Creating or updating a new website isn’t enough. You need to be proactive in order to drive more traffic to your website. Increasing your website traffic almost always increases your sales. And who doesn’t want that?
There are two types of traffic: organic and paid. Organic traffic is when visitors find your site naturally through other platforms and search results. Paid traffic comes from paid advertising.
Since 90% of people only look at the first page of their search results, ranking high in those results is one of the best ways to attract more traffic to your site. There are a variety of methods to do that. These are the ones we deem tried, tested and true and recommend for your website.
Keywords and phrases
Keyword research is a technique used to help find the words your potential customers are entering into a search engine in order to find products and services like yours.
These are the same keywords and phrases that you want to use in the content of your webpages in order to help the search engine connect you with those visitors.
Useful Tips:
- Be intentional in your choice of keywords.
- Perform comprehensive research before deciding what keywords you’ll use.
- Try to find words that your competitors aren’t targeting.
Answer the right questions
Many visitors will find your website because they are researching products and services that you provide. With high quality content that informs and educates, you can show them that you’re the expert in the field. When visitors find what they were looking for on your site, it builds trust and credibility.
Wait, there’s more!
All that informative content creates a good user experience which makes the search engines happy, boosting your rank and in return, driving more traffic to your site.
Heads-up:
Search engines can also detect a bad user experience which can have an adverse effect on your ranking. This is especially true if the search engine sees that the content doesn’t match the purpose of the page. If you’re selling running shoes, it would make no sense to create content around winter boots.
Add new content
You’ve got a new website. Great! The work isn’t done, though. You can’t just create it and leave it. Keeping your website updated is vital. You want to ensure it continues to look fresh and modern by updating images and content. That means things like new blog posts or updating pages with new information on the business. When search engines see that you are posting and updating regularly, it indicates where to rank you in the search results.
Adding new content will not only make the search engines happy but will help you to stay relevant and keep your visitors engaged. You’ll remain top-of-mind with regular updates.
Make it easy to read
We, the people, have short attention spans. It’s important to remember that when writing content. If it’s difficult to read, most visitors won’t. Making the content on every page of your website easy to consume should be a priority.
Useful Tips:
- Keep sentences short and sweet.
- Use plain, simple language.
- Headings and lists make the content scannable.
- Use images to break up the text.
Backlinks
A backlink is when another site links to your website somewhere in their content. Search engines use backlinks to help determine the value and importance of the webpage. If a page has links from several other sites, its reputation grows which results in a higher ranking. Think of backlinks like votes. The number of links and the quality of the sources where they’re found give you the popular vote with the search engines.
You should have relevant content before you begin to worry about backlinks, though. Create easy to read, helpful content that people will want to reference and share with others. You can begin by sharing your posts on your own social media sites as a way to spread the word. As the word spreads and your reputation grows, so will your backlinks.
You can also build links by ensuring your information is up-to-date and listed in business directories such as:
- Google My Business
- Bing Places
- Yellow Pages
- Yelp
- Industry-specific directory
Internal links
Internal links are links that point to another page of the same website. They help visitors navigate the site and lead them to relevant content. By placing links to meaningful information, such as feature pages, visitors spend longer on the site learning about your business.
Internal links also help search engines understand the relationship between the content of your pages. It makes it easier for them to discover, index and rank it.
Fix broken links
Don’t you just hate it when you get the ‘page not found’ error message? It doesn’t matter how cute the robot image is, it’s annoying. Visitors think so too. Just like you, they’ll often move on to another site if they follow a link to nowhere.
Routinely check your links to ensure everything is in working order.
Search engine friendly URLs
A URL is the address of a webpage. Search engines use your webpage’s URL to understand what your page is all about so it should be readable by both robots and humans alike.
When the URL clearly states the content of the page, visitors are able to get a sense of what they’ll find when they click on it. They’ll also stay to read, and possibly discover more about your business, because it has met their expectations.
Mobile-friendly
More than 50% of visitors are using a mobile device, so it’s important to have a responsive design that’s mobile friendly. If they can’t read the content easily or fill out your contact form from a mobile device, you’ll lose them.
Clean code
We stated this previously so we know you know but it’s really worth saying it again.
Website visitors tend to be short on patience.
They want sites that load in less than three seconds. In fact, search engines use your load speed as a factor in your ranking. Using clean code, optimized images and caching will keep your site loading quickly. To learn more, read this other helpful article.
Talk to an expert
If you’re ready to start driving more traffic to your website, we’re here to help. We’re more than happy to discuss your needs during a free consultation.
