At some point, we have all worked in a marketing department that, for whatever reason, has a very limited budget. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the world keeps turning, oblivious to our marketing woes. However, this is not an excuse to neglect our website marketing! We need to be resourceful and luckily, there are many ways you can drive traffic to your site without breaking the bank.
1. SEO Audit
Start with a small SEO audit of your site. This can be accomplished by using a mixture of many free tools, which will give you an overview of what your site is missing, and what it is doing well in terms of search engine friendliness. For instance, with a mix of these 3 tools you can get great insights to optimise your site:
- marketgoo (of course!) – you can get a Free SEO Report from us where you will see the results of our scan of your entire website. You get a grade as well as details on how your website is doing in areas such as social, mobile, traffic received, etc.. You can also opt for a free trial of our full-feature version and gt a detailed web marketing plan with recommendations to improve generated specifically for your website, and functionality that allows you to compare your metrics with competitors’.
- Hubspot Marketing Grader – Hubspot has a quick, no nonsense tool that can give you an overview of what you’re doing well on your site and what you’re missing.
- monitorbacklinks.com – This is easy to use and gives you the information you need: what sites are linking to you, whether Google cares, how good the links are, and what the anchor is. Use this for uaditing your site, and take the opportunity to check out your competitors’ links and see which ones you’d like to get for yourself.
2. Track your traffic via Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools
While this is suggested for people who aren’t total novices, we think it’s a good idea for you to get started with these free and powerful tools sooner rather than later.
- Read a Beginner’s Guide to Google Webmaster Tools
- Refresh your Knowledge of Google Analytics
Use these tools to see where your traffic is coming from, where you are losing visitors, how much time visitors spend on your page, and what Google really thinks of your site 😉
With the information you get, you will be able to formulate hypotheses about what your visitors’ intent is, and what is lacking in their user experience. Don’t think you can’t use these two tools just because you’re not a pro.
3. Social Media
Take advantage of social media, because it can do a lot for SMBs. You can directly impact your level of brand awareness, your customer satisfaction, community engagement, and identify leads, eventually leading to more sales.
Facebook pages, Google+ communities, LinkedIn groups and Twitter have discussions happening all the time, which you can participate in. Be sure to add value when you participate; not every interaction will involve you mentioning your website. However don’t miss the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.
A good metaphor we have heard is that social media is a cocktail party, where you like, share and chat about things which suits the interests of your followers/fellow cocktail attendees, and not just your own set of stories which will make the party a snoozefest.
4. Content Marketing
Creating high quality really deserves a dedicated post, because there are so many aspects to it. You should ideally create long pieces of in depth content, and if you simply can’t afford the time to do that, a short piece of content that is packed with valuable information and some media will do. Think about what your potential audience is interested in, and what kind of content they are more likely to be shared through social media. Write catchy headlines and make your content different than that of your competitors. If you don’t yet have a blog, start one today! This is the best and easiest way to share content you have created, as well as showcase your expertise within your industry, as well as what your brand essence is.
5. Link Building
Go old school and get PR and Publicity for your business. This is an excellent way to get coverage, get on potential clients’ radars, and most importantly, get links from high quality sites back to your own site!
Keep in mind that you should have a set objective for doing PR outreach (‘getting good backlinks’ isn’t enough!), for instance generating more leads for your business, and be consistent in the message you want to transmit to your audience. This PR Strategy for SEO primer is an excellent guide in order to have a cohesive strategy once you start reaching out to media outlets and blogs.
Don’t wait until ‘the time is right’ to start optimising your website. No money, no problem. There are always things you can be doing to improve your website’s rankings and drive more traffic to it, that don’t cost you anything.
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