How to Create More Long-Term Traffic: 7 Things You Can Add to Your Site

Looking to drive long-term, organic traffic to your site? Who isn’t?!

Organic traffic = less time and energy spent promoting and advertising your business which ultimately means more time freedom for you! By taking the time to build a site that works for you, (a site that attracts traffic on autopilot) you’ll be working smarter not harder.

In this post, I’ll be sharing 7 things you can add to your site to create more long-term traffic.

Disclaimer:

*As an Amazon Associate I may earn commissions from qualifying purchases. For more information, please read my affiliate disclaimer.

1. Add Social Share Buttons to Your Site

The popularity of social share buttons rises to the surface based on one simple fact: the easier it is to share your content, the more organic traffic you’ll get.

So help your readers easily share your content by adding social share buttons to your site.

When a reader loves something on your site, they can use these buttons to share your post, page, or special offer to the social media site of their choice. This will automatically include a link back to your site, which will ultimately help more people find and share your content!

Furthermore, gaining organic traffic from authoritative sites like Facebook, Pinterest, etc. is a great way to boost your rankings with Google as well!

Social Share Button Plugin I Recommend:

Sumo – I personally love this plugin because it’s free and easy to customize. Plus there are a bunch of other features that come with it to help you automate your site growth!

You basically choose where you want these buttons to show up (on the side of your page, above your content, and/or below your content) and which social media channels you want to include. Then when someone wants to share your content they just click on the appropriate button and instantly share it!

Here’s an example of a blog post on my site:

You can also use Sumo to create “Pin It” buttons:

This is pretty easy to set up on your own, but if you need any help, contact me!

2. Create an Instagram Landing Page

An Instagram Landing Page is a simple page created on your site that includes buttons/links. This page acts as a navigation menu, funneling traffic to all of your most important content.

Once you create the page, you can add the link to your Instagram bio to help your audience discover more of your content, shop your online store, join your mailing list, and more!

For example: taratierney.com/links/

Instagram Landing Page:

Instagram Bio:

The benefits of having your own Instagram landing page:

It will contain links to all the important places you want to send your followers to from Instagram.
You will be able to fully customize it so it will match your branding, much better than Linktree!
You can easily make updates to it from your site using a page builder.
You’ll have more control and ownership over it (in case Linktree or Instagram ever go down!)
You can have a “prettier” URL in your IG bio (instead of linktr.ee/yoursitename it can be yoursitename/links)
It’s free! (Linktree pro is something like $6/mo.)
Instead of your Instagram traffic going to Linktree, your Instagram traffic will go directly to your website. And the more traffic your site gets from authoritative sites, like Instagram, the better your SEO rankings will be on Google… and you always want to appease the Google gods. Do good by them and they will reward you exponentially! 😉

If you’d like me to create an Instagram Landing Page for you, feel free to reach out!

3. Create High-Quality Blog Posts

Show off your knowledge by writing helpful, valuable content in blog posts created specifically for your target audience (or hire a content writer to do this!)

Most people do the “easier” thing and only use social media to write lots of “mini blog posts” while they are out and about and on the go. Maybe this is because they don’t know how to blog, maybe they don’t understand how valuable blogging can be, or maybe they just don’t have the time to write.

Whatever the case, because it’s essentially “easier” to post on social media, this is exactly what most people do. If you’re doing what everybody else is doing, then you are also setting yourself up against a LOT more competition, which means you will have to work harder to get people to notice you. Plus, once you post something, it’s almost immediately lost in a sea of information after just a few hours.

So basically, you’re just creating a lot more work for yourself, for such a little return on investment (investment = time and energy).

I’ve personally discovered over time and experience that using social media as the main way to promote myself is really just a great way to burn myself out (maybe you’ve felt this at some point, too?)

Blogging, on the other hand, is much more evergreen, meaning it can continue to work for you long term.

As I mentioned above, if you write quality posts that are helpful to your target audience, your posts will most likely start showing up higher on the Google search results page, bringing you more organic traffic over time, for FREE, and without having to do a lot of extra work. 🙂

Blogging does require a bit more of a time investment upfront, BUT it’s proven to be worth it. In fact, it’s been the main method I’ve personally used to build 4 successful online businesses/blogs of my own since 2013.

Check out the initial stats of one of my niche blogs below:

Out of the 4 blogs/websites I’ve built, the one above was the newest (I started it in August 2016) and it ended up growing faster than any of my other blogs… probably because I was 3.5 years into entrepreneurship at this point and knew what I was doing by then. 😉

Below shows where my top all-time website traffic was coming from for that same site.

Notice how most of my traffic was coming from Google and other search engines, while social media was a bit more down the line? This had a lot to do with the fact that I spent more of my time writing blog posts and providing quality content on my site that helped people find the information they were looking for.

As you can see, Google rewarded me quite handsomely for this. 🙂

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of blogging, check out these posts:

If you need help setting up your blog, I can help with that, too! Check out my brand + website design services.

4. Optimize Your Site + Blog Posts with SEO

You could have the prettiest site in the world, but if people can’t find you, then you’re kind of sh*t out of luck (I learned this the hard way my first 2 years in business… don’t do what I didn’t do. 😉 ).

The solution to this is to optimize your site and all your blog posts with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The great thing about this is that the basics can actually get you pretty far. I personally saw a really quick return on investment when I first learned (within 2 weeks, but it can take a few months to gain traction… regardless, it’s worth it to start optimizing it now!)

If you’d like to learn how to do your own SEO, here are two resources I’ve personally learned from and recommend:

If you’re not interested in getting your hands dirty with that, or if you just don’t have the time, you can also hire me to help. 🙂

5. Link to Existing Pages or Blog Posts

First of all, I recommend having a multipage site vs having a one-page site as it promotes more interaction with your content. When people click around to learn more about what you have to offer, they also stay on your site longer, which is a positive thing when it comes to pleasing the Google gods.

Remember, it’s about the audience and what’s in it for them!

This signals to Google that your site offers something valuable that people are interested in, and Google rewards sites that help people find what they are looking for. They do this by boosting your SEO rankings, which means your site’s individual pages and posts will be more likely to show up higher on the search results page of Google. 🙂 Since people generally only click on the first two or three links that show up vs clicking to the next page of the search results page, you definitely want to build a valuable site that ranks higher!

To create more organic, long-term traffic on autopilot for yourself, your goal is to make it easy for people to discover more, related content on your site. You can do this by creating links to different pages or posts: Link certain keywords or key phrases in a blog post or page, or manually add a “Related Posts” section to the middle or end of a post, depending on what feels right to you.

For example:

Related Posts:

6. Use Pinterest to Your Advantage

If you don’t already have a FREE Pinterest business account, you may want to consider signing up for one! It can be a HUGE resource for driving traffic (it’s personally been one of my top two referrers over the past few years for all 4 of my sites!)

Like Google, Pinterest is a search engine that helps people find content through visuals (and people LOVE visuals!)

Although there are a lot of things you can do to optimize your content on Pinterest, the first thing you can do is start creating shareable Pinterest pins, which are vertical images that essentially help advertise your posts or products on Pinterest.

The standard size for a Pinterest pin is 1000 x 1500 px. which you can easily create for free in Canva.

After you finish writing a blog post, you would create a branded Pinterest pin, that includes the title of the post, and then add it (usually at the top) to your blog post, as you can see I’ve done in this post. After you hit publish, you can then pin that Pinterest pin to a board, or even a few boards, on your Pinterest account to help your blog post get found in Pinterest searches.

If you have products for sale that you’d like to promote, you can create and optimize Pinterest pins for those as well by making your product images vertical in shape.

Click the image below to view the branded Pinterest pins I’ve created for my client:

In addition, you can also create branded Pinterest board covers to help your business look and feel more professional.

Click the image below to view the branded Pinterest board covers I’ve created for my client:

If you’d like some help branding and optimizing your Pinterest account, I can help! Feel free to reach out!

7. Email List Signup Form

Last but not least, having your own email list can be a huge long-term traffic driver.

The great thing about building your own email list is you will have a lot more control over it VS social media, which can subject you and your target audience to frequent algorithm changes. This means people might not always see the content you post, which translates into missed connections and potentially lost business. Womp womp…

On the flip side, when you send an email to a subscriber on your list, it goes straight to their inbox, which means they are more likely to see the message and interact with any links you use in it.

Your email list can be something simple like notifications of new blog posts, or you could create a weekly or monthly newsletter, promoting any new products, services, news, tips, or special sales that only your subscribers have access to.

Example of a simple email list signup form for my client:

The best part is that people on your list want to hear from you because they consented to subscribe to you and that is totally priceless! Because this list is yours and can’t be altered by external forces, I highly recommend creating your own and adding a signup form to your site. When you send out your emails, you can add links that lead back to your site, which will help promote long-term, organic traffic from people who are truly interested in what you have to offer. 🙂

I personally use and recommend Mailchimp. It’s great if you’re just starting out because it’s free and relatively easy to use!

If you need some help setting up a subscription form or even creating a branded template for your newsletter or a lead magnet that will help you build your list, feel free to reach out to me! Also, feel free to check out my client Moon Soul Magic’s brand + website project for some ideas on what you can do to create your newsletter and build your email list!

I Want to Hear From You!

These have been some of the best ways to boost your organic, long-term traffic.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these strategies? Have any of them produced any noteworthy results?

Let me know in the comments below!