“How do I increase my website traffic from scratch?”: A Canadian SEO agency answers.

You are a small business in Canada and finally click that “publish” button. Your website is live! It was an exhausting journey this far to prepare everything, but you are proud you did it. Products or services, delivery systems, picking your style, figuring out your audience, you’ve finally done it! You are finally a small business owner and things are exciting.

But the more you wait, the more you realize that the “traffic” needle is stuck to zero. “It can’t be” you think, “I’ll wait more”. But it’s just not coming. Something is wrong, and you don’t know what. Let us help get you out of your misery.

Understand the Website Traffic Challenge

First of all, know that you’re not alone. There are millions of businesses starting out facing the same problem. What separates success from failure is having the mindset to: a) pivot, b) be creative, c) be consistent, that’s it.

So, get a pen and paper. You’ll need it.

Use Social Media Platforms

Half-the world is on social media. Literally, 4.8 billion people. We bet you are also “doomscrolling” on Instagram or TikTok. And we also bet that besides regular content creators, you’ve also stumbled upon professionals becoming viral.  

Becoming viral is the best way to generate traffic, but it is hard to schedule it. But, if you want to pursue it, we recommend The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Let’s get grounded. Social media can have a huge impact on your sales regardless of becoming viral. But if you want to avoid 0 Impressions, you need to craft funny, witty and relatable content.  

A great piece of advice is “Create as if you’d share it.” Many people watch good content, but even more share great content. A good rule of thumb is making your content as generic as possible but hold elements of your services in it. This way it appeals to more people, but no one will say that the content is out of context with what you do.

And of course, before you do anything, choose the right platform for you!  

Some advice from us:  

• Use Instagram and TikTok for short-form video content

• Facebook for ads  

• LinkedIn for networking and credibility.

Optimize Your Website for Google (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is our specialty. And it’s really important if you want to appear on Google Search when a user searches something relevant.  

To achieve that, you need to re-word how you present your business to match exactly what users search for. (User Intent) This is On-Site page keyword optimization and SEO copywriting.  

(For more on what you should expect and demand from SEO copywriting, check out our blog post.)

You will also need specific landing pages (pages that users visit and are dedicated to buy from you) and a solid blog that will increase your chances of getting known.

Creating a strong network of backlinks is also vital. Building links, or Backlinks, refers to connections you make with other businesses through links. E.g. A business wrote about you in one of their blog posts, and they linked your website to it. This way, Google knows you are an expert and rewards you for it.

And then there is the technical side, Technical SEO. This includes tending your website’s backend to let you monitor your progress, optimize it for different devices, and avoiding errors, and more.

Finally, if grabbing the locals’ attention is on your list: Local SEO. Local SEO services include fine-tuning your Google Maps, local keywords, and many more. We’ve actually written about this too! Check Local SEO here.

If you want to learn more about SEO, we wrote an extensive blog post about it!

Create High-Quality Content

Believe it or not, with the rise of AI in the last few years, High-Quality Content has plummeted. Most content creators now seek the easy way out.  

Do they succeed? No!

High-quality, relatable, and engaging content is still a “human thing”. No matter what content you create, on social media, blog posts, commercials, online ads, it needs to be “human” to succeed. Remember: Humans buy from humans. Not robots.

A few tips on high-quality content:

1. Make it relatable. This means that you will describe or present a common experience that many people across the world, regardless of culture, are familiar with. E.g. Stepping on water with a sock. Yikes.

2. Make it sharable. The same with social media content applies here. Great content is sharable, good content is watchable/readable.

3. Offer value. Consider your relationship with prospects as a transaction. You have to trade something for their attention. If you trade something good enough like value to their goals/needs, they will convert (buy) from you.

4. Be consistent. Google or any social media platform will not recognize you immediately. You need to persuade them that you are a good content creator. This needs time and effort if you want to do it without paying (ads).

Utilize Email Marketing

Email Marketing has an average ROI of 36$ for every $1 spent. Plus, it’s a direct contact line to your audience.  

This needs no further explanation. Email was, and will remain, one of the best marketing channels for a business.

Don’t forget that email content is still content! Check above for high-quality content tips.

Here’s a useful blog post that gives a few tips on the tried-and-true tactics of email marketing. Scroll to the bullet points to save time.

Invest in Paid Advertising

Paid Advertising is the definition of “jumpstarting” your business. Contrary to organic methods like posting on social media, paid advertising will show your content with 100% success. What’s the catch? You have to pay for it.

Warning: You should know that in ads, you pay for it when people click the ad. Whether they convert or not is another matter.

So, make sure your ad is “clickable”! How?

Guess what. Check the “high-quality” content tips we gave above!

Here’s a simple guide to start your first advertisements as a small business.

Collaborate and Network

Connections are everything in the world of business.  

If you have strong connections already, aid them, and they will aid you back. It’s always give and take.  

However, if you don’t... You should start connecting with people! Check out local network events, old colleagues, even old bosses, online networking events, send messages to people in LinkedIn, let your imagination run loose.  

We as a company found a lot of value from LinkedIn networking groups. Here is one of our recommendation. Feel free to explore more!

So, what’s next?

A lot more can be said to aid you in your beginner journey, but we will end this with a simple and humble advice: Stay persistent and be patient! Business is hard either way.

If we can help you with a part of your journey, we would like to be your SEO experts. AltitudeB2B is a local SEO company in Toronto helping small businesses grow. We’ve helped dozens of clients and even got some of them funded through the Digital Adoption Program. So, you never know, you might actually have our partnership funded!

Book a free 15-minute exploratory call with our CMO, Nicholle, here: https://meetings.hubspot.com/nicholle-ellis

Stay safe!

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