Every business naturally wants more traffic to their website as traffic essentially translates to increased sales. What’s the secret for getting people there? And, how do you get them to stay? Like poker, while there may be a bit of luck attached to it, attracting and keeping people on your site is a skill.

It’s all in the headline

When you meet someone that you’re trying to impress, most people will take extra precautions with their appearance. The same should be true online. Catchy titles are beyond valuable since they draw people in. Multiple tactics work including humor, statistics, bold facts, and more, but please be careful to not sensationalize the title. Sometimes it’s tempting, but if readers feel tricked or misled, the super catchy headline serves no purpose.

The best advice in regards to headlines comes from Copyblogger in 10 Sure-Fire Formulas That Work. These tactics provide variety as well as meat that assist in SEO initiatives.

Content matters… a lot

If you read any content from SugarSpun, you should know that we place a tremendous amount of emphasis on content marketing. The reason is simple – it’s vitally important for business success. If a headline gets people there, the content keeps them and causes them to return. Your content has to deliver on what the title promised.

There is a lot of content across the Web, and much of it is good. To make your content stand out, you need to, first of all, be well-written. If you have misspellings or really poor grammar and punctuation, readers could be impacted negatively. You may have breaking news or a breakthrough on a new strategy, but if the reader can’t follow the story due to errors, you have a problem.

Focus on being informative, innovative, and helpful, among other tactics that make people feel like they need your content. From there, you can throw in some humor and other flavor to spice it up, but you must lay a strong foundation first.

Use multimedia and other outreach opportunities to your advantage

If you have a really enticing title and solid content that people can use, you’re setting high expectations. In other words, these visitors aren’t going to be satisfied with just text. The new media era has almost forced us to depend on visuals. This means images, charts, infographics, and videos. People like variety. They also like supplemental material. You can always do this through linking, as you should, but readers will also appreciate if you embed a YouTube video or an infographic directly into your content.

It’s great if you produce this content yourself, but it’s also very beneficial to utilize content that’s already created. By giving other’s credit, it also helps to present you in a positive light in the industry. And who knows, they might even push your content out, which broadens your reach and creates new opportunities.

Be part of the community

Getting people to your site is not just a matter of writing an article or having a good website, it’s also about your overall presence in your industry. This means you need to participate in conversations that are already happening. Join groups on LinkedIn, answer questions on Quora, become influencers on relevant forums – these are just a few of the ways that you can be involved.

However, as you do this, you must really contribute. Don’t come across as if you’re trying to make a sale – be real and human. Play off of your content by being catchy and informative, but then let them know where they can get further information.

Another aspect of being part of the community involves your social media strategy. Don’t just constantly push out your content – that’s the easy part. Instead, find conversations to be part of and add updates to previous posts.

Above all, be present. People like communication and good, valuable content. If you fulfill this desire, you’ll get increased traffic to your site and long-term, repeat readers.