increase website traffic
There is a lot of advice about how to increase website traffic for small business owners, and most of it hands you forty things to do. We would rather give you the handful that move the needle for local businesses, in the order we do them, with a rough idea of how long the wait is.
- By Mike Purvis Co-founder of NH Strategic Marketing
- August 14, 2020
- September 8, 2026
Before Anything, Make Your Small Business Website Stand Out Online
If you’ve ever seen the movie Field of Dreams, you’ve heard the iconic line, “If you build it, they will come.” Well, that may be true for a Field of Dreams but it is NOT true for your business website.
Just creating a website isn’t enough to guarantee that you’ll rank well and attract traffic. Having an effective and professional website that represents your business in a positive way and builds trust with your potential customers can be challenging, but is worth the effort.
The Internet is a very big place. There are over 2 billion websites and hundreds of thousands more are added every single day. This means that your website has to be that much better to attract the customers that you want for your business.
Getting it in front of your ideal customers is the next step. Now, there are lots of ways to do that.
I still remember sitting with a paving contractor serving New Hampshire. He had paid a good amount of dollars for a website the year before and had gotten about 5-10 calls from it in twelve months. Beautiful site. But nobody could find it. We redesigned the website, did some important CRO stuff and Local SEO, and within a couple of months, he was fielding 10+ calls a week.
How To Increase Website Traffic For Small Business Owners: The Short Answer
To increase website traffic for small business, there are five most important things you need to get right.
- Fill out and maintain your Google Business Profile.
- Publish pages that answer the questions customers ask.
- Run paid ads against high-intent searches.
- Keep fresh reviews coming in.
- Clear the technical roadblocks slowing your site down.
That list is short on purpose. Owners come to us having read a hundred-item checklist somewhere and feeling more stuck than when they started. Five moves you finish beat forty you begin.
Here is what to expect from those five, and how quickly.
| Move | First results | Ongoing effort | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | 2 to 6 weeks | 20 min/week | Any business with a service area or storefront. |
| Paid search and social ads | Days | Weekly management | Owners who need calls this month. |
| Service and location pages | 2 to 4 months | Quarterly refresh | Businesses with several services or towns. |
| Reviews and reputation | 4 to 8 weeks | Ask after all jobs | Trades, medical, home services, retail. |
| Site speed and technical fixes | 2 to 8 weeks | One-time, then monitor | Sites older than three years. |
How To Generate More Web Traffic For Your Small Business
Think of each of these strategies to increase website visitors as tools in your digital marketing toolbox. Not all tools are right for every job and the same is true for different businesses:
- Some businesses do better by focusing on getting their website prominently displayed on the front page of Google.
- Others do better relying on social traffic from Facebook and Instagram. Maybe even Pinterest and Twitter.
- Some businesses can focus on a bunch of methods to get the right eyeballs on their site.
Digging deeper, it matters if you’re a local business that services a specific geographic area versus a national business that can help people in other areas.
A Side-By-Side Look At Your Options
| Channel | Speed | Typical monthly cost | Pick this if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Maps and Business Profile | Fast | Time, plus tools | You serve a town or a radius. |
| Google Ads | Immediate | $500 to $5,000 media | You need the phone ringing now. |
| Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram Ads | Immediate | $300 to $3,000 media | Your buyer discovers rather than searches. |
| Organic search and service pages | Slow, compounds | Time or agency fee | You plan to own the market for years. |
| Blog and helpful content | Slow, compounds | Time or writer fee | Customers ask you the same questions. |
| Email to past customers | Fast | Under $50 tools | You have a customer list sitting unused. |
| Directory listings | Medium | Time, plus tools | Your business details differ across the web. |
| Short-form and Long-form Video Content | Medium | Production cost | Your work looks good on camera. |
| Retargeting | Fast | $150 to $800 media | Visitors arrive but do not call. |
How To Attract More Local Customers To Your Small Business
Here are our top three recommendations for a local business to show up in front of their ideal customers online and attract traffic to your small business.
Rank in the Google Maps Pack (the 3-pack)
Most people looking for local help start at Google and type in keywords such as “landscaper near me,” “jewelry store Concord NH,” or even “mold testing NH.”
Google remains the platform for consumers turn to most when they research a local business, used by 71 percent of them according to BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults.
Google will display just 3 businesses in the Maps Pack. There could be 30 plus competitors in your area and only 3 spots that will actually display on the front page.
Getting your business showing up in the Google Maps pack can help you attract very qualified traffic to your business and your website.
Google looks at a lot of information when deciding which businesses to show in the Google Maps 3-Pack. These factors include:
- Directory listing accuracy (the more accurate your business information is across the Internet is a BIG factor and a lot of businesses get this wrong all the time. If you want to see how accurate your business listing information is across the web just reach out, we’re happy to help).
- Reviews. The number of reviews, frequency of reviews, quality of reviews, and keywords in the reviews are all factors that Google looks at.
- If you’re looking to learn more about how to get your small business showing on Google Maps, take a moment to read our Ultimate Guide To Completely Optimize Your Google My Business Listing.
A study found that 47 percent of consumers will pass over a business with fewer than 20 reviews. If you sit below that line, asking for reviews is the highest-value hour in your week.
Our walkthrough of the steps for filling out a Google Business Profile properly covers the categories, services and photo settings that tend to sit half-finished.
Google Ads & Facebook Ads
Google and Facebook are where the bulk of online attention sits, and effective paid advertising campaigns are the quickest and fastest way to attract your ideal prospects to get your website found.
You don’t have to have a huge budget to make this happen either.
Determining the right advertising budget for your local business really depends on the type of goods and services you offer. If you tend to sell higher ticket items or services, you can typically afford to spend a little more on advertising to get the right viewers to convert to new customers.
For some businesses, it makes a lot more sense to only focus on Google Ads whereas for other businesses, it may make more sense to rely on Facebook Ads to reach your ideal audience.
There’s a lot more that goes into running an effective advertising campaign, but some big points are:
- Know your ideal Customer and where they spend their time and what they search for. This is so important and many times not being clear on this can lead to failure from an ads campaign.
- Making sure your targeting is dialed in so you’re reaching the right people (most ads campaigns we evaluate for prospective clients are missing the mark and attracting the wrong people. This results in their ad campaigns “not working” and feeling like they wasted money).
- Get proper tracking in place. One of the biggest reasons most small businesses fail when running online advertising campaigns is due to the fact they’re playing “Blind Archery.” They aren’t properly tracking anything so they can’t see if they actually attract the right people. By having the appropriate tracking in place (phone tracking, web form conversion tracking etc) you can accurately “see” what’s really happening with your ads, which keywords to keep focusing on, which ones to get rid of, and more.
- A lot goes into effectively managing an advertising campaign from week to week. You need to be routinely adjusting the campaign, adjusting bids, adding negative keywords, and more. We typically see people that set up their own campaigns “set it and forget it.” As a result they don’t see the results they hope for.
So there are two starting points if paid traffic is new territory for you. Our breakdown of how Google Ads work for a small business answers the budget question owners ask first, and our paid search management service covers the weekly work described above.
Improve the Search Engine Rankings for your Website
Another big traffic strategy for local businesses is to get their website to rank higher in the search engines by optimizing the pages on your site for the keywords you want to rank for.
The more clear it is for Google to understand who you are, what your business offers, the services and products you sell, where you are located, and the service area you serve.
Having the right technical set up “under the hood” of your website is absolutely crucial if you want your website to display prominently on the front page of Google. Additionally, you need to optimize each of the pages for specific title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, and more.
Most sites we look at don’t do this and they don’t rank well as a result.
Additionally, there are a lot of other factors that might negatively affect your website’s Google rankings.
If your site is slow (slow loading times), not secure (your isn’t HTTPS secure) both of these can negatively affect your website rankings.
The prize for getting this right is larger than most owners assume. First Page Sage’s 2026 click-through-rate research found the top three organic positions collect close to 69 percent of clicks on a clean results page, and the number one spot draws more clicks than positions three through ten combined. Moving from page two to position four is progress. Moving into the top three changes the math of your month.
Having a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy doesn’t have to be complicated and it really comes down to doing the right things in the right ways. If you want an audit on your current rankings, reach out to the NH Strategic Marketing team of online marketing experts and we’d be happy to take a look at your site and offer some suggestions.
A lot of what we do for our clients to help them with their SEO is showing them how they rank currently, how their competitors might be beating them, and giving them a simple to follow strategy that will help them grow their SEO Rankings.
We will pull your current rankings, check your listings across the web, and show you what the businesses beating you are doing differently.
Drive Traffic to Your Website From AI Answers And AI Overviews
Something shifted this past year that changes the shape of this whole topic. The share of consumers using AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode to discover local businesses climbed from 6 percent to 45 percent in twelve months, while Google’s share of local discovery moved from 83 percent to 71 percent.
Google is still the giant. AI assistants are now the third-largest way people find a local business, ahead of Yelp.
Anyone learning how to increase website traffic for small business growth in 2026 has to account for those surfaces. The encouraging part is that the work overlaps almost completely with what already helps you rank and reach your target audience.
What earns a mention in an AI answer
- A direct answer near the top of the page. AI systems that retrieve in real time weigh your opening content heavily. Put a 40 to 60 word answer to the page’s main question above the fold, in plain language.
- Headings shaped like questions. “How much does a paving job cost in NH” gets pulled into an answer.
- Identical business details across the web. Name, address and phone need to match on your site, your profile and your listings. Our piece on why online directory listings carry so much weight explains how quickly small mismatches add up.
- Structured data. Article, LocalBusiness and FAQPage markup give machines a clean read of what your page contains.
- Recent reviews. Assistants lean on third-party corroboration. A profile with reviews from this month reads as an active business.
- Mentions on sites you do not own. Local news, trade associations, chamber pages, supplier directories. Independent sources raise confidence in your business as a real entity.
Ranking well is still the entry ticket. Studies of AI Overviews keep landing on the same finding that the pages cited are overwhelmingly ones already sitting on page one. Google’s guidance on creating helpful, people-first content is the closest thing to a rulebook, and it asks a simple set of questions about who made the page, how it was made, and why it exists.
We started offering an AI visibility check because owners kept asking us whether ChatGPT knows my business exist. Our AI search visibility service handles the ongoing side of that work.
Traffic Sources Small Business Owners Usually Overlook
Plenty of traffic sits close to the surface and goes unused. These are the ones we find most often when we audit a new account.
The customer list you already have
Past customers are the warmest audience in your business, and most owners have their contact details sitting in an invoicing system. A short monthly email pointing to one new page on your site brings back people who have paid you before. Low cost, quick to set up, and the traffic converts better than anything cold.
Posts and photos on your Google Business Profile
Your profile has a posting feature that most competitors ignore. Weekly posts with a photo from a recent job and a link to the matching service page feed both your profile and your website.
Retargeting the visitors who left
The bulk of first-time visitors visiting your website leave without calling, which is normal for a considered purchase. A small retargeting budget puts your name back in front of them for days afterward. Our explainer on how retargeting works covers the setup in plain terms.
Video that shows the work
A two-minute walkthrough of a finished job answers questions text cannot. Embed it on the service page, upload it to YouTube with a backlink, and post the clip socially.
Reputation as a traffic channel
Review platforms send real referral traffic clicks, and a strong rating lifts click-through from search results you already rank for. Keeping that side of the house tidy sits inside our reputation and marketing services.
Partners in adjacent trades
A roofer and a gutter company serve the same homeowner at different moments. Trading a genuine recommendation on one another’s sites sends qualified people both directions and creates the kind of local link Google reads as a real-world relationship.
How To Increase Website Traffic For Small Business Websites That Already Get Visitors
Sometimes the traffic is there and the phone stays quiet. When we look at analytics for a new client and find a few hundred sessions a month with two form fills, more visitors is rarely the right next step. Making the current visitors count is.
This matters for rankings too. Visitors who land, find what they came for, and take action send Google a very different signal than visitors who bounce back to the results page within seconds.
Working out how to increase website traffic for small business results, rather than for the chart in Google Analytics, means treating these two jobs as one.
Five fixes that are worth the attention
Run your homepage and top service page through Google's PageSpeed Insights and work the mobile score. Oversized images cause more of these problems than anything else. Our article on why site speed matters covers what a slow load costs you.
A visitor should know what you do, where you do it, and what to press within about three seconds.
On mobile, the number in your header needs to be a link that dials. This one takes five minutes and gets missed constantly.
Name, phone, and one sentence about the job. You can gather the rest on the call.
Reviews, a licence number, years in business, photos of finished work, positioned beside the button rather than parked on a separate page.
If your site is old enough that these fixes feel like patching a roof in the rain, a rebuild is often cheaper than the workarounds. That is the conversation our website design and build team has most weeks.
How To Attract More Website Traffic
“If you build it, they will come” is great for the Fields of Dreams but NOT for small businesses looking to improve website traffic. Just getting a website live isn’t enough. Having a “pretty” website isn’t enough. If you want to get your website found by your ideal customers you need to show up prominently on the front page of Google and show up on Facebook when they’re spending time scrolling through their newsfeed.
The right traffic strategies can help turn your website into your best salesperson but getting the right people to visit is vitally important. If you want some help coming up with a strategy to improve your website traffic reach out and we’re happy to help.
One last thought before you go. Owners who ask us how to increase website traffic for small business growth usually expect a complicated answer, and the ones who see results are the ones who picked two moves from this page and stayed with them for a quarter. Consistency beats cleverness here, reliably.
We have helped local businesses get found online since 2012, across 36+ states. Bring us your site, and we will show you where the traffic is hiding, what your competitors are doing, and what we would tackle in the first 30 days.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How long does it take to increase your website traffic?
Paid ads bring visitors within days. Google Business Profile work tends to show movement in two to six weeks. Organic rankings for service pages typically take two to four months, and high-quality content that answers buying questions compounds over six to twelve. Most local businesses see the first meaningful lift between 60 and 90 days.
Q: How much should a small business spend to get more website traffic?
It depends on your average job value and how fast you need results. Local service businesses commonly start with $500 to $1,500 a month in ad spend alongside ongoing SEO work. Higher ticket services can afford more per lead. We break the numbers down in our guide on how much a small business should spend on marketing.
Q: Is SEO or paid advertising better for a small business website?
They answer different needs. Paid advertising delivers visitors immediately and stops when the budget stops. SEO takes months to build and continues working afterward. Local businesses that grow steadily tend to run ads for near-term leads while their organic pages mature in the background.
Q: How many blog posts does a small business need before traffic improves?
Volume matters less than focus. Three to five strong articles tied to one service, linked to that service page, outperform twenty scattered posts. Answer the questions customers ask before hiring, publish consistently, and refresh what you have quarterly.
Q: Does a Google Business Profile send new customers to my website?
Yes. Your profile carries a website link, and the calls, direction requests and clicks it generates are among the most qualified visits a local business receives. Completing categories, services, hours and photos, then posting weekly, gives that link far more exposure.
Q: Why did my website traffic drop when AI Overviews appeared?
AI Overviews answer some questions on the results page, which reduces clicks on informational searches. Buying-intent searches are less affected, since people still want to see prices, photos and reviews before calling. The response is to strengthen your service and location pages and add clear answer blocks so your page becomes a cited source.
Q: Do using social media platforms turn followers into website traffic?
Some do, when posts point somewhere specific. Social platforms work best as a way to reach people and move them to your site, where they can call or fill in a form. Posting a photo with a link to the matching service page outperforms posting the photo alone.
Q: What is the fastest way for a brand new small business website to get traffic?
Set up and complete your Google Business Profile the day the site goes live, then run a small Google Ads campaign on two or three high-intent local keywords. Those two moves produce visitors within a week while your organic rankings develop.