How to Drive More Traffic to Your Homepage

Before we kick this off with a bunch of tips for driving more traffic to your homepage, I want to lay out a subtle reminder that

Not everyone who comes to your website lands on your homepage!

There’s an entire report in Google Analytics called Landing Pages that tells you which page of your website a visitor “landed” on. Why don’t you go there right now (Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages) and take a look at what your top landing page is? And even if it is your homepage, take a look at what percentage of your total website landed on your homepage (ours is less than 20%!).

So while it’s important to have a strong homepage, just know that not EVERYONE who comes to your website will land there, so make sure the rest of your site is solid as well.

Oh and one last thing before we get to the tips:

Your homepage isn’t always the best place to send people!

If you want to prevent people from hitting the back button and want to encourage people to become your customer, you want to send them to the most relevant page of your website for their needs.

Let me give you an example. You’ve seen retargeted ads like this, right?

You click on it and it takes you to a page like this:

Relevant, yes?

Can you imagine if the ad took me to Nordstrom’s homepage instead of the page where I can actually buy those gorgeous fuchsia Jimmy Choos? Side note: Totally not buying that shoe. I don’t allow myself shoes that cost more than my car payment.

Moral of the story is—your homepage isn’t always the best place to send people!

Nonetheless, here are

3 Ways to Send More Traffic to Your Homepage

#1 Add More Content

I’ve performed a lot of SEO audits on a lot of websites, and one thing I see over and over again is homepages without content. Your homepage should have at least 1,000 words of content to give it the best chances of ranking high in the search engine results. And by ranking higher in search results, you’ll get more search engine traffic to your website.

But don’t worry! It’s completely possible (through a few web development like mega-dropdowns, UberMenus, and jQuery sliders) to add a lot of content without sacrificing design! Check out Window World for an example of this:

Sealy also takes advantage of its navigational menu for adding extra content to its site, as well as a JQuery slider in the footer:

(Believe it or not, that page has over 1,000 words of content on it!)

While you’re adding content, make sure you have a well optimized title tag and meta description, too.

#2 Start a Branded Pay Per Click Campaign

In most situations, your homepage is NOT going to be an ideal landing page for your pay per click campaigns. However, there is one pay per click campaign I will make an option for—the branded pay per click campaign.

Bidding on your brand name will increase the number of times your website shows up on the front page of search results:

The more positions your brand occupies on the first page, the fewer positions your competitors are able to occupy. We call this maximizing your online real estate.

If you want to get more traffic to your website, you need to build, develop, and maintain as much online real estate as possible. A branded PPC campaign is a cost effective way to do this.

In addition, a branded PPC campaign can help prevent competitors from stealing your branded traffic. It’s common practice for your competitors to bid on your brand name. This allows their website to show up even when searchers are specifically looking for your brand. Look what happens when I search for HubSpot:

All of the ads highlighted in yellow represent competitors who have bid on HubSpot’s branded name. By having the number one paid listing and the number one organic listing, HubSpot reduces the likelihood of one of its competitors stealing its branded search traffic.

#3 Use Facebook Clicks to Website Ads

I don’t care what kind of business you have—your customers are on Facebook. Seriously, even if you sell dentures, your customers are on Facebook (both of my grandmothers are my Facebook friends, no joke). So basically, you need to be advertising there.

While some Facebook advertising options exist to get you more page likes and more engagement on your posts, there are also Facebook advertising options to send more people to your website. My favorite ads are called Facebook Clicks to Website ad, and you can send that traffic right to your homepage (or products/promotions page if that’s more appropriate).

And you know how I said your customers are on Facebook? Facebook has a bunch of advertising options that allow you to target in on that audience through location, age, gender, language, interests, and behaviors.

Need Help Getting More Traffic to Your Homepage?

Give me a call and we can talk about a unique strategy for getting your homepage more traffic. If you have an irrational fear of speaking to people on the phone, fill out the form below; I’ll analyze your site, and show you what it takes to be a winner.