Whether you are a large retailer, a small B2B services provider, or even a local food truck on a shoestring budget – your website is critical to bringing in new customers and making more sales. And for every website, large or small, traffic is the lifeblood of your online efforts.
There are many different ways to get traffic to your site, but search engine optimization (SEO) is probably the most effective and most affordable. While specific optimization tactics can come and go, below are seven basic strategies that are sure to give you good results for the long haul.
1. Publish Blog Content Regularly
Blogging is the foundation of every website seeking traffic from search engines like Google and Bing. Many studies over the last few years have shown that websites that publish blog posts several times per week can get 3-5x more traffic than sites that publish just once a week or less frequently.
While the exact traffic numbers will vary from one case to another, the point is that more blog posts mean more traffic.
2. Target Longtail Keywords with Your Blog Posts
Keywords are words and phrases people type into search engines like Google to find things like information, products, and services. Longtail keywords are longer, specific phrases that are easier to rank for in search results – and therefore are more likely to bring you more traffic.
So be sure to create blog content that targets very specific keywords and not only broad, generic topics.
3. Get Backlinks from Authoritative Sites
Writing guest posts for other blogs in your industry or in related niches is a great link building strategy. If you can get high-traffic websites – especially those within your industry – to link to your content, you can expect to get some significant boosts in traffic over time.
Guest posting will help you expand your customer base, build authority as an industry expert, and of course – drive traffic and sales to and through your website.
4. Include a Wide Variety of Multimedia Content
Few people love reading walls of text on a website or blog. So you can keep visitors on your site longer and convert them into customers more easily by providing a lot of interesting content.
Along with written blog content, be sure to include photos, infographics, videos, and interactive media like polls and clickable maps to help visitors and customers find the info they’re looking for.
5. Optimize Your Internal Linking Structure
Your website design is also important for SEO purposes. Many sites have categories and topics pages that overlap each other, creating a mess of duplicate content and internal links that seem to lead the reader in circles.
Organize your site structure and content so that potential customers can find what they’re looking for within a few seconds, with as few clicks as possible.
6. Improve Page Load Speed
The amount of time it takes for a page to load on a visitor’s computer screen or mobile device is another factor that affects your traffic levels and conversion rates. Nobody likes waiting for several seconds for media to load onto the page.
Be sure to compress multimedia for fast download speeds. And when necessary, upgrade your web hosting to a dedicated server for both improved website speed and improved security.
7. Get More Traffic with Email Marketing
While the focus of this post is how to get traffic using search engine optimization, the next best way to get traffic is through email marketing. And you should probably work on both of these traffic sources simultaneously. In fact, your SEO strategy should complement and help build up your email list.
For instance, all of your blog posts should include a call-to-action to sign up for your email list to get more free blog content as soon as it is published. Your guest posts on other sites for link building purposes could also include links to landing pages on your site where you offer a free info product for every visitor who joins your email list.
The above search engine optimization techniques have stood the test of time and are excellent ways to get more targeted traffic to your website.
If you need more information on how to implement these techniques, or if you would like to have our digital marketing and website design experts implement them for you, contact VillaGraphX today.