I need traffic to my website!

[pgfurniture]

Hey guys I just started a new Refinishing Service business in Houston. I have had 20 years experience and have created many different sources where i can be contacted, i also have a website where it has pictures of my work. Any more ideas how to get more traffic to my website and get to be known? I also have google ad words and google analytics. I also go around Town to personally hand out business cards to furniture companies, restaurants. I plan to go to banks and also schools. If anyone has any ideas how to be known faster and get my work out there please feel free to let me know. Ideas and opinions are more than welcomed!

Thank you - Peter
[link removed]

[DanielleImprezzio]

Have you thought of Facebook advertising? I have seen some furniture stores really make significant sales on Facebook buy doing furniture piece giveaways. It can generate a ton of traffic to your FB business page really quickly for the price of a piece of your work ( which can be relatively cheap in comparison to Google)

[FirstPortMarketing]

Free options are great if you're short on money, but not time:

-Craigslist
-Local forums
-Content marketing: start blogging about your niche

That said, I would also consider spending a little just to test Facebook ads and AdWords. You never know if you'll end up making a $1,000+ sale on $10 worth of ads.

[Harold Mansfield]

How to get known faster is an easy answer. Advertise and continue exactly what you are doing. Although, you're wasting money trying to get people to your website. It's not ready for advertising. I'd focus on advertising your business as a whole until you can build a website that actually works to close deals.

Sorry, I had to remove your link. First post, about traffic, and then a link drop is usually deleted around here. But you can create a signature with your link in it.

[Dspyker]

Hello pgfurniture!

How I would suggest on going about creating a buzz for yourself and your website would be to offer a FREE service to small gigs in return for testimonials and referrals. Without investing a lot of capital in a marketing campaign this is probably where you could start. This model could also potentially set you up for a great lead generating system that can work automatically and with in time, putting in place a percentage based referral system. Just getting your foot in the door and building relationships with local shops is the way to go.

Also contact your competitors as well and mention to them if they ever get to busy to refer to you and you give them an agreed upon percentage in return.

Take Care and good luck!
D.S.

[quamz0]

For a local service like that, local seo, yelp, yp, yahoo local, bing local, google local, get reviews on those sites. Try yahoo's business listing service under their business services its like 30 bucks a month and they sync all of the main business sites with one of the major data aggregators and its all uniform, your changes will update across all the business listing websites in days rather than months or independently organized.

[3iinfocom]

I have reviewed your website(actually I have entered a search query specifying your company name and location and I got your site url). Its design layout and content architechture are very poor. You just need to redesign it. I think the current website is built by Wix(online website builder tool). This is not enough because lots of other things require to fix. all these things can't be fixed by website builder tool.
Please write unique and fruitful content that your prospect or customers expect from you.
Don't forget to add the process you follow for refinish when you will write content for website.

[MKarp]

Definitely start a blog and start learning local SEO techniques. Or hire someone to do it for you.

If I were you, I'd also begin building a social media following. When you hand out your business cards, tell them they'll get a discount on their first purchase from you.

This way, your social media following will help you attract more customers.

But really, you want to be one of the first businesses people see when they search for "refinishing service Houston" or another variation. That's what is really going to attract business for you.

[jlevitt]

I would start with three things:

1. Blogging - create fresh original content that your audience will value
2. SEO - make sure you site is using the terms your customers use when searching on Google
3. Add email list signup - highest converting sales channel online

Facebook and Google AdWords are an OK short term strategy to get some traffic, but the methods above are free and will build a steady flow of traffic to your site. If you do advertise, make sure to setup measurements so you can assess the conversion rates and overall ROI of your campaigns.

[jlevitt]

Definitely start a blog and start learning local SEO techniques. Or hire someone to do it for you.

If I were you, I'd also begin building a social media following. When you hand out your business cards, tell them they'll get a discount on their first purchase from you.

This way, your social media following will help you attract more customers.

But really, you want to be one of the first businesses people see when they search for "refinishing service Houston" or another variation. That's what is really going to attract business for you.

Excellent points. Specifically about search. It's how businesses are found now. Everyone's searching all the time and if you're site's not optimized to show up, then you won't get any traffic.

[NeilS]

Not many people talk about speaking to others directly and building relationships so I would stick with this for now to avoid spreading yourself thin across multiple things. Attending networking sessions is also great. This is a physical in person business so I think the way you have approached it is great.

Without knowing too much about your business it's difficult to give other specific advice but do take a look at your competitors and see what they're doing, choose the low hanging fruit and do it too :)

[Douglas F. Farrell]

Three things I can recommend from my POV:
1) Facebook advertising;
2) Local SEO;
3) Adwords

[david15beck]

Social networking sites are a very helpful to get traffic and rankings for your website. if you have already Google ad words for your site then i highly suggest spend some money on Facebook ads. its a good source for promoting business online.

[Rob Malone]

Definitely start blogging. Then take your blogs and post them as articles on ezine.com. Then take your blogs and break them down into small chunks and post on your Facebook business page (not your profile). Start making videos on how to refinish furniture and completely educate you customer on how to a great refinishing job and post on your youtube channel then repost on blog and Facebook. When your prospects see how good you are and what a pain in the ass it is to do it themselves they will come to you. Make sure you have your good keywords on your website and optimize your keywords for local searches. Get as many testimonials as you can with head shots of the people and put them on your website and Facebook page (make sure you have permission to use them). Do this and you will be dominating your local searches in about 6 months.

[Ryan26]

I did not read all of the posts but saw some guys mentioning Facebook ads.
Don't do it unless you give something really great for free. As well all you will get many people who don't care about what you're doing. If you want likes you can just buy them. I have tested Facebook ads with small and bigger money vs Google Ads. Google Ads always give me better results. I plan to write an article on this but not at this moment.

[TonyPayat]

I did not read all of the posts but saw some guys mentioning Facebook ads.
Don't do it unless you give something really great for free. As well all you will get many people who don't care about what you're doing. If you want likes you can just buy them. I have tested Facebook ads with small and bigger money vs Google Ads. Google Ads always give me better results. I plan to write an article on this but not at this moment.

I agree with this guy. Facebook ads are maybe best for local results, or a large branded company that already has tons of (real) followers.

Throwing money at FB ads won't get you the kind of results you're looking for, they're too "small" and people tend to ignore them as they're on FB to just look at pictures and stalk ex-girlfriends, etc.

[SEOHouston]

1.Google Ads, if not done properly can eat your budget very fast, with no results.
2.Make sure your site is properly Optimized (title tags, descriptions, etc) (do keyword research)
3.Build quality back links
4.Have social signals
5.Make sure your business is listed correctly in the Top business directories (Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, Yahoo, etc)
6.Create a Facebook fan page and try some FB ad's (keep your budget low, and target your specific audience)
If your able to do all of these things, your traffic will increase and sales will pour in.

[BasicBrix]

Do a blog with interesting articles while focusing and repeating few keywords in your articles. It will help to bring in people who are interested in what you are doing.