No matter whether you own a local tool hiring shop or a small Italian restaurant on the corner of the high street, your business will probably rely on a lot of foot traffic. So you may have been a bit reluctant to jump on the website bandwagon initially. But now that you have, how much new business is your website actually bringing you in?

When a new customer or client walks through your door….”ding”….or you get a phone call from someone wanting your products or services….”ring, ring” – do you ask them how they heard about you? How many of these people actually say, “oh, I found out about your from your website”. Probably not as many as that designer bloke who did your website promised you’d get.

So let’s look at 5 free methods to promote your website that you can do yourself to increase the web traffic to your business, thus bring in more customers.

1. Register your business and website with Google Places

If you click on the link below, Google will guide you through the signup process.

http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage

Be sure to add as much detail to your listing as you can e.g. your opening hours, photos etc.
If you can manage to get your listing up to 100% complete then you will stand a better chance of showing up in Google when someone is searching for your product or service.

2. Sign up to as many local business directories as you can

I have listed a few of the good ones below that you can start off with.

http://ukonlinedirectory.co.uk/

www.freeindex.co.uk
www.businesslinedirectory.co.uk
www.business-directory-uk.co.uk
www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk

They are all free to sign up with and list your business on and should get you a nice increase in web traffic to your business.
You can always find more free business directories by heading to Google and searching for ‘free business directories’.

3. Start participating in Business Forums

One of my favourite business forums is called Web Pro World

http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/register.php

Once you have created your account you can head over to your profile and fill in details about yourself and your business; make sure you put your website in the appropriate box on your profile page so that people can find you.

Next you will want to create a signature for yourself. This is the text that displays below every post you make in the forum. If you own an Italian restaurant in Milton Keynes then a good signature to have would be:

<a href=http://www.yourwebsite.com>Italian Restaurant in Milton Keynes</a>

If you copy that piece of code exactly and paste it into your signature then it will show up like this:

Italian Restaurant in Milton Keynes

Then the more posts that you make in the forum the more times your signature will display. Post enough and you will find a good increase in web traffic to your business.

4. Find blogs related to your market and post comments

When you’ve got the kids to bed and have a spare hour to yourself, rather than peruse through your Sky+ recordings for anything interesting, spend an hour or helping your business. No matter what market you are in, there are going to be hundreds of blogs out there on-topic that you can comment on.

If you own a tool hire shop then jump on Google and search for ‘DIY blog’ or ‘tools blog’ and you will see hundreds show up. Check a few of them out, pick an article that looks interesting, and post a comment giving your opinion on the article. Of course, make sure you put your website address in the website box, as well as your name and email address.

Even if the blog doesn’t target your area or even your country, it is still very worthwhile adding your 2 cents (and website). Google will notice that your website keeps appearing at all these relevant blogs and will send you more targeted traffic as a result.

5. Give your existing customers a reason to visit and tell others about your website

Other than to find out your contact details and location, are there any other reason why someone might want to look at your site? Probably not! So why not spend £50 or so and have some simple flyers made up. The flyers will tell people that they can get 15% off their next purchase. All they need to do is go to your website: www.yourwebsite.co.uk/15percent and they can print off a coupon to bring in next time. Stick a 6 or 12 month expiration date on the coupon.

So the next time someone walks in to your business….”ding”…and buys from you, staple their receipt to the flyer, or stick it in their bag with the goods.

This will do two things:

Firstly, there will be an incentive there for that customer to come back and buy from you again with their printed out coupon.
Secondly, when that customer gets home she will no doubt jump on Facebook (that’s what people do now). Whilst waiting for her friend to reply, she checks out her new purchase and comes across your flyer. Her friend still hasn’t replies so she opens a new tab in her browser and types in the web address on the flyer. Her friend finally replies asking what she’s up to….she will paste your voucher link into her Facebook feed and tell her friends about her recent purchase and the voucher etc. and BANG….you’ve just gone viral!

You can make it even easier for someone to share your voucher link on Facebook by having a ‘Share this on Facebook’ icon on your voucher page. But we are starting to get into a bit too much detail.  Send me a note if you’d like to know more about how to do this.

You may be thinking, yeah right, as if anyone would actually do that! Well believe me, they do…culture is changing, and Facebook is ALWAYS open in the background which means you are just one click away from going viral.

Another popular excuse I hear is that Facebook is great if you want to target teenage girls. But teenage girls aren’t likely to hire any tools from me. You’d be WRONG. The biggest growing Facebook demographic is 30 and 40+ so get on there and ride the wave!

So there are your 5 free traffic strategies aimed at helping local businesses, local business marketing. If you could come up with something more creative than just a voucher then you give people reason to spread your message, and you can instantly leverage their social networking influence.You now can