SEO is the lifeblood of online marketing.
It is probably the most prevalent but also the most time-consuming way to boost your online traffic. However, with the constant changes of the Google search engine algorithm, a high ranking now doesn’t promise a bright future for your business in the time to come. A slight change of algorithm and your business may suffer.
Now you can see, why is it imperative that we engage in ways other than SEO to drive our traffic.
Here I collated 5 awesome tips to help you boost your online traffic without SEO.
1. Blog commenting
Ever wonder why some articles seem to attract more comments than others?
Commenting on other people’s posts is often not just about leaving your thoughts, making friends or being nice. The benefit actually goes both ways. A well-thought and in-depth comment convince your reader about your credentials on the subject, pique their interest in you, and later clicking on your backlink and dive straight into your sales funnel.
Relationship advantage
Commenting on top blogs not only exposes you to like-minded bloggers that are experts in their area but also a committed audience that won’t cringe at spending on a quality product. Top bloggers are what they are for a reason, their circle of the audience is what makes them successful. Leaving your comments is akin to building up quality backlinks by drawing the coveted audience to your blog.
Best practices for leaving comments
1. Write long (few paragraphs length), relevant and informative comments.
2. If you don’t know what to write, share your own story! Everyone loves people that genuine and opens up.
3. Be subtle if you are commenting on competitors’ blogs, don’t appear as if you are up to stealing their audiences and don’t pick a fight.
4. Set a blog commenting schedule, start by leaving 1 in-depth comment every day, 3 will be ideal.
5. Take time to find out the blog editor’s name and address him/her by the name.
2. Video marketing
I am a writer, not a YouTuber, why should I make videos?
But do you know that Youtube came in no.2 as the most popular search engine, second only to Google? And that it is owned by Google itself and it totalled up to more searches than Yahoo, Bing, AOL, Ask.com combined? It has over a billion users with massive traffics coming on from all around the world.
More visibility to search engine
Video marketing is gaining popularity rapidly. Many businesses have integrated video as an integral part of their marketing strategy and so should you. With video, your audience is not only able to reach you from Google search engine but also from YouTube directly. They will be compelled to spend more time on your site, and time per visit happens to be something of value in determining your search engine ranking. The two-fold effect can increase your traffic substantially.
Best practices for video
1. Make it shareable and your audience will do the marketing job for you.
2. Optimise your video by having keywords in the title (and also the word video’ itself), including video transcripts, and have your video short, informative and engaging.
3. Do it consistently, target to upload at least 1 video per week.
4. Be creative! You can record yourself talking, do a screen recording, give a presentation slide, animation or even play a stop motion.
5. Try to begin your video with your logo and a short tune, so that people recognise your brand.
3. Q&A websites
Q&A website is like an online ecosystem of information exchange, where people ask all sorts of questions and get answered.
If you ever type a question in Google, you would notice that Q&A websites often came on the first page of your search results. That is because questions themselves contain long-tail keywords, which helps them rank better.
People who view the question typically already have a genuine interest in the subject, so if your well-written answer seizes their attention, it can drive good traffic to your site.
There are many Q&A sites out there, the few biggest one includes Quora, Stack Exchange and Yahoo Answer. And I advise you to focus on these few.
Best practices on answering questions on the Q&A website
1. Set up your profile on the site, put on a picture, write a short bio etc., it builds up trust.
2. Find the right questions to answer, ideally questions with a high view count and within your area of interest.
3. Find questions that are relevant to a post that you already have, so that it looks natural to link your answer there. Provide the link at the end of your answer.
4. Don’t just post a link without much content, some sites especially Yahoo Answers penalise answers like this (your comment might get deleted and marked as spam, your account might even get banned if you do this often enough).
5. Give high quality and well-researched answers, so that you can easily get upvoted and appear at the top of the answer list.
4. Email marketing
Email marketing is a very different approach compared to the rest. We are targeting the audience who had willingly subscribed to your mailing list. Those people had opted to hear from you, so they are much more receptive to whatever you have to say.
You can set up an email campaign to solicit sales, create brand awareness or send out ads. Just don’t spam them with excessive sales pitches, and you can secure a long-term relationship with them.
People are not going to hand you their personal email address without a good reason. So give them a good reason- first furnish your blog with informative and high-quality content, it helps to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
Then, offer them something of value, like ‘subscriber-only articles, free e-book, bonus information not found in your blog, or even freemium products or services, in exchange for their email addresses. Engage them regularly by sending out newsletters, that way you are enticing them to keep checking out your articles or content.
Best practices on email marketing
1. Living in a mobile age, it is best to prepare your email in a way that is easy to load and read with mobile devices.
2. Personalise the email, address your recipients by their name.
3. Research revealed that on average, most people only spent 15-20 seconds on an email. So, include visuals in your email as a quick way to capture your audiences’ attention.
4. Make the email subject title attractive and intriguing, so that the recipients feel the urge to open up your mail.
5. Be creative, increase the click-through to your blog by including simple games or quiz. It can be as simple as a question lined ‘which product do you think most suited for measuring pasta?’, followed by 2 product pictures placed side by side that link to your target sales page when clicked.
5. Social Media
‘Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants‘ -as quoted from Jonathan Perelman of BuzzFeed. The amount of content being published every day has been growing exponentially in recent years. There is no shortage of great content on the internet. In fact, many quality contents went unnoticed due to poor distribution strategy.
As the popularity of social media continues to soar, the number of users is expected to reach 3.02 billion by 2021. Social media revolutionise the way businesses connects with their audience. It helps to foster a community network around your brand, making advertisement more accessible to the public, so that you can reach out to your audience easily.
Best practices on social media
1. Make sure you have signed up for all major social networking accounts like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. Set up your profile and include a short business description and a link
to your website.
2. Set up a social sharing schedule, say, every Wednesday and Friday (best is every day!) so that your readers know when to expect from you.
3. Include images or videos on your post to engage your audience. Visual content is also more likely to be shared compared to other types of content.
4. Make your website content easily shareable by having sharing buttons.
5. Out of new content? Repost your old one!
In a nutshell
I hope this article has broadened your perspective on ways to boost your online traffic.
Now if you have tried any of the tips above, or if you have your own tips on how to drive more traffic without SEO, I would love to hear about them!
