How can I increase traffic on my website?

I had the same question when I started my company 3 years ago, and I will begin this blog by sharing my website traffic stats, and the strategies I used to grow website traffic for my startup — Stoned Santa.

Here’s a snapshot(Google Analytics Dashboard) of web-traffic from 2017–20

I am sharing the breakdown of my major traffic sources year-wise, I hope this table gives you the idea that increasing traffic is more about adding layers of channels one at a time, rather than going all-in on one singular channel.

Before we begin understanding the process to find more and more website visitors, let us ask ourselves some very important questions which will help us create effective strategies to drive people to our website -

• What is my website about? How well do I understand my own business? (Sounds like an easy question to answer, it isn’t). Please spend time finding all possible answers to this very question.
• What do people get when they visit my website? It is very important to have a very clear understanding of your goal, or the action you want your web visitors to take.
• Is it a blog/news article they can read?
• Do I want them to download an app? Could be a game, a productivity app, etc
• Do I want them to buy a product or service from me or my business?
• Am I spreading awareness, or taking donations for a cause?
• Do I want anybody and everybody to visit my website, or would I rather be interested in attracting those who might be interested in what my website has to offer?

Once we are through with a decent understanding of the above-mentioned questions, we can go ahead formulating strategies to welcome people to our website.

Stoned Santa’s Artwork

Step 1 — Creating engaging content relevant to the audience you want to attract

• Writing Blogs, guest blogs about topics that interest potential visitors
• Creating vines/videos for different platforms
• Creating creative designs/infographics/ebooks to educate potential users/customers
• Generating Memes are very effective, you might observe tons of memes on Netflix shows. Don’t be surprised if I tell you that the creators are paid for the same

Step 2 — Distribution of content is important, else how do people know of your existence?

• Running ADs on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Google, Hotstar, TikTok, etc
• You can always opt for traditional methods of marketing which involve newspapers, magazines, distributing flyers, putting up billboards, etc
• If you feel you are short on cash or do not wish to spend money, there are tons of available options, but this method requires a lot of time. (It took me almost 2 years to drive approximate 50,000 visitors from Quora to my website)
• There are multiple ways in which you can reach out to people, given the boon we have in the form of Digital Platforms which allow us to potentially reach millions at the click of a button

If the Content is king, then distribution is King Maker.

Remember this,

Website traffic might be a vanity metric, which could mean 1000s of website visitors might do you no good if you do not know what to do with them.

So, the million-dollar question is, “What are you gonna do with your website visitors?”