Avoid the Pigeonhole – Tips to Increase Traffic on Your Blog

A niche business can be a double edged sword. It can be a good thing because you offer a particular product or service and therefore there are relatively few competitors. However, this also means that your products or services aren’t needed by everyone or during every season, thus reducing your target market. When building a website to cater to your niche business, it’s important to keep these qualities in mind. From design to content, every aspect of your website can make or break the success of your online traffic and, to a great extent, your business. To guard against this, here are some points to consider when developing your niche business’s website.

1. Friendliness Is Attractive

Whether or not your website is for a niche business, the surest way to drive people away is to have a confusing and unfriendly design. Make sure your website is easily navigable with a well laid out navigation bar and other options for your audience to find exactly what they need. This may include putting navigation links at the top and the bottom, providing a search box, or making your archive easily accessible. Watch the colors you use and take care to choose combinations that do not strain the eyes. While good web designers will know these things, tastes differ, so make sure to still communicate preferences to your designer from the beginning. Remember, even if you have stellar content, if your design and layout is not user-friendly, people will not waste their time trying to figure it out.

2. Be Needed

“Make your customers think about you, your products, and your site

As much as you need them, one of the best ways to get a loyal audience is to make them need you. What’s the way to do this? Offer valuable, focused and relevant content. The goal here is to make your customers think about you, your products, and your site the moment they need what your business is selling or anything related to it. Be sure to offer how-to tutorials, expert advice, and a blog where you can write about topics that you know your target demographic is looking for.

3. Keywords Will Open Doors

By using keywords that are relevant to your niche, there is a greater likelihood that the good content you create will rank higher in search engines and thus lead to more people going to your site. There are many ways to make your website rank high on search engines but some key things to do is to optimize your site for relevant keywords that don’t have too much competition. It might be your first instinct to try to use all the relevant keywords to your product, but to do this is ineffective because of the sheer amount of competition you will have with these keywords. The thing to do is to search for a dozen relevant keywords with two or three that are in the high competition list and the rest that are relevant but with less competition. If you have a static site and a blog, make sure to use these same keywords too!

4. Links Are Gold

Exchanging links with websites that rank high in search engines is like a golden ticket to success. It won’t get you all the way there, but it will certainly give you a huge boost towards your goal website traffic. Popular websites have vast readership. One mention or a permanent link on their site opens up your site and business to their large following. The benefits that can come of this link exchange are twofold. One, you can potentially gain more loyal clients directly from this link exchange and indirectly from referrals made by the popular website’s readers.

Two, your traffic will increase exponentially almost overnight. This immediately translates to statistics that potential advertisers will love. And more advertisers will mean more money. How exactly do you get this wonderful link exchange? Popular blogs don’t just give them away. Aside from marketing yourself as an expert, you have to constantly churn out good content, keep posting in forums and other blogs (including the popular blogs you want to link to you), and doing everything you can to get your worthwhile content noticed.

5. Be Consistent and Reliable

After all this work, while it’s appealing to just sit back, relax, and wait for the traffic to come, this is not how it works. A website needs work and care. You will need to consistently post updates, articles and other material that your readership or customers anticipate. Even if you already have stellar content, a large readership and a flourishing business and website, you will need to post on a regular basis. The upside of becoming a popular website or blog? You can ask other experts in the field for guest posts! This not only creates great content for your site, but you also pay it forward by giving other people a chance to achieve the same success you have!

Niche businesses can be challenging, to say the least. And while marketing them online can be just as difficult, by following these few key steps you’ll find people flocking to your site to purchase products or services.

Image credits:
Day to Night – Framed by Schtumple
Web 1.0 Keywords by mary hodder
Chain in gold by tanakawho
Reliable by Eva the Weaver