At this point, all small businesses should recognize the importance of having a website.

So the question becomes how to drive traffic to it, particularly without the marketing budget of a bigger company.

When it comes to your website, the quote is not “if you build it, they will come,” but rather “if you build it well, create valuable content and have a successful promotion strategy, then they might come.”

“SMB is an abbreviation for small and medium-sized business”

Here are FIVE WAYS to increase the number of visitors to your local or national website:

1. Consistent Content

Simply building a website is not enough; you need to give people a reason to visit the site and to keep coming back.

You can do that by providing valuable, consistent content.

A survey by HubSpot found that 82 percent of companies that blogged once a day not only increased their site traffic, but were also able to convert that traffic into customers.

Likewise, when Entrepreneur Magazine increased its blog posts from twice a week to over 10 per week, its website traffic increased 300 percent over two months.

Convirza started publishing three blogs every weekday and saw a 210 percent increase in web traffic, which resulted in more new customers than any other three month period in company history.

You don’t need to add content multiple times a day or even every day to see results.

Posting consistent content that visitors can rely on is key.

Consistent updates to your website can also increase your search engine ranking by indicating to Google that the site is informative and relevant.

TIP: Learn more about how to write compelling content.

2. Invite Guest Bloggers to Contribute

Generating content is time consuming and difficult to keep fresh.

One way around this is to invite other industry experts to contribute to your page.

A good example of a company employing this strategy is Top 10 Cloud Storage, which posts weekly blogs on topics of interest to its customer base.

Its blog has articles written by outside cloud experts, business analysts and business owners.

Not only does this bring new perspectives on relevant content, but guest bloggers are likely to share and link to their articles, which directs new traffic to your website.

TIP: Learn more about Guest Blogging and other essential SEO tips.

3. Guest Post on Other Websites

On the flip side, contributing interesting and well-written blogs to reputable websites can help drive traffic to your site.

TIP: Consider a strategic, helpful outreach program via Twitter and email marketing. (no spam!)

4. Link to Content

While you’re at it, post links to the content on your website on your social media pages.

LinkedIn has become a popular platform for finding industry-specific articles, so posting regular content on that forum can increase your website visitors and raise your profile within your industry.

Other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter work hand-in-hand with your website.

The more interesting content you post to those platforms, the more your social media presence grows.

The bigger your social media presence, the more you are able to direct new visitors to your website. Search engines tend to follow in time.

5. Do Not Ignore Functionality

Do not add so much content that your website load time lags.

American Express found in 2014 that a webpage that took longer than 10 seconds to load lost 38 percent of visitors.

Additionally, spend the time and money to build a fully functional mobile website.

Not only do 80 percent of consumers use mobile devices to search for businesses, but Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher (TIP: Watch the video).

FREE: Download the free Social Media Performance Handbook that will show you how to set up your social media campaigns in 7 simple steps. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.