If you want to know how to increase website traffic, start with the places people already look for someone like you: search, your Google listing, the customers who’ve paid you before, and the side of your van. Not clever tricks.

Most quiet websites aren’t broken. They’re just the only door, and nobody knows where it is.

How to increase website traffic when nobody has heard of you

Traffic isn’t one tap you turn on. It’s the sum of a lot of small doors, and most small firms have only one or two of them open. Somebody searching for your trade in your town, somebody who saw your van and typed the name in, somebody who got your email, somebody stood in a car park looking at their phone: those are all different doors, and they all need different things doing to them. The reason a site sits quiet for months is usually that none of them lead anywhere. The fix is boring and it works. Make every page say plainly what you do and where you do it, fill your listing in properly, put the address on everything you hand out, and give the people who already know you a reason to come back. None of that needs a marketing budget, and all of it stacks up.

Nine things that actually bring people to your site

• Say what you do and where you do it, on every page, in the words a customer would type.
• Fill in your Google Business Profile properly and keep the opening hours honest.
• Ask happy customers for reviews, because that’s what people read before they click through.
• Put your web address on the van, the invoice, the sign, the card and the leaflet.
• Give each service its own page rather than cramming the lot onto one.
• Write a page answering each question you get asked on the phone every week.
• Email the people who’ve already paid you, even if it’s only now and then.
• Get listed where your trade gets listed: trade bodies, local directories, suppliers’ installer pages.
• Make the site quick on a phone, with your number tappable at the top.

Which of those is worth your time first

Where visitors come from	How quickly it shows	What it takes	Best for
Search	Slow to build, then steady	Real pages and patience	People looking for your trade right now
Google listing	Quicker than search	Filling it in and keeping it current	Anyone searching nearby on a phone
Paid ads	Fast, and it stops when you stop	Money every month	Testing whether people want the thing
Social posts	Uneven	Turning up regularly	Reminding people you still exist
Email to past customers	Fast	A list you already own	Repeat work and referrals
Print and signage	Slow and steady	Designing and printing it once	People who type your name in

Is more traffic even what you want

Be careful what you’re measuring. Traffic is easy to inflate, and a busy graph isn’t the same thing as a fuller diary. A pile of visitors from the wrong end of the country does nothing for a plumber who only works within a short drive of home. What you want is the right people, landing on a page that answers the thing they came for, with an obvious way to ring you. That usually means fewer, better pages rather than more of them. Before you go chasing visitor numbers, open your own site on your phone and try to hire yourself. Can you tell within seconds what the business does, where it works, and how to get hold of an actual human being? If you can’t, sending more people to it just means more of them leaving. Sort the landing out first, then worry about filling the sky.

What about paying for traffic

Ads work while you pay and stop when you stop. That’s not a criticism, it’s just the deal, and for some jobs it’s the right deal.

The trap is paying for clicks that land on a weak page. If the page doesn’t say what you do, where you do it and what happens next, you’re buying people the chance to leave. Fix the page, then decide whether you still need the ads.

Questions people actually ask

How long before I see more visitors

Nobody honest will give you a date. Your listing and your own customer list tend to move first, because those people already know you. Search takes longer, because you’re waiting on other people to notice you.

Do I have to blog every week

No. A handful of pages that properly answer the questions you get asked on the phone will do more than a weekly post nobody reads. Write them once, keep them right, leave them alone.

Is social media worth it for a one-van business

It’s worth it if your customers are already there and you can keep it up without it becoming a chore. Photos of finished work beat anything else. If posting makes you miserable, put the effort into your listing instead.

Do I need to pay somebody every month for this

Not here. Reor sells single jobs at a fixed price, so you can have the pages sorted once and walk away owning them. If you’d rather somebody looked after it every month, that’s Distinctive, the sister side of the business.

Getting the site pulling its weight

If your website’s quiet and you’d rather someone just fixed the pages than sold you a monthly plan, ring 01823 242424 or email info@reor.co.uk and tell us what you do and who you want ringing you. One job, one price, and the files are yours at the end.