Answering common questions is a low or no cost marketing idea you can implement right now and increase website traffic over time.
Some of our website clients’ invest in strategies like search engine optimisation (SEO), retargeting or pay per click (PPC) advertising to drive more visitors to their websites…commonly called Traffic Strategies.
But many don’t.
I always wonder “Why not?”, when a website can be such an integral part of your marketing…much more than just an online corporate brochure.
The reasons I have been told include when asking clients include:
- Referrals from existing clients keeps me busy enough
- Budget constraints
- Expected more to come from just having the website (ie and doing nothing extra)
- I just want the website to support my offline marketing
- It’s somewhere for people to find out about us…corporate brochure
Unfortunately, unless you actively send people to your website, there is little chance of being discovered by prospective clients.
But there are strategies that any website owner can implement very easily and at low or no cost, that will help attract visitors to your website over time. Especially if it is done consistently.
So, what does answering commonly asked questions have to do with online marketing?
And how can it increase website traffic?
Every business has clients or prospective clients who ask questions. And how often do the same questions get asked again and again?
Many small businesses are constantly answering these repeat questions and coming up with new answers every time. It’s a huge waste of time and cost to the business.
Well, what if you prepared an answer just once. Then create an article with that answer on your website blog. Then, every time someone asked that question, you referred them to the article for the answer.
Sounds easy doesn’t it?
And it is.
What do I need to do?
You have probably seen an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on websites before. Well that is a similar thing. Some offline businesses have even prepared printed FAQ’s or maybe email templates that can achieve similar results.
But the objective here is to build traffic to your website over time, which will eventually make you money.
If you have the same question being asked regularly, you can bet that people who don’t know you also ask that question, and search for the answer online.
Therefore if you create the answer and place it on your website, Google may discover the answer over time and put your page in a search result when someone asks that question online. When that happens, you get traffic to your website. New visitors. People who have an interest in your service or product because they are asking the same question. Maybe even qualified leads.
It doesn’t even matter if you are investing in some other traffic generation strategy or not, this idea can work for any business.
5 simple steps to increase website traffic
Here are the 5 steps you need to take:
- Write the occasional article answering a question you commonly get from your clients.
- Add the article to the blog on your website (or better still if you are a member of our Care Plan service, ask us to add it for you…it should fit into your available support time)
- Send an email to all your clients and contacts telling them about the article (and/or a post on your social media site(s)). About how it is something many clients ask and that you thought they might be interested also. Include a link so they can open the article on your website and read it.
- Include an invitation or call to action to contact you for more information or to provide a solution. You don’t get anything if you don’t ask for it. But do it nicely and make it relevant.
- Rinse and repeat. If you did it just once per month, there would be 12 articles working for you by years end. And 12 questions you no longer have to keep inventing answers for…
Benefits…what’s in it for you?
By telling your existing clients, contacts and prospective clients about the new article, you will generate traffic to your website. This helps to send a message to Google that there is something of value on the website. Every thing helps and you might even get some referrals to the article.
As a side benefit, if you use an email marketing system to send these emails (and you should), having people click links on the email increases engagement which will help ensure more of your emails are read and less go to spam folders.
These simple strategies will build your website content overtime…but don’t do it just once and expect miracles! Done properly, this will help people who want answers to the questions you solve to find you online.
Cost? Some of your time or a staff member’s time. Collect questions. Draft answers. Check which ones are being searched for online (just do Google searches and Google will tell you). Write about those ones first. Load them on your website and tell people about them. Rinse and repeat.
What is next?
It will help to implement some basic SEO on the article. Use the SEO plugin we include in your website and it will guide you. We may add some ideas for this in a future article and we will update this one with a link to it, so keep an eye out for it.
Until then…start answering questions and work towards increasing website traffic for free.
If you want a hand with building traffic for your website, book a Strategy Session and we can investigate options together.
