Generating traffic to a new website can be a difficult, time consuming, and depending on the industry, an expensive undertaking.  It takes more than just throwing up a site, creating some pages, and voi la, you have instant customers.

In this article I am going to discuss how you can generate new leads by being creative, patient, and spending a little bit of time researching and writing to attract the right audience to your site even in a highly competitive industry.

To give an example most can follow, I am going to illustrate what a new real estate brokerage should do to get started. (Real estate is also one of the most competitive industries to market on the internet)

Scenario:  A real estate firm is looking to grow their websites’ traffic to help generate leads for their sales staff.

1:  Build the foundation before putting up the roof.

Start by attempting to generate leads organically: create your website, optimize it, start blogging, and create social media profiles that links back to your website.  Many times, hiring a seasoned SEO team is a great way of putting things in the right order.

Note:  NEVER let a SEO team write all of your content without proofreading or giving them direction…it usually ends up spammy and Google will de-rank or completely ignore your site.

Rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t read it, Google won’t like it either

This method can be difficult considering the amount of competition in the industry you are in so be patient and make sure to create unique, relevant content on your site.

2:  Organically Generate Traffic To Your Website Through Link Building and Guest Blogging

When you are in the process of buying a home or commercial property, you are leveraging the value of the home to borrow money from a bank. Similarly, you can leverage your abilities to write about a topic as a contributor on a high traffic website that relates to your own business to grow your own sites traffic.

Guest blogging is an efficient way to generate attention to your site that can be both consistent and efficient when it comes to the time and money spent on creating and marketing these posts.

Sometimes you can write the entire article on your own website, then submit a summarized version as a guest contributor, linking back and mentioning your own website, leveraging the traffic from the host site.

Done right, the contributed site is happy because they received relevant content, and you are able to promote your business while establishing yourself as a local expert.

3:  Build Relationships on Social Media

Picking a Realtor is very similar to picking a Doctor or any other professional, people look for those they trust, feel are well informed on their profession, and many times come recommended by a friend or family member.

The more you are able to connect and friend people on social media sites the more opportunities you will have to be one connection away from a client.  This doesn’t mean spamming people saying “hey you need a realtor?  Do you know anyone looking for a house?  I have one for sale?

Be informative letting people know about great charity events, grand openings of restaurants, and other cool things going on in your city, allowing you to become the go-to for things happening in an area and also a fun person to know.

4:  Drive Attention To Your Site Through Ads

If you are looking for immediate traffic to buy time while you are developing content, a great way of accomplishing this is through buying keywords in search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo and placing ads in niche websites people are actively searching for houses like Realtor.com, Zillow, and other similar property listing websites.

Note:  These kinds of ads can cost a good amount of money and are very competitive.  This is not a long term strategy as once your ad budget is done, unless you had a great website that inspired email capture, those leads are gone and no more are coming.

5:  Be Consistent and Patient

Generating traffic on the internet is not that easy anymore and doesn’t happen overnight.  The good thing is that the world wide web is just that…HUGE with plenty of room for those looking to use it wisely.  With the right game plan and experience in place, you can have a successful business generating leads and selling your product or services on the web before you know it.

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