Remember about technical aspects of your website. It’s not literally a strategy, but it’s more like an another encouragement for your website visitors to come back. If your website is mobile responsive, if it loads quickly and it’s easy to find the information you’re looking for, your visitors will want to come back and visit your website once again.

That’s all for today!

I know that “how to drive traffic to your website” is a very wide topic and I won’t be able to tell you everything about it in one go, so stay tuned to next episodes where I will tell you more about increasing traffic, conversion rates and - of course - sales!

In two weeks time I’ll be talking about conversions, so hit the subscribe button, choose one of the available platforms you’d like to listen to us and subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss any sweet emails from me.

All the best to you and I wish you millions of happy website visitors. Take care!