Local and small businesses often face the problem of bringing in more footfall on a regular basis. No matter what your type of business, be it plumbing, gardening or a clothing boutique, increasing your digital marketing presence will enable you to reach more customers online.

Try using the following five tips to boost online traffic to your website:

1. Place content on your website that has a local SEO (Search engine optimisation) flavour:

The benefits of SEO can never be underestimated, so why not use it with a local emphasis? With local SEO, you can narrow your focus so that you reach out to local customers. In order to do this use locally used keyword phrases on your site to engage your target audience.

2. Get in touch with local customers on social media platforms:

Through social media, local businesses can reach out to new customers while also keeping existing customers engaged, thereby fostering long-term brand relationships.

• To reach out on Facebook, post content, video and photos about 2-3 times a day or you can re-post content with a different headline.
• For LinkedIn, post content links on your profile page and long-form content on LinkedIn Publisher.
• On Twitter, aim to tweet about three times a day and re-tweet content or updates. You can also embed videos and start conversations with tweets by asking for opinions.
• On Instagram and Pinterest, post images along with your blog post. If you’re addressing a younger audience, Instagram can be more beneficial while Pinterest has an older, more female demographic.

When using social media, it is important to make your content sharable and portable. All your content should be accompanied by social bookmarking and should be able to be forwarded to friends. You should also make information available through blogger outreach, guest blogs and social media press releases. Contributing to forums and blogs can also create relationships which can drive more traffic to your website as can running giveaways or competitions on any of the above sites.

3. Use paid promotion opportunities:

There are good opportunities for advertising online, such as paid promotion in the form of social media marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. These also enable you to reach out to different audiences. Through search ads, you can reach out to potential customers who seek certain relevant topics on the major search engines.

4. Set up your profiles on review sites and directory profiles:

Certain review sites like Yelp and directories like Trip Advisor can also help your business to reach more people. By setting up your profiles on such high-traffic sites and encouraging your existing customers to provide positive reviews, you can get high-quality leads when customers use these sites.

5. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly:

These days nearly everyone has a smart phone, so it has become imperative to have a mobile-friendly site. This will help customers find you when searching for local goods and services. With a responsive and easily navigable website that can be accessed from a mobile device, you can reach a wider audience more quickly and efficiently.