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You’ve probably spent a lot of time, and money, getting your website ‘just so’. Now you want people to visit it, find out what you do and hopefully, buy from you! Many people believe Google will instantly bring hordes of potential clients – if only that were true! Search Engine Optimization takes time to produce results and needs ongoing testing and tweaking. Using Pay Per Click campaigns will certainly help – but can be expensive.
Whether your business sells products or services, the following list of low-cost and no cost ways to get more visitors aren’t at all techie to do.
1. Tell people about it – don’t assume everyone knows about your website. If you’ve recently added something interesting, that’s a good reason to mention it when you’re out networking.
2. Business card – give people a reason to take a look at your website, offer them something interesting like an article or free report (this will also give you an opportunity to include them in future email marketing campaigns)
3. Online Directories – there are so many of these directories that they aren’t as useful as a few years ago. But it’s still worth taking advantage of free listings that include a link back to your website so long as the directory looks reputable.
4. Social Network Profiles – people you connect with on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are more internet savvy and will probably want to visit your website to find out more about you, even before connecting. Give them a warm welcome
5. Email Signature – so often forgotten, this is a great place to encourage people to click through and visit your website (or blog). Make sure to provide a ‘live’ link and check it works OK.
6. Postcards and direct mailers – just because traditional mailings are offline, don’t stop promoting your business’s online home.
7. Letterhead – same as 6. above. (Does anyone actually use letterheads anymore?)
8. Invoices – why not include a discreet promotional message and your web address? (I’d advise against anything too brash when you’re also asking for money)
9. Voicemail – Use the outgoing message to encourage people to visit your website after they’ve left a message for you. It’s quite unusual, so they may just do it!
10. Articles (online and offline) – If you’ve written something of interest, be sure to provide a link (url offline) so readers can click to find out more.
If you consistently use all the above methods, you will get more visitors to your website.
Do you have anything to add to the list? Please share in the comments below, we’d love to know 
About Louise
Louise Barnes-Johnston has been working in social media marketing since 2007 after realising that it was a powerful marketing tool which would enable her clients to raise the profile of their businesses on the internet, even when working to a limited budget. Her specialism is in researching social media practices; trying out the most effective online tools and then sharing the best of them with her clients.
Although all of those things do bring traffic they are small amounts in comparison to what can be brought by natural search engine optimization, pay per clicks, and even article writing that is distributed on lots of other sites. The difference is from about the 10 or so business cards you pass out a week, and the hundreds or thousands that are looking for you on the internet.
It may take a couple of weeks to get an seo position for local traffic, and may take weeks or months for a nationwide position if you spend e time to find the right keywords where you can actually earn a search engine position. And those are worth doing.
But a pay per click can happen right away. And yes, what you say about expensive, can be true. But the real cost isn’t the click thru cost, it’s the cost to acquire a client, the total cost, and that’s more dependent upon the conversion rate on your website. A $1 click thru to a website that converts 1 in 1,000 is $1,000 for the lead. A $1 click thru to a website that converts at 10% is $10 for the lead.
The cost is dependent on you developing an end to end system that works.
Hi Alan, Thanks for stopping by. I totally agree that search engine optimisation and pay per click campaigns can bring a lot of traffic to a website, particularly when done properly, and website owners certainly need to measure their return on investment!
However, it’s still worth reminding people of the many other ways of attracting visitors to a website which are inexpensive and very easy to implement, particularly for those starting out online!
As you mention, it’s finding a system that works for your own business as there are so many activities that can be done to attract new visitors to a website.