Web traffic for most websites drop during the weekend because less people are using the internet to look for information or checking their favorite websites for new content.
This is a natural and inevitable occurrence and a corresponding dip in traffic figures or sales is nothing to be alarmed about.
Jay Wilson recently asked if I had any recommendations to stop traffic from reducing during the weekends and as a matter of fact, I do have some suggestions that might work, although they will require some effort on your part.
Getting traffic to your site during the weekends is no different from methods commonly used to increase visitors to your site during the weekdays. The key is to focus on hitting defensible traffic sources for referral traffic, since these are factors which you can control to a certain extent (as opposed to organic search traffic).
Seven Easy Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Site on the Weekend
Your goal is to target websites with regular traffic flows and large numbers of users and make them referral sources which will send visitors to your website. Naturally, you should try to focus on getting targeted traffic whenever possible.
These short-term strategies will allow you to get traffic very soon after you implement them. They will not only reduce your weekend traffic dip but may get you even more traffic to your website than the weekdays.
I have omitted other long term traffic building methods like building a community, product development, joint ventures or affiliate programs because they are not something you can easily implement for immediate results.
- Network within Social Communities. This includes posting and interacting with other people on relevant forums, social networks like Facebook, news sites like Digg/Reddit as well as blog sites like Blogcatalog or MyBloglog. There will always been people on crowded online communities and you will always get some visitors if you plug your site discreetly in the right places.
- Create a Weekend Link Bait. Establish the habit of creating and promoting a weekend Link Bait on popular social websites like Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. This is by the far the easiest and most powerful way to get traffic to your site during the weekends.
Social news sites usually get less news during the weekend, and it is likely that your bait will be more successful during this time.
- Comment on Blogs. While many blogs don’t update during the weekend, you can still comment on the ones that do. Focus on those with more traffic and try to be the first few to leave a comment. Make your comment relevant and you’re likely to receive some visitors from others who visit the same blog.
- Email Pitch Your Website. Write an email to bloggers within your niche to promote your website, business or best article for last week. Give away a product or offer premium access for selected publishers in return for a mention.
Some blogs like Daily Blog Tips have a habit of doing weekend speed-linking. Pitch your site to these blogs and you’ll get some traffic if you get a link.
- Try Blog Traffic Exchanges. Blog traffic exchanges are tools which allow you to get traffic by visiting other blogs. They are more useful for newer blogs and as they require more time and effort on your part, I suggest using them strategically to find new blogs within your niche as well.
- Use Paid Advertising. This involves spending money on paid advertising in order to get traffic to your website. Pay per click advertising and social media advertising on sites like StumbleUpon can bring in traffic on the weekends. The benefit of this method is that you don’t have to do any work whatsoever.
- Publish During the Weekend. Publishing during the weekend will get you some traffic, especially if you have many feed subscribers as some of them will visit your site to read the full article or comments. Smaller sites can also benefit as new content will bring in a small amount of long tail search traffic.
Future publish your post during the weekend so you don’t have to sit down in front of the computer to write. Asking a question is sometimes the quickest way to put out an extra blog post.
The downside of all of these methods (with the exception of paid advertising) is the time-investment. Do you really want to spend time in front of the computer on the weekend? The amount of time needed for these tasks will vary and perhaps it would be better to alternate them each weekend to lessen the workload.
Another way to deal with this would be to get someone to help promote your site for the weekend instead of doing it yourself. Learning how to oursource marketing is important, even for amateur webmasters or bloggers because they can really help your website to grow much faster.
If you have the time and interest, try implementing some of the tactics listed in this article. I’ll love to hear if it helps you to get more visitors this weekend.