When you have a small business, it can feel like the success of your website is something of a game of chance. You know that getting a lot of traffic is key to having lots of leads to convert, and to building your brand’s reputation, but the sheer number of things that can contribute to whether or not your site takes off can make it seem like you don’t have a lot of control.

While there is no sure-fire way to get the kind of viral success that some sites enjoy – and there is some luck involved in that – there are ways that you can make sure your website is getting a respectable amount of traffic and that you keep visitors who have found it returning. Here are some of the things you may not be doing which could be the cause of disappointing traffic:

You Don’t Publish New Content Regularly

Static business websites that simply give the details of what a company does are no longer enough to cut it. People expect a website to be full of useful and interesting content, and to post fresh stuff regularly so that there is a good reason to follow the business on social media or keep on visiting the pages. If you don’t have a blog on your site, you are losing out in many ways. First of all, you aren’t posting new things that can be shared on social media to help you reach more people that way. Secondly, you aren’t regularly adding new content that will help boost your Google search engine results. Thirdly, you aren’t leveraging the chance that a website gives you to really establish yourself as an authority in your field and a brand that can be trusted by posting useful and informative things.

If your site doesn’t include a blog yet, adding one is easy, and a little time spent with a good website building tool plus a commitment to writing or commissioning content could be all it takes to improve your traffic.

You Don’t Engage with Visitors

If you do have content on your site, do you allow comments, and if so, do you reply to them and engage with your readers? A site that can be shown to interact with the people who visit it tends to be far more appealing. Your social media feeds that advertise your site and business should keep the same thing in mind – people want a two-way conversation when they follow an account or comment on content, rather than simply being talked ‘at’ as traditional advertising does.

You Don’t Use Keywords Well

One of the most important things when it comes to traffic is search engine optimisation, and while there are lots of things that contribute to a page ranking well, one thing that you can definitely control is the keywords used in your content. Learn how to do keyword research and find phrases that are relevant in your industry. Then, optimise your content so that it uses these well. When you do this right it doesn’t change how readable your content is or how appealing it is to human readers but will tell search engines which user searches your content is related to. If you’re not doing this, you absolutely need to add it in to your strategy. Naturally this ties in to having a blog, because this is where you would post most of this content.

As you can see, there are a few things you can change very quickly which can help see more traffic coming in to your website.