Last week I published the first part of this list Part one: 13 ideas to increase traffic to your website. Today, we’ve got part two with another 11 ideas! I know how important it is for you as an online business entrepreneur to drive more traffic to your website. I’m not going to bore you with an intro, let’s just get to it!

Get published

Getting published elsewhere with a byline and a link back to your website can absolutely drive more traffic to your website. There are so many different ways to go about this from guest blogging, guest appearances and so much more.

1. Guest blogging

The general idea is that you’ll write a free post for someone else’s blog. Since you’re not getting paid, you’re allowed to promote yourself within the post. I did a couple of guest post for a fellow female entrepreneur, Elley Mae. In the first post, I went all out promoting myself, my own content and my services. Check it out, it’s called 4 steps to creating a magnetic brand as a new blogger.

There is always someone looking for a post from an expert in your field. Do a little research and see which blogs you’d like to reach out to and get the conversation going. Reach out to fellow bloggers in Facebook groups or Instagram too. I promise you can quickly get this done because you’re giving them free content making their life easier!

2. Get interviewed

Being interviewed on a podcast works the same exact way as guest blogging. You volunteer your time with a relevant story or information, and in exchange, you get to promote something, anything. Although podcasts are still not as common as blogs, they are rising significantly. Just like with guest blogging, people are looking to find guests to provide valuable content, and they will eagerly accept you if you’re willing to reach out.

Usually what will happen is in the beginning and end of the episode the host will do a shootout with your promotion. During the episode, you’ll get to talk about your area of expertise which only helps boost your credibility. And if you can tie your promotion into your interview, then that’s amazing! Additionally, there will usually be a link to your website in the episode’s description which is just another great boost to drive more traffic to your website!

3. Branded content

Just two week ago, I wrote a whole article about why branded content is a great way to get your business seen. I highly suggest reading that article as it goes into serious detail with case studies.

In short, it’s an alternative and a super effective way to promote your business (and drive more traffic to your website). It’s a similar concept to content marketing but without direct promotions. Branded content is supposed to be entertaining or shining a light on a related cause instead of promoting your services directly.

An example of branded content is when Netflix published a piece in the New York Times on the issues that female inmates face in real prisons. Of course, it was a promotion for their, then, new show Orange is the New Black. The show itself was never mentioned in the piece itself, only in the byline.

People don’t like being sold to. It’s a discomforting experience, so the challenge for content marketers is to make sure the entertainment value of the content outweighs the discomfort.

Mike Clear, Digitas

The reason I’m suggesting branded content is that it works best to drive more traffic to your website and general brand awareness when it’s published elsewhere. And, if you’re pitching branded content to blogs or publications, it’s most likely going to be accepted from your pitch because you’re not asking for a direct promotion. You can really go big here and pitch to places like Inc., Huffington Post, etc.

Another thing with branded content is that you can team up with other companies for it. An example of branded content partnerships is Men’s Health partnering with Fitbit to do a content piece about extreme sports. Or, the New York times partnering with Google Cardboard to their readers to allow the New York Times readers to experience The Displaced, a story about refugees, through VR. Don’t forget, with branded content the idea is to put the focus on the story. For Fitbit, it was on extreme sports, and for Google Cardboard it was on refugees. However, in the true nature of a partnership, both Google Cardboard and Fitbit leveraged the audience of the New York Times and Men’s Health, respectively.

4. Submit your content to aggregator sites

When it comes to getting published, submitting your content to aggregator sites is also a great way to drive more traffic to your website. I’m not talking about spamming the shit out of Reddit. The more niche the aggregator site, the better as it gives you the chance to catch an eye of people closes to your target audience. However, it’s still a great idea to post your links.

Members of communities like Reddit are extraordinarily savvy to spam disguised as legitimate links, but every now and again, it doesn’t hurt to submit links that these audiences will find genuinely useful. Choose a relevant subreddit, submit your content, then watch the traffic pour in.

Dan Shewan

Do some research. There might be niche specific aggregator sites similar to Reddit that speak to your particular topic. Designer News is one of them, for all thing web design.

Partnerships

The whole idea behind partnerships is that you’re coming together with someone else to get access to their audience or contacts, and vice versa. Which is why partnerships can be so powerful for driving more traffic your way. And, the fun part, is they can take on a verity of different forms.

Here are a couple of posts that detail some must-know information for creating quality partnerships.

5. Create referrals or affiliate programs

One way to start a partnership is through a referral or affiliate programs. An affiliate program is based on sales from a link whereas a referral program is introduction based. So if you introduce me to a friend of yours who ends up hiring me to do their website I’ll give you $500 after their final payment. That’s 100% true. However, I don’t have it published anywhere, I’m not very outspoken about it either. Don’t be like me!!! Create a separate page for affiliate marketing or referral program details. There are plenty of affiliate apps you can sign up for that will track accounts and links for you, so it’s done automatically (such as affiliate.com). Additionally, both of these are great incentives for past clients to keep spreading the word about you 😉

The beautiful part about both affiliate and referral programs is that you only pay if a client signs up. This makes it a high-value idea to invest your time and effort into it.

Below is a fantastic video from the gals at M4 Business talking all about how to leverage referrals to get more sales. Use these techniques to get your business known and seen!

6. Be a featured guest

Another way to partner with others is to be a featured guest. I’m not talking about being interviewed in a blog post or on a podcast either. I’m talking about being part of someone’s product. I’ll give you a perfect example. I took a 3-month group coaching course with Amanda Davis, and part of her course was a section about PR with a featured guest Suzie Bartle who had a chance to talk about her expertise and her business. Within her PR section, Suzie threw in a few promotions about free consultations for Amanda’s students. There was also Sam Gioia (Video Production Expert, Graphic Designer, and Online Course Strategist Sam), Kim Heintz (technical expert with all things MailChimp, Lead Pages and the like) and Hollie Tkac (Messaging Strategist and Copywriter). All three of these ladies got a place to show off their skills and gain access to Amanda’s students.

Partnering with related fields to be a featured guest is a great way to increase brand awareness and another great way to drive more traffic to your website!

7. Collaboration

Collaborations are a key partnership relationship. Collaborate with companies from relating or complementary fields. You can go as far as creating offers together. It’s actually very common among creative freelancers where web designers, like myself, will form partnerships with copywriters and web developers to provide more well-rounded packages for clients who need more than just one service. Having a reliable, go-to partner will make securing the client significantly easier too.

Additionally, you can collaborate on products, cources, eBooks, freebies… so many other things that aren’t just service related.

Partnership with companies in related fields can help you win business when you are in competition with larger rivals. Graphic designers, for example, can partner with photographers and copywriters to win contracts for advertising campaigns that they could not win on their own. Manufacturers can partner with industrial designers to win contracts for products that require an innovative design solution.

Ian Linton, Ideas for Small Business Partnership & Improvement

More content ideas

I talked about how to drive more traffic to your website and engagement to your blog a whole lot in part one. As luck would have it, I have a few more ideas for you!

8. Cornerstone content

Cornerstone content is a killer concept for a variety of reasons. Here are some benefits if you’re looking to create cornerstone content to drive more traffic to your website:

• It allows you to collaborate and partner with other brands – link sharing FTW!
• Because of its size, the content can often be reused and recycles on all your platforms especially social media
• Also, because of its size and depth, you’ll be able to link to it more often when someone is looking for answers to a question on social media or from your other content
• It targets both regular SEO keywords and long-tail keywords
• Easy to make a verity of content upgrades for them which further attracts more eyeballs and email signups!

Okay, but what is it? Cornerstone content is an in-depth piece of content, (most often a blog post) that goes into serious detail about a specific topic. One key characteristic is their length. They usually start around 2,000 and can go on from there. You can’t cover a topic thoroughly in sheer 500 words; you will naturally end up writing a lot more.

I love using Screw The Nine To Five’s webinar cornerstone piece as an example. Open up the link to their “The Ultimate Guide to Webinars” post and start scrolling because this is one hell of an in-depth piece all about webinars. They even divided this post into 6 chapters!

Writing cornerstone pieces can be a lot but publishing one a quarter or even one a month – especially if you batch your content writing – can be a phenomenal way to drive more traffic to your website.

If you’re looking for a great piece on cornerstone content, Jill of Screw The Nine To Five, wrote another article on how to drive more traffic to your website using cornerstone content. It’s a great read! (So meta ?)

9. Conduct an interview

Another idea for creating interesting content is to start interviewing other people on your own website. This can be done as a video, a blog post or a podcast. Interviews are an amazing way to spice up your content types and something definitely worthwhile experimenting with. And, like with most partnerships, it allows you to get access to the interviewee’s audience as well when they share their interview.

Getting more people to read your blog is no easy task though…. Today I have a technique for increasing your blog traffic that has worked well for me, increasing my traffic by about 650% over 2 years. That technique is interviewing people.

Under 30 CEO, 4 Ways Interviews Can Increase Your Blog Traffic

Because you’re the one that gets to the conduct the interview, this gives you an opportunity to scout the best possible stories to tell. And it’s relatively easy. People love talking about themselves and promoting their own businesses or causes so finding people to interview isn’t very hard. Although big names will help, the focus here is on bringing value to your own audience, and anyone regardless of how well know they are can deliver this value.

It all boils down to taking the time and doing your research before the actual interview. Learn how to ask targeted questions that will benefit the type of people you want to attract to your website. Doing your research and prepping for the interview will make the conversation flow smoothly. The hard part will be editing out the most valuable pieces for your final publication.

By the way, if you do a video or audio interview consider adding a text transcript. It will help boost your SEO!

10. Webinars

For this example, I’m thinking of webinars as an alternative content form. They are great because they are easily shareable and scalable if you choose to do prerecorded session instead of live ones. Webinars are popular for a reason, and that’s because they are a client magnet. If you create landing pages and blog posts for them you’re bound to drive more traffic to your website. Additionally, webinars are great at converting clients and customers.

Any research you do on increasing webinar attendance will also be helpful for driving more traffic to your website, the concept is the same. You can use just about all of the ideas I’ve outlined in this article and part one if you’re worried about low attendance number. (If it makes you feel any better, my first ever webinar I launched for my business had maybe 15 attended over 2 month period ?).

I do believe webinars, (masterclasses, whatever you want to call them) are a creative way to create content that grabs the attention of your audience and, in turn, drive more traffic to your website. They allow you to collaborate with other companies, create guest posts and be interviewed on your upcoming webinars too… Like I said, any ideas from this article can be leverages to promoting your webinar and driving more traffic your way!

11. Invest in ads

The last piece of advice I have for you is to invest in ads. Specifically in Facebook and Instagram ads as they are still quite affordable. There is a whole art to mastering Facebook ads but hear me out.

You can create an ad for anything. For your services, products, blog posts, Facebook groups, content upgrades, webinars ?, landing pages, newsletter, promotions… ANYTHING!

I’m not going to get into this, because that’s a whole other topic, but there are plenty of free online resources like this one, this one or thiiiiis one all designated to help you get the hang of Facebook ads. If you can afford to, take a paid course or hire a VA to take care of it for you. All I’m saying is that Facebook and Instagram ads do work wonders in driving more traffic to your website.

The takeaway

If you combine the 13 ideas on how to drive more traffic to your website from the 11 from part one that makes for a lot of fucking ideas (if my math is correct ?)!

As ways, I hope you found one that resonates extra well with you and your business. There are so many opportunities for you to invest in driving more traffic to your website, it’s not even funny. Whichever strategy or route you choose to go with, I do want to remind you that when it comes to traffic going hard but consistently is vital. You can’t expect significant changes from a single ad or a single interview. But, doing those consistently over time and improving upon them will yield some fantastic results.