How to Attract More Visitors to Your Website in 3 Steps

Have A Website? Attract More Visitors (And More Clients)

So you have a nice website up and running for you translation agency, or perhaps for your own freelance work, but what now? How to attract more visitors to your website so that you can work your magic and turn them into clients?

SEO should be a key part of your plan. SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is how you tweak your site so that Google ranks it higher in people’s search results.

For translators it is important for two reasons: first, you need to know how to translate a website in a SEO-friendly way for your clients, as we discussed in a previous article. Secondly, you need to learn how to leverage it for yourself, in order to get more visitors and, hopefully, convert them into clients.

If you still don’t have a website because you think “I am only a freelancer and I don’t need a website, I just need a CV” you are missing out a lot of opportunities. You send CVs if you are applying for jobs, but if you are a freelancer you actually are a business owner. Ok, your business is made of yourself only, but it is still a business. So start promoting your business, and leverage the internet for this. Furthermore, if you don’t have a website you’re leaving the opportunities to people who promote themselves online. Start creating your website with this step-by-step free guide, then come back here and keep reading.

1 – Content, Content, Content

Before you start trying any of the SEO “tricks of the trade”, take a deep breath and repeat: “content, content, content”. That’s right, the most important thing you can do is post informative and quality content on your side, and post it often. You can have a section with your services, and a section for a blog. A regularly updated blog is virtually essential to success, as you will build up return visitors. If your content is interesting and informative, people will check back regularly to see your latest posts. So keep the content coming.

While you’re writing all that great quality content, make sure to partner with other blogs and write guest posts for them. Maybe you can partner with freelancers who work in other language pairs so you can recommend each other when clients need more languages? This will help improve your credibility, and more importantly, it will create links back to your blog. As this network of connections grows, Google will reward you by ranking you higher in their results.

2 – Social Media

Social media should always be part of any strategy to drive traffic to your website. Start with the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Any new blog posts should be announced (and linked to) on those three platforms. Once you have those down, consider expanding into other social media outlets such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, or Instagram. Which ones you focus on will depend a lot on your specific content and the general culture of each site. At a minimum, each company or freelancer should probably have at least a basic LinkedIn profile.

If your site lends itself to having a podcast, I encourage you to start one up. Keep it light, interesting, and engaging. Remember, a podcast is not a lecture or a sales pitch, and humor can help quite a bit in this regard. Podcasts can get wide exposure by distributing them through iTunes or other similar sites.

For small businesses that are starting out, word of mouth can’t be beaten. Social media is great for this, so don’t be afraid to ask all your online friends and contacts to share your posts. You might be surprised how quickly word can spread in this manner.

3 – Keywords

Keywords included in your content can be another way to boost visitors. What this means is that you should include common words and phrases which people would typically search for inside your actual content. The risk with this strategy, however, is to go overboard and sprinkle everything your write with industry-specific jargon. While this approach will get all the keywords onto your site, it tends to also dilute the quality of your content, making it less interesting to read.

Never forget that quality of content is the most important thing, because none of your visitors will be talking about or sharing boring or uninformative articles. If you want to attract fellow translators, talk about CAT tools and ITI meetings. If you want to attract potential customers, show them the benefits of translating their website and translating their material. Show them your expertise in a way that they can understand, talking their language (not their real language this time, I speak about things they are interested in). That being said, use keywords sparingly, along with the other ideas above, especially the one related to your fields of expertise, and you should be well on your way to attracting new visitors to your site.