It goes without saying that a primary objective for any website is to drive traffic to it — even more so with e-commerce and affiliate sites. While every good marketer should always be looking for both effective and newer ways to drive traffic to their sites, one aspect that routinely gets overlooked is a form page.
Forms on a WordPress site can be used for any number of things, whether it’s generating leads for your business, driving sales, or obtaining key information from your readers and prospective customers.
For whatever reason, these forms and the pages containing them often receive less attention from the developer or site owner, despite the distinct advantages to be gained from pushing visitors to fill out forms on your site.
So with that said, here are 8 ways to get more attention for existing forms on your WordPress site, and also some methods you can utilize in order to drive more traffic to them.
1. Plan Your Keywords and Most Important Pages
This is something you should obviously already be doing, but it’s worth reiterating. Proper keyword research is essential to getting your site more traffic, along with prioritizing certain pages within your site.
Always be sure to focus on the appropriate keywords that are relevant to each page on your site. If you are truly trying to get more attention for any forms on your site, it’s best to place your form on the main pages that you want the most traffic on.
For instance, if you want your homepage or service pages to be the priority, don’t link to a form on another page; include it in that page itself. You are cutting out a step for your visitor while ensuring the form benefits from better visibility and hits.
With most sites having a bounce rate of around 2.0 pages or less, this could make all the difference in getting forms filled out.
2. Get Featured on High Authority Blogs
It never hurts to try and benefit from the high readership of another site or blog.
There are two distinct advantages to be gained from this, with the first being more visibility in general. Getting a blog with tons of regular readers to mention or link to your site will instantly boost your own stats, especially if you are within that blog’s niche. It gives you an instant level of credibility in the process as well.
Secondly, a high authority blog boosts your traffic by giving you a valuable backlink on a high-traffic site, which in turn raises your SEO score.
There is not a one-size-fits-all method for getting featured, other than first ensuring your site has quality content and an alluring layout. From there, try to build relationships with authority blogs you would like to be featured on, with the understanding that the process will be slow.
Start by interacting with that site within its comment sections, and offer good insights and commentary. Follow and interact on social media too. Eventually, you can approach that site about mentioning or featuring you after you’ve established a rapport.
3. Use Internal Linking
Internal linking within your site is another thing you should already be doing. First of all, it makes your site easier to navigate, while also improving your bounce rate. And of course, it improves your SEO.
However, if you insist on keeping your form separate from your high-traffic pages, the next best thing is to find ways to link that form from within those pages, but in a natural way that does not look forced.
This is a mutually beneficial way to improve a number of aspects about your site, while simultaneously driving more traffic to your forms, which in turn drive your sales. Everything is always related.
4. Run Paid Ads
Paid ads should always be a part of your marketing strategy, but their role in driving traffic to your site is constantly increasing. Google AdWords and Bing ads provide you with the opportunity to use highly-targeted marketing and ad strategies in order to reach those most likely to be interested in your site — something you’re probably already well aware of.
The key is using them properly, especially if you are wanting to prioritize traffic to your forms. If you are creating special landing pages for these ads that are separate from your main site, you need to include the form within these landing pages, otherwise, you’re wasting a key opportunity.
The same is true with sponsored and promoted ads on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. If forms are a priority, center the content linked from your ads around the form as your call-to-action.
5. Utilize Webinars For Exposure
Webinars are perfect for driving traffic to your form, since every good webinar ends with some sort of call-to-action, whether that’s signing up for a service, email list, or whatever else.
If you aren’t ending your webinar with a link to a form, you’re wasting your time. As with linked landing pages from paid ads, tailor the content and message of your webinar to end with the filling out of a form — whatever it may be.
Note: Special Thanks to Carla Lewis from TopReviewedTen.com for this excellent tip.
6. Reverse Engineer Research Your Competitors
Your competitors are often your best teachers in a way. After all, if they are your competitors, it means they’re doing something right, even if you eventually outperform them.
As with any business, studying the tactics and methods of your competitors offers keen insight into what works, and what doesn’t. Reverse engineering research is more advanced than ever, and there are tons of legit services out there that can give you plenty of help in obtaining the information you need.
Effective reverse engineering of your competitors can provide you with measured insights into things like how their SEO is performing, what ads they run, their backlinks, site load times, plugins used, and so on. You can not only use this information and utilize their methods for yourself but also pinpoint things they aren’t doing that you can do instead.
7. Offer Incentives
This is Marketing 101 at its core. How many times have you signed up for a mailing list, or opted to receive text messages from a business with the promise of a discount? You need to be doing this with your own forms.
The possibilities are endless, and of course, the incentives you provide are all up to you and what niche your site is in. They can range from things like a percentage discount, a free week or month of a service, a free ebook or guide, being entered into a drawing, etc.
Whatever you go with, be sure to advertise the incentive in several ways on the page, and certainly right above the form. Don’t skimp on the incentives either; think about what rewards or offers could actually motivate a visitor to fill the form out, do it from your own perspective.
8. Use Pop-Up Forms
In most consumer circles, “pop-up” is a dirty word, but it doesn’t have to be. Using WordPress plugins to create strategic pop-ups for forms is becoming more common, and developers are finding better ways to use pop-ups without being disruptive, overbearing, or downright annoying.
Pop-up forms are a great way to really bring the form directly to your visitor’s attention, giving them the opportunity to fill it out just in case they don’t make it over to the page with the form.
There are a lot of ways to do this, and different plug-ins have different options. You can use a timer with some, and others can cause the form to pop up when the user navigates their pointer towards the corner of the page to close it.
Again, be strategic, and think of it from your visitor’s perspective. Avoid being forceful or desperate, and keep the pitch short, direct, and to the point.
For instance, say you run an affiliate site for lawncare products, and you have put together a quick ebook about lawn maintenance tips that are available as a free download. If you go with a pop-up form that activates when the user is about to close the page, create a pop-up with text saying something like:
“Before you go, would you like 5 easy tips to make your lawn green and full by late spring? Download our FREE ebook!”
Of course, the form to download the ebook would require them to submit whatever information you’d like.
And that’s just one of numerous examples.
Final Thoughts
It’s time to utilize forms on your WordPress site as an asset, and not some kind of optional feature. There are several ways you can implement forms to your site, regardless of the niche. Just be creative, purposeful, and use customer empathy, and you’ll have plenty of effective ideas in no time — and a boost to your traffic soon after.
Good luck!
Many thanks to Shaira Williams of TechiesPad for this contribution to our blog. For more awesome content on all things tech, from apps and software to crypto and gaming, check out her blog at https://techiespad.com/ !
