Hajra Naz
Site visitors are always your lifeline, regardless of whether your website is an affiliate program, content site, or even an online store. Making a fantastic website is just the beginning. Ensuring that your potential audience visits your website is another aspect of your work.
Since I’m an online publisher that emphasizes educational content, I view my websites as magazines. As publishers, we take extraordinary consideration in creating outwardly engaging magazines that are filled with important data. Yet, if we don’t put those magazines where our perusers can see them, nobody will ever turn the pages of our lovely publications.
It is our responsibility to locate and approach the virtual newsstands so that our magazines are visibly on display.
Search engines as newsstands
The biggest and best “newsstand” for online magazines used to be search engines like Google.
Our readers would actively seek out the information they wanted by using a search engine. After that, the search engine, which is usually often Google, would see what’s available and give them a few decent possibilities. Google would show your publication prominently for that search query if it were good enough.
With the development of generative AI, this dynamic is rapidly shifting. Google is starting to offer results for generated searches. It now positions a robot in front of the newsstand and allows it to respond to people’s inquiries rather than displaying magazines as it has been trained to read our magazines.
There are a lot of problems with Google’s new strategy that lawmakers and regulators ought to solve hopefully. However, there is an increasing issue for website owners that only use Google to drive traffic to their sites.
Diversifying your traffic sources is crucial.
Nowadays, more than ever, the proverb “not putting all your eggs in one basket” holds true. Many website owners have grown dependent on search engines in recent years to increase traffic to their websites.
Concentrating marketing efforts on SEO was reasonable because Google was such a strong and useful newsstand. However, it’s time to vary your sources of traffic today.
Thankfully, there are other options. Here are some practical suggestions:
1. Social media
Every day, billions of people utilize platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Pinterest, and TikTok. Offering eye-catching content segments that appeal to your target audience will help you promote your website successfully. Some will visit your site if the material aligns with their intent and interests.
Social media has the extra advantage of being a significant source of traffic for a lot of websites if your posts go viral.
2. Paid Advertising
If you are confident in paid advertising, it could be a good option to maintain your business’s return on investment per visitor. Through sponsored channels like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or others, you can draw in highly targeted visitors who are more likely to become leads.
3. Utilizing additional channels for content marketing
This may be an excellent opportunity for certain organizations to investigate more conventional methods. Developing partnerships, networking with coworkers, and sponsoring neighbourhood NGOs are a few possible choices.
Allow me to tell you a story from before Google, in case you need some motivation. I made printed materials advocating for the spaying and neutering of cats in an attempt to promote a content website about the subject. After that, I urged website users to print off these pamphlets and distribute them to different spots that pet owners frequent.
Even though the visitors were difficult to follow, we received comments for years afterwards from people who claimed to have discovered our website from a pamphlet at their neighbourhood pet groomer or veterinarian’s office.
4. A newsletter
Building a strong mailing list by curating user emails is becoming a crucial component of website marketing. Regardless of the source of your traffic, it is important to try to obtain the email addresses of your visitors. Next, use those emails by distributing a newsletter.
Conveying this email can be an extraordinary method for keeping in contact with your visitors and urging them to return to your site. Discounts, promotions, and other ways to turn visitors to your affiliate or e-commerce website into customers can be distributed through your email list.
If your email list growth is hindered by insufficient traffic, you can enhance your efforts by utilizing lead ads on several platforms.
Search engines are not be-all-and-end-all traffic generators
Numerouswebsite owners have encountered the impacts of Google’s algorithmic changes throughout recent months as the web search tool has become progressively AI-driven.
I understand their suffering because I am an online publisher myself and the president of the online Publishers Association. However, it’s crucial to keep in mind that there are other newsstands besides Google. Social media platforms are the many newsstands that our audiences see on a daily basis. Furthermore, we possess the ability to convert them into subscribers who receive our magazines directly in their email accounts.
Now is the right time to unleash our creativity and learn new ways to promote and associate with our ideal target audience in novel and innovative ways. Although it’s rarely simple, site owners should turn their businesses in 2024.
