How To Increase Traffic To Your Website

If you’re wondering how to increase traffic to your website, this post is for you! There’s a few main ways to get more website traffic:

• Use paid advertising – the fastest way is to use paid ad platforms such as Facebook, Google Adwords etc.
• Improve your SEO – That’s where I come in! I can help you with your SEO to optimise for your best keywords
• Create a lot of content targeting keywords in your niche – Focus on long tail keywords and start blogging
• Build backlinks and increase your domain authority – More on this later in the post
• Optimise your local business listing on Google & Bing (Google My Business listing)

Each of these strategies is a post in itself but I will cover the main points in this post.

How To Increase Traffic To Your Website – Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is the fastest way to get more traffic to your website. Google Adwords is a good place to start. There’s also Facebook and other social media websites which offer paid ads and of course Bing (Microsoft Ads). I would start with Google Adwords if you haven’t used any before. Google Adwords lets you target specific keywords for your ads, so they only show when someone types that specific keyword into Google.

That means you can get very focused on the main keywords you want your advert to show for. This saves you wasting budget on low value keywords which are less likely to convert into customers.

Be careful initially with paid ads because you can easily spend money on traffic without increasing your return on investment. Start with a low daily budget you can afford to lose while you learn. A lot of website traffic doesn’t immediately convert into customers, so you’ll need to test and experiment with paid advertising, to see what works for you.

How To Increase Website Traffic To Your Website – SEO

There’s a lot to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but an “easy win” for website owners is to start by looking on Google’s keyword planner and find a keyword they would like to rank for. The best keyword for you will depend on the monthly search volume of the best search term which identifies your particular business/service the best.

Some terms are going to be more competitive than others, so that means you’re more likely to rank for the less searched for terms. In very competitive areas, you might not even rank for the less competitive terms. But if you’re locally based, you can include your town/city keyword which will narrow down the competition. With a global brand, or for online businesses without a physical location, it can be much more difficult competing for keywords.

To optimise your website for your main searched for term, you’ll need to place that keyword in your main page. It’s amazing how this opportunity is missed so often, simply because a website owner doesn’t know to include it! Link back to your main page using your keyword phrase in other content. This is known as deep linking. This helps Google see what your website is about, and rank it accordingly. For more help on this and if I’ve lost you already, drop me an email.

How To Get More Traffic To Your Website – Create a Lot Of Content – Blogging

SEO and blogging go hand in hand and through creating regular content on your website you do two things:

• Increase your domain authority with Google, by proving your expertise in a particular subject with your content
• Bring customers to your website through long tail keyword searches.

Long tail keyword searches are one of the best ways to attract traffic and customers to your business. A long tail keyword is one with three or more terms within it. These are great for two main reasons:

• They are easier to rank for on Google, because there’s less competition for them
• They are very targeted and tend to be people who known more specifically what they want (ideally your product/service)

To create content which attracts free search engine traffic, write high quality posts on your blog which target the long tail queries in your niche. Basically, you’re writing content which answers the questions your potential customers are asking.

Backlinks

Backlinks are one of Google’s most important data points for its ranking algorithm. More backlinks means Google will rate your website as more of an authority in your niche. However, not all backlinks are equal, so before you rush off and buy a tonne of spammy backlinks, read on! Google likes to see a natural link profile which would be consistent with the growth of an actual business. A thousand spammy links in a few days is more likely to damage your reputation than boost your authority.

Where your backlinks come from is as important as how many you get. So a high authority backlink from someone within your industry carries more weight than a load of low value spammy ones from a directory which has nothing to do with your business niche. It’s better to slowly build up backlinks from highly credible sources in your industry.

Backlinks happen naturally too by creating high quality content. When someone finds your article, for example, and likes it, they are more likely to share and link to it. So creating useful resources such as pdfs, ebooks, research, data and infographics is another way to build digital assets which people will link to over time.

If you’re a locally based business one of the fastest ways to build links is through local directories. Don’t over use directories which aren’t local though as some can negatively impact your link profile. Google advice on links.

Backlinks can have a twofold benefit for website traffic:

• You potentially gain traffic directly from the website linking to you
• You gain authority with Google which pushes you up the rankings

Optimise Your Local Business Listing

Don’t have a business listing locally? Get one if you have a local business. It is worth a lot of traffic and it’s free! See also top 10 tips for locally based businesses.

A local business listing with Google My Business and Bing (Microsoft Business Listing).

Google business listings come up in local search when someone is looking in a certain place for a business or service. So if you have a physical location, it’s a good idea to have a listing. You can optimise your listing by filling it out as fully as possible and making sure you choose the best category to list it in. Certain categories will be prioritised over others and you can use Google’s keyword planner to find out which keywords are being searched for the most. If it’s a choice of two categories, you can pick the one which gets more traffic, once you’ve done the research.

Customer Avatar

So, there’s a few strategies explaining how to increase traffic to your website. Another thing to consider before going ahead with a strategy is your customer avatar. A customer “avatar” is something you create to help you with your marketing. By getting very clear on who your ideal customer is, you can save a lot of advertising budget, and a lot of wasted time not creating the wrong content.

The customer avatar is an important thing to consider because the internet is a vast open space. You can attract the wrong people to your website and they definitely won’t convert into customers. After all, the point of more traffic isn’t more time-wasters is it? No, you want more customers. So make sure you attract those people who are the most likely to buy from you to your website.

That’s why it’s worth spending a little time on who those people are! What questions do they want answer for (for content)? How old are they? Where do they hang out online? By knowing more about your customer avatar (or target audience), you can save a lot of time and effort chasing the wrong kinds of website visitor. You can get very focused on attracting the right kinds of website visitors – more of those who turn into customers!

Not all website traffic is equal – attract the right audience with buyer focused keywords which show a buying intent. For example, a buyer focused keyword for a flower shop might be “how much is a bouquet of flowers”. This shows a clear intention to buy.

Summary

As you can see, there’s lots of ways to attract more website traffic. They key is to pick a strategy and stick to it for some time. Often people try a strategy once, and then give up on it when nothing happens. All these strategies require some consistent effort! Particularly blogging! Stick to a strategy and you should see some nice trickles of traffic coming to your website. If you stick with it, those trickles will turn into streams. Pretty soon, you’ll be having a flood of customers! That’s how to increase traffic to your website!

Get in touch and let’s work together!