You have spent so much time building your website, updating your products and services, and creating compelling content. Yet, you aren’t getting the website traffic you were expecting for some reason.
Today, I will review some of my favourite strategies to increase website traffic and get your business on the road to success. Some methods for boosting traffic are free, while others may incur an expense.
What Is Website Traffic?
In short, website traffic is the number of visitors who find their way to your site.
In addition, analytics define your audience’s demographics, such as age range, location, gender, and more. Navigating the most important information and spotting the trends that matter to your business takes a keen eye and continued analysis.
When I build a website, I always add Google Analytics and link it to Google Search Console as part of my standard process.
Google Analytics tells you how visitors get to your site. Do they find you through a Google search, directed through social media, or by typing in your URL?
You will find out how many repeat and unique visitors are and even their behaviour once they get to your site.
Review your existing analytics to know where to target and what keeps visitors on your site. Expand upon that success. Additionally, put effort into figuring out why other strategies haven’t worked and how to strategise more fruitfully.
If you don’t have enough time to become the SEO expert you need to be, don’t worry; I can assist.
I have spent years keeping up with the latest changes in Google’s rankings.
If you need help getting your SEO in shape, hiring a professional is sometimes best.
Basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is complex, but you can do the basics to help search engines understand your site.
This set of strategies will help your organic search rankings but will not catapult you to number 1 for every keyword you would like.
If you want to boost traffic to your website, part of your goal should be to get placed on the first page of the search results, but some SEO basics probably won’t do that. See my post on SEO essentials or my SEO cheat sheet.
Some factors you should focus on:
Meta Title and Meta Descriptions
When you search, you see meta Titles and Meta Descriptions in a SERP (search engine results page).
The first line is the page URL, and the Meta Title is the big, bold line.
The meta description is a couple of lines of text that appear beneath the meta title. It gives the user an idea of what to expect within the content. Essentially, this section summarises your content with a short snippet.
Google rewrites a lot of meta, but it’s good to put in what you would like, and hopefully, Google will serve what you post.
Header Tags
You should utilise headers in your content. Header tags allow crawlers to scan your material more easily for relevance. Use the Title, H1, H2, H3, and H4 headings to break up your content.
Quality Images With Alt Tags
Quality images include professional images versus stock photos. In addition, the images should be relevant to the message you are sending.
Alt Tags allow browsers to find your relevant content through both the content and the images. So be sure to use alt tags.
Image Optimisation and Image SEO are 2 things that can help you get more visibility on a search engine.
Internal Links
Internal links within your content allow you to keep visitors on your site longer, providing them with additional value.
Google will recognise your site based on how long visitors remain before leaving. For example, if you produce travel content and have links to RV content, include them organically in your new content.
Keywords
Including keywords in your content is crucial.
First, consider how someone will find your content. Based on what you think their search will be, use those keywords within your content. Second, be sure to include those keywords organically in your content. Don’t force keywords into your content.
If you overuse keywords, Google will view your content as keyword stuffing, which will work against your rankings and, therefore, your website traffic.
Long-Tail Keywords
Keywords are part of SEO, but Long-tail keywords focus on longer, more specific series of words and can be great for social media captions and other content.
What do you think a person will key in as a phrase to search and find your content?
Long-tail keywords reap significant benefits when you can hone in on common questions or phrases used by searchers to find an answer.
Headlines
Headlines are also known as titles. Headlines should try to grab visitors’ attention, compelling them to read your content.
This headline is the first interaction your content will have with a visitor. Make the exchange riveting and thought-provoking, and use relevant keywords to your advantage.
Viral Content
Suggesting viral content as a strategy can be a bit misleading. We all hope for viral content, and the benefits can be astounding when you are lucky enough to experience it. Search for topics with the potential to go viral.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content essentially means the content will be relevant regardless of when a visitor sees your post. Generally, they don’t tie to specific dates or times. Recycling content is a great strategy as you grow, but update it or rewrite it entirely to please the algorithm while providing quality content to your audience.
New customers and followers may not have seen content that is still relevant from three years ago, but refreshing that content with a more modern spin can be a huge bonus for you and your potential new customers.
Mix your content up. Naturally, you will include written content, but photo and video content are also highly desirable and engaging.
Guest Posts
Guest posts are a two-phase strategy.
First, allowing guest posts on your site improves your ranking, and often, the person who wrote the guest post will share it with their audience.
Second, this collaboration gives you access to an untapped audience.
Next, guest posting on other sites will also offer access to an untapped audience. Additionally, Google will recognise the number of backlinks you have on other sites, which can help increase your organic search rank.
Social Media
Share your content on social media for more explosive growth. This growth is due to the availability of many platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Each of these may have a completely different audience demographic.
Additionally, social media is more interactive and will allow for immediate feedback.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is similar to sharing on social media. Some visitors may want the information to show up in their email box to ensure they see it. Additionally, email marketing strategies allow you to build up a person’s interest and anticipation and drip-feed mentions of your brand into their daily consciousness. Consider an email strategy such as a mini-course delivered over several days in separate emails.
Remind them that you are there, and give them something interesting with each message to draw them back to your site.
Paid Advertisements
Paid advertising is often a great avenue to build brand recognition and showcase new products. Years ago, this would include mailers to people’s homes, but now it is mainly successful with paid social media promotions and Google Search ads.
Maximise Interview Content’s SEO Potential
Interviews are also two-phased. If you are offered the opportunity to be interviewed on radio, television, podcasts, or even another website, jump at the chance!
Additionally, you can interview high-profile individuals in your niche to increase traffic to your content and create strong backlinks to your interview partners’ sites and resources.
Are You Ready To Boost Your Website Traffic?
I pride myself on my digital marketing expertise and WordPress web development, which looks good and is technically awesome!
You can use your marketing budget on paid advertisements and spend all day every day on social media, but that can be an expensive, time-consuming route that does not necessarily bring the kind of web traffic you desire.
Countless marketing tactics and strategies claim to give you overnight success, but it’s all BS. These “gurus” are trying to sell you into the dream that digital space is easy. It’s not! It takes a lot of hard work.
Work with me, and let’s use the power of SEO to transform your ideas into a more elevated and profitable business. Contact me today to learn how we can get you the traffic you need to help your business grow and thrive.
