5 Unique Ways to Attract Huge Traffic to Your Website

Ask someone how to draw traffic to your website and they’ll probably give you a tired line about “great content” and “original ideas”. Yeah, that’s not incorrect, but if unique ideas were enough to monetize a website then the guy who invented bacon cake would be rolling in Benjamins as well as heart disease.

The truth about virtual marketing is that sneaky advertising tricks are a faster and more effective way to increase your readership than simply waiting around for the world to recognize your genius.

But don’t get me wrong, there’s good sneaky and bad sneaky.

There are things you can do to increase your page ranks that have nothing to do with the quality of your content.

so…

Interested in drawing bigger traffic to your website? Here are a few ideas that are just as or more useful than just “great content.”

1. Become A Social Media God

Sure, you’re on Facebook. So is your grandmother. So is your third grade teacher. Also, she’s grown a beard.

Facebook is no longer the golden standard of social media engagement: It’s the bare minimum. To really increase traffic to your website, you need to expand your horizons and become a ubiquitous presence across all platforms.

There are several tricks to getting the most out of the social media, starting with knowing which ones are out there and ending with understanding their demographics. Which sites are male-dominated and which attract more females? What’s the average income of its users? Where are the teens hanging out? (Grab an aspirin before hitting that site.)

You should also learn how to take advantage of each website’s unique marketing opportunities. For example, Facebook has Open Graph and Facebook Exchange (FBX). Twitter offers Promoted Tweets. Tumblr sponsors and spotlights.

It’s a brave new world of social networking out there, so don’t be afraid to bump more traffic to your website by taking full advantage of people and their vanity and their desperate eagerness to share personal information with the entire universe. That’s what the internet is for, right?

2. Get Very Acquainted With Viral Video

“Video directories are now used like search engines. A lot of people, instead of going to Google, they’re finding information on YouTube. That’s why it’s an opportunity for you to take massive amounts of space on YouTube (…) so when people search for your topic they’ll be seeing your videos.”

– BJ Min, How To Get Traffic To Your Website

We’re a lazy generation. Hell, if you listen to the pundits, texting is declining our literacy rates and ripping apart the very fabric of our society. One day we’ll all be illiterate Descent-like creatures scrabbling in the dirt while the whiz kids from Asia lord over us with their superior math and language skills.

So what’s the secret to engaging all those lazy, indifferent readers who would rather not be readers at all?

Two words: Viral videos.

Viral videos have become a massive success at driving traffic to your website. They’re fresh, they’re fun and they attract attention like text-based ads simply can’t. It’s easy to ignore a little chunk of text pitifully bleating “SALE!”, but an embedded YouTube video where the preview image is of the Old Spice guy riding a unicorn?

Now that makes you look twice.

Which brings us to the next point of viral videos: Following the trends. It’s critical that you’re active on social media in order to identify the fads as they come along. The internet is a fickle mistress, and what’s cute and amusing today will be old news tomorrow.

No one makes Gangnam Style parodies anymore. The world has officially moved on from the “Friday” disaster. If you want to stay relevant, you have to stay up-to-date. That’s both the power and the curse of driving traffic to your website with viral videos.

3. Start A Rivalry With Someone

Coke vs Pepsi. PC vs Mac. Even singing cartoon animals aren’t immune to vicious brand wars, what with Disney and Pixar fighting box office battles for more than a decade until Disney said, “Haha, I’m one of the richest companies in the world, I’m just going to buy you out.”

What does this mean for increasing traffic to your website? It means you need to roll up your sleeves and pick a fight. By giving your readers a cause to champion, an enemy to mock, you’ll inspire them to greater levels of both loyalty and self-superiority. “That other blog is so stupid, I can’t believe people read it.” “It’s full of Republicans. I’m staying where the intelligent people are.”

By starting a blog war, you’ll also increase your exposure as innocent bystanders wander into the fray and then give their uninformed opinion about what’s going on… because that’s what people do.

Humans thrive on picking a side. It’s actually a well-documented social experiment: In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sherif took a group of boys to summer camp and divided them into two equal but separate teams. Even though none of the boys knew each other, even though they had nothing in common but a normal, two-parent background, they immediately began classifying themselves and each other based on entirely made-up characteristics.

They gave themselves names, the Eagles and the Rattlers. They started “claiming” areas of camp. They burned each other’s flags. It was Lord of the Flies in a boy scout camp.

You can see these attitudes in practice today with things like Team Edward and Team Jacob. It isn’t just a glittery vampire phenomenon: It’s psychology.

Besides, you hate most bloggers anyway. Don’t try to deny it. Go ahead and pick a fight with a really annoying one.

4. Become A Problem Solver

Why do people use search engines? Because they have a problem and they’re looking for answers. It may be a direct question, like “How can I use social media in my business?” or it may a roundabout search for “Legit ways to make money online.”

It may even be “How do you attract huge traffic to your website?”

We won’t judge.

The key here is to become a problem solver in your industry, not only so readers will love, link and lust after you, but also so you can reel in all those troubled souls who have turned to Google for supreme wisdom. They’ll come in search of a specific problem, see all your great content and then wind up clicking through your endless side articles and internal links.

You should be familiar with this form of time-suck, because it happens to you all the time on Wikipedia and Youtube and Vine. You start off with “renaissance welding” and end up watching babies eat pop rocks for two hours.

Embrace this kind of spontaneity and procrastination. Don’t be afraid of baiting readers into staying on your site longer than good sense dictates. Become that pop rock baby.

This is the sagest piece of advice you’ll ever receive, so appreciate it.

5. Engage, Engage, Engage

There are two personality types when it comes to websites.

You can be the Facebook, the cold, aloof social media mogul that’s so successful it doesn’t have to give a single shit about what its users actually want.

Or you can be the Bing, the desperately unloved stepchild that interrupts everything you do with “Notice me! Notice me! Aren’t I great? I’m so popular. Why aren’t you noticing me?”

If you want to draw big traffic to your website, you need to be the Bing. You can’t afford to be the Facebook, because you aren’t that successful yet and the last thing you want to do is drive away any potential readers. You could try a middle ground approach, but that may or may work; just look at all the other small- to mid-sized blogs within your industry that aren’t exactly failing but haven’t revolutionized the world, either.

You need to become an interesting and engaging online presence by constantly assaulting your readers with opportunity. Offer newsletters and RSS feeds to keep them updated with your world. Host contests, surveys and sweepstakes to interest old readers and attract new ones. Design apps. Answer questions. Follow back on social media sites.

“You can’t just start using Facebook and Twitter LinkedIn to interact with your customers unless you (…) capture those interactions, track them, do analysis on them and understand what interaction you’re having with your customers. If you combine the use of social media with a proactive customer relationship management policy, then you’ll have a social solution.”
– Nick Halsy, What You Should and Shouldn’t Do When Engaging Customers on Social Media

If you’re trying to draw serious traffic to your website, it’s go big or go home. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t be content with average numbers and a piddling readership.

Embrace social media. Do the Harlem shake. Go out, grab your knife and join Fight Club. Solve problems. Never stop intriguing, exciting and engaging your readers.

Become, in short, the best pop rock baby in the world.

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