Question: Are there benefits to using uncommon practices to drive traffic online?
Answer: Yes.
Another question: Do you currently use any of them to drive traffic to your own website or blog?
That one’s rhetorical.
Most would say no. Why? Fear of the unknown, lack of knowledge, and lack of awareness probably rank highest.
Every industry establishes it’s own standard of ‘normal’ practices. These baseline behaviors create large streams of traffic for many. And everyone follows the leader.
Driving traffic and conversions from alternative channels can be very effective as a result.
Anyone willing to think outside the box can quickly add to their email subscribers, increase their authority, and net new customers.
Here’s a quick overview of UpViral’s five most untapped and effective ways to drive traffic to your website or blog.
Reddit is the untamed jungle of the online community.
It boasts 20 million unique visitors per month and around 150 million page views.
Listen carefully: the only way to drive traffic through Reddit is to create great content. The typical Reddit-or looks something like this:
- Male
- Age 20 - 30
- Liberal
- Values gaming/technology
- Values intelligence - and hate old news (via other social media spheres)
So you’ll need to cater to this audience. If you come through and post about the glories of Nascar and Libertarianism, you’ll make no friends. Worse, you’ll receive few comments and few upvotes. And no subsequent traffic. Here’s an example of a great post topic:
3 Quick Steps to Getting Traffic from Reddit
Step 1: Find Relevant Subreddits
- Use the subreddit search (or metareddit, since the subreddit search is notorious poor) to explore keywords related to your business or website.
- Only pay attention to relevant results with, ideally, 5,000+ subscribers. But don’t target massive subreddits like /r/food (5.3 million subscribers). Use only relevant, smaller subreddits where you can get more upvotes.
Step 2: Study/Hack Subreddits
- Go to top posts of all time. Read through all the threads. Uncover popular opinions and common subjects in your niche are. Follow these for a week. Note which “hot” posts are upvoted and downvoted, and why.
Step 3: Become an Active Community Member
- After you’ve created an account, and you know the rules, start by making comments. Reply to comments as well. As you interact more, the limitations will decrease. Know the reddiquette.
If you start submitting to subreddits early in your career, you’ll be flagged for spamming. For the same reason, don’t jump in and start submitting links.
If you’re caught submitting links to only your site, you will get a spam notice or worse, a shadow ban.
4 Factors of an Effective Reddit Post
Once you’ve setup your account, time to get technical. These four best practices will help you to drive traffic on Reddit:
#1: Timing
- Reddit Later details when posts will see peak traffic.
#2: Headline
- Look to what works on Reddit already. Make it better.
- Follow Neil Patel of Quicksprout’s guidelines to a powerful headline.
#3: Text/html
- Include your blog post link and the important elements of your submission in the post description. Sometimes a moderator may feel there are too many links to a blog post in a subreddit you post. You will still be able to drive traffic from your description if the moderator flags your post.
#4: Early Votes and Comments
- New posts appear high on a subreddit. To drive upvotes and interest readers, respond to early comments. Sustaining momentum means you stay high on the subreddit and receive additional commentary. Review the Reddiquette if you’re getting downvoted early.
Remember...
Submitting your existing content is a good start. But to consistently drive traffic to your website, create content specific to your subreddits. Vie for those upvotes and reap the reward of traffic.
Quora is the ‘ask and answer’ social network. Community votes, from experts and amateur alike, decide upon which responses are most valuable and see traffic.
Like Reddit, Quora comes down to creating and sharing great content within the community.
This is a great dynamic in which to insert the voice of your business. The most immediate benefit to your marketing efforts will being perceived as an authority on a chosen topic.
And being able to drive traffic by linking to your own content.
However, forget the ROI says Smarthustle:
“Hustling or selling is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing on Quora. Instead, aim to spread knowledge.”
Why use Quora?
- Gain exposure to Quora’s 1.5 million monthly worldwide visitors
- Showcase and build your expertise on any topic
- Provide direct information to anyone asking about your business, services, or products
- Share content from other website (such as your own) in topic-specific boards on your profile
One remarkable benefit of Quora for your business will be engaging in market research. You can learn what people are asking about in your industry.
What makes for a great answer?
A “good and short answer” is one that provides statistics, sources, and references. Like a mini-research paper, says The Crazy Egg blog.
Factors of “good and short” may include:
- Passion for the topic
- Personality
- Specificity
- Narrow focus
- Storytelling and takeaways
With a good answer you can drive traffic through linking to information available in longform on your blog or website.
Here’s a great example of an answer sure to attract reads to your blog. It’s brief, focused, and includes a link to learn more.
This is a quick checklist to guide your exploration of Quora:
If you’ve ever travelled in foreign country, you know how welcoming your own language can be. You’re automatic inclination is to interact with this similar person.
This same principle applies to the internet.
72.1% of consumers spend most, or all, of their time on websites of their native language, finds Harvard Business Review.
You’re missing out on a huge pool of potential clients by offering a site in only one language.
The study also shows that 72.4% of consumers are more likely to buy products using information in their own language.
If product information is not in the right language, odds are they won’t buy it.
Follow these fast tips to expand your readership abroad and drive traffic for more business.
Start with One Language
Use the Audience tab in Google Analytics to figure out where your traffic comes from.
Aside from what you’re using now, what language will bring the highest return on investment?
For example, say people in France already visit your blog. Approach them in French.
What if Google Analytics shows that most of your traffic arrives from a country when your native language is also the primary language, like the U.S. or Canada?
Target a secondary language. For example, translate your site into Spanish (widely spoken in the U.S.) or into French (widely spoken in Canada).
4 Easy Ways to Boost Conversions with Language
#1 Live Chat
Live chat already promotes conversions. So translate the invite to chat into additional languages.
Try Zopim. It offers simultaneous translation between the client’s language and the support person on the other side.
#2 Translate the Most Valuable Pages
Use Google Analytics to find out which of your pages have the most unique views. Translate these.
Also translate pages that are most helpful to a client. Pages that answers product questions, provides information, increases client trust of your company are a priority.
For example:
- Home page
- Products and packages page
- About us page
- FAQ page
- Contact us page
Site funnel pages, where sales actually occur, will be important too.
#3 Adjust Prices
By providing clients the option to select their country of origin and their preferred currency you can do wonders for your conversion rate.
Automatic recognition of a consumer’s IP address can be used to accomplish this.
By streamlining the buying process, consumers will be less likely to patronize another company’s site that’s in their own currency.
Also beneficial: outlining shipping costs and any additional taxes or fees.
Asos does a good job of this. By selecting Italian, the prices and language change to Euros.
#4) Personalize Your Email Marketing
Write some targeted emails in the recipient’s native language. This is an easy way to experiment with the effect of translation on your conversion rates.
Guest blogging is great for driving traffic to your website through other high DA blogs. It will increase your authority and develop your brand image with qualified traffic and motivated leads.
The demand for valuable content online is insatiable. Here’s Peter Sandeen’s 140+ Best Sites to Guest Post for.
Gregory Ciatti used guest blogging to bump his email list of subscribers to 36,733. In only six weeks.
The first rule of guest blogging is to avoid “byline blindness.” This happens when readers skip over the author line and leave the post without netting you any ROI.
Gregory’s 3 Steps to Avoid Byline Blindness:
#1 Use a Closing Subheading
Draw the reader's attention to the end, and the next step to come, by using “conclusion” or “over to you” to indicate a shift.
#2 Ask a Question
Engage the reader. Make sure the question flows smoothly from the conclusion. Maybe use a bullet point to make it stand out.
#3 Place a Call-to-Action
A CTA ensures you byline won’t be ignored. Readers will gladly click on a (e.g. “download my ebook) link placed on a bullet point. Make sure this looks as though it’s part of the content.
Whether or not you’ve just written a guest post or a post for your own blog, it’s time to make and insert a content upgrade into it.
Brian Dean of Backlinko has documented an impressive 185% increase in site wide conversions since starting to use content upgrades.
As a business, your conversion rate successes hinge upon how tantalizing the upgrade offer is, how specific the information is, and how well you can integrate the content upgrade through the blog post.
Here are the 5 steps to doing just that:
The 4 Easy Steps to Great Content Upgrades
1) Find/write a blog post that gets the content upgrade
The ideal blog post for a content upgrade already has lots of traffic.
Using Google Analytics, go to “Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages” to determine which post is best.
2) Brainstorm great content upgrade ideas
Think of ways to improve the user experience of your blog post. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think of what questions you might still have after reading.
3) Make the Content Upgrade Look Great
A content upgrade is free, yes. But it shouldn’t look like it. This resource should be visually appealing, an opportunity to “wow” your readers.
Think of it as a chance for your company to brand itself and stand out to readers. So put some energy into the content upgrade.
It is, after all, an “upgrade.”
Piktochart and Canva make this process cheap and easy.
#4 Add the Content Upgrade
Offer the content upgrade once at the beginning of the post, once in the middle, and once at the end is the sure way to maximize your conversions.
Having multiple opt-in points means your readers won’t have to read to the bottom of the blog post to access the opt-in box.
Conclusion
As always, it pays to stay on the cusp of new markets. These five largely untapped methods for boosting traffic won’t stay on the fringe for long. But those that gain entry to these largely untapped channels now can reap huge amounts of traffic and conversions for themselves.
Don’t forget to grab our quick-use checklist for all these steps and processes here.
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