For small business owners, building and maintaining a website is crucial. A professional website is a great tool for educating potential customers about your business and for driving sales and revenue.

But once your site is up and running, what comes next? How do you actually get people to visit your site in the first place? Here are some techniques to take advantage of right now to drive traffic to your site — and ultimately help you boost your bottom line.

1. Use email marketing to invite readers to your website

There are a number of advantages to sending out an email blast to drive traffic to your website. First, it’s inexpensive. Additionally, it’s easy to track things such as how many people opened your email and how many clicked a link to visit your site, which helps you understand which types of messages work and which don’t.

Email tip: You can choose to set up email marketing campaigns yourself or let a team of professionals handle it for you.

2. Promote your website on social media

In addition to your main business website, plan to set up social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with current and potential customers while also directing them to your site.

There are many ways you can utilize social media to generate web traffic. The most basic is to include a link to your site within the posts you share on your accounts. You can also place social ads that will cost some money up front, but can deliver large amounts of visitors to your site.

Social tip: If you’ve just launched a new website, don’t be shy about broadcasting that on your social media platforms.

3. Create a blog

Placing a blog on your website and updating it regularly will get visitors to your website and keep them coming back. Unique and fresh content will attract your target audience because they’re interested in topics related to your business.

There are a handful of best practices to keep in mind when creating a successful blog, but one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to not update it regularly. If someone visits the blog on your website and sees the most recent entry is from March 2014, they probably won’t take your business seriously.

Blogging tip: If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas for blog posts, consider interviewing a subject matter expert in your industry, highlighting new products or services, showcasing stellar employees, answering customers’ questions or providing instructions on how to best use your products.

4. Drive traffic with pay-per-click advertising

Most small business owners prefer to save money in any way possible, but pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is almost always worth the investment. That’s because the small amount you pay for each click will feel minimal when those visitors make a purchase or book a service.

Further, combining PPC with search engine optimization will boost the effectiveness and lead to even more visitors on your website.

PPC tip: Learn more about PPC and how it works with your other digital marketing efforts by watching this free webinar.

5. Optimize your website

Even though your website is already up and running, there are always steps you can take to make it even better. Just think about the websites you have visited, and which of those have done the best job at grabbing your attention. The best sites often look nice, are easy to navigate, are always up-to-date and make it simple to quickly find information.

Similar to email marketing, you can either take a hands-on approach and put together a do-it-yourself website, or you can let a group of pros handle it. Either way, be sure to maintain your site and keep it modern so it doesn’t feel stale to potential customers.

Website tip: Pay careful attention to these 11 aspects of your website to ensure your site is as optimized as it can be at all times.

These days, using your website to drive business is a must. Those who don’t use their sites put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Once your site is live, refer to the five tips listed here to ensure you attract a steady stream of visitors who will ultimately turn into customers.

Eli Daniel-Wilson

Head, Digital Media & Innovations

Global Media Alliance

LinkedIn: Eli Daniel-Wilson