By |Published On: October 17, 2016|

Local traffic is the foundation of your small business’ web presence. But are you overlooking the importance of non-local traffic?  We show you how to expand your reach.

Driving local web traffic to your business website is important. But if your business is only optimized for your local clients, you may be over saturating the local market.

Expanding into larger markets will allow you to reach new clients and lessen the chance of wearing out your welcome with your current customers.

But What’s the Best Way for a Local Business to Expand? Try These Five Techniques:

 

1) Leverage the Power Of Influencers

Influencer marketing – where you get key leaders in a particular industry to drive your brand’s message to a larger market – has been one of the hallmarks of digital marketing in 2016.

There are endless ways of tapping into this type of marketing. You can use influencers to help launch a new product, promote a competition, or help improve brand awareness.

Since influencers have a very wide audience, their passionate fans will take their recommendations to heart. If an influencer asks their fans to visit your site, be prepared for enormous traffic.

2) Invest in Ethical Link Building

Link building is another excellent way to reach new markets. When you have links to your site in leading blogs and online news outlets, millions of people will have the chance to visit your website.

In addition, you will find your website quickly rising through search engine result pages. That additional exposure will boost your reputation and lead to more traffic.

But the ‘Ethical’ part of ‘Ethical Link Building’ is key here. You must make sure your link building activities do not breach Google’s regulations. Guest blogging and submitting articles to directories are two great ways to ethically build your links.

3) Promote Your Business on Social Media

Social Media networks have hundreds of millions of users, a majority of whom check their profiles at least once every day. Since these users are spread across the globe, you can quickly increase your non-local exposure using this familiar tool.

Start being more active on social media. Advertise your promotions on the popular social networks and, again, call on influencers to help you spread the message.

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4) Consider Long Tail Keywords

You might be performing poorly with your non-local traffic because of stiff competition. In non-local markets, there could be thousands of businesses providing the same goods and services. This means it can be difficult to find your company on search engines.

One way of overcoming this challenge is to utilize long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and carry more of the words that searchers use in the search bar. This means you’ll have a better chance of reaching more targets in untapped markets.

5) Have a Great, Professional Website

Make no mistake about it, the quality of your site will affect every aspect of your online performance. A poor, user-unfriendly, non-responsive site is guaranteed to perform very poorly on search engines, give minimal visibility, and lead to low traffic.

Make sure your website has professional graphics and photos. Choose a design that has a good amount of white space, and an eye-catching color palate. And don’t forget that 60% of customers will try to find you on a mobile device – so make sure your site has a usable mobile option as well.

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