July 23, 2019 By SmartBiz Team

Are you looking for a way to increase your website traffic on your own?

Many small businesses and marketing professionals are using specific marketing strategies to gain a higher volume of traffic on their websites. Some of these processes can get technical, but there’s still plenty of things a business owner can do on their own to increase web traffic.

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Whether a site sells a product, sells a service, or simply exists to educate other people on a specific topic, gaining more web traffic is possible - as long as you know how to make it happen.

Success Doesn't Have to Be Difficult

Believe it or not, having a successful website for your business or hobby doesn't have to be a difficult thing to accomplish these days. One of the biggest reasons businesses fail is simply from not understanding what their company needs. In fact, a new study from HigherVisibility shows that 41.8% if small business owners don’t even have a specific goal for their website. How can you garner web traffic if you don’t even know your audience?

So yes, having some technical knowledge of SEO and digital marketing will help you to generate web traffic - but simply having a clear goal in mind might put you ahead of your competition.

Website Traffic Trick #1: Quality Articles WITH Metadata

The most important element of any web page is keeping readers engaged. Most search engines like Google can detect if a website's content is not written well. If you copy articles from other websites, write generic, uninspired posts, or plug in a ton of keywords, your website traffic will likely remain low.

In a recent article about increasing traffic to websites, ThriveHive writes that web page content shouldn't be the only concern if looking for more traffic. The same care and consideration must be put in the metadata that is put on the web page. (For an easy description of metadata, review What is Metadata from the LifeWire blog.)

Metadata helps search engines understand what the page on your site is about and it helps users get a quick snippet of your site to show them that it's the page they want to click on. Investing time in understanding how to create quality metadata is something anyone can figure out with a little patience to dedicate to the process.

Website Traffic Trick #2: Using Good Keywords Efficiently

Within metadata lives a bundle of elements that make users want to read your site, but how do they find your site to begin with if you aren't picking topics that are relevant to your readers?

There’s a term in digital marketing that’s important to consider here: long-tail keywords. Unless you’re running a massive website, it’s hard to rank for general keywords that get tons of web traffic. Instead, focus your time on creating content that’s meant to rank for a variety of long-tailed keywords.

According to the folks at WordStream, long-tailed keywords are responsible for driving the majority of traffic to websites. By including related long-tail keywords in your content, you can piece together more organic web traffic than you would trying for a massive keyword.

Website Traffic Trick #3: Webpages Are SEO Friendly

Search Engine Optimization means more than using keywords. Picking the best keywords that relate to your website is obviously important, but there are other SEO factors to consider. The content on your site needs to be clear and engaging, but the site also needs to be user friendly and easy for web crawlers to navigate.

The main message to take home from this trick is that SEO means three things: technical performance of the website, incredible on-site content, and meaningful off-site tools. These three types of SEO work together and work off of each other to increase the amount of traffic that finds your site.

Website Traffic Trick #4: Technical Aspects of Site

Users need to be able to navigate through your website with ease. This trick is actually a form of search engine optimization, but it often gets put aside because it doesn't involve creating content on your site or linking to your site.

The value of your site is determined by search engines that crawl through your website, and one of the biggest factors that search engines look for is whether or not the site is running smoothly. Do the pages load quickly? Is it a secure website? If a website is performing better technically than another site with similar content, web search engines will likely rank the better performing site higher than the other similar website.

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Website Traffic Trick #5: SEM and Advertisements

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. This marketing strategy is similar to traditional paid advertising methods, but it concerns ads appearing to users when looking on a search engine. Imagine the number of times each day the average person uses a web search engine. Each time a user has a questions or phrase to search for, they are shown results that contain relevant advertisements. Those ads pop up on the search engine based off of the keywords the user entered.

All advertisements are helpful in bringing traffic to a website, but the reason that SEM is a valuable option for small business owners is because it is generally cost efficient. Running an SEM campaign isn't as expensive as running an ad on local radio, but it's a strategy that is shown to produce great results for the user. The reason that this campaign is cost effective is because SEM advertisements generally are pay-per-click techniques, which means the owner of the ad is only responsible for paying when a user clicks on their advertisement.

Website Traffic Trick #6: Analyzing the Source of Website Traffic

This trick might sound obvious at first, but whether a website has great traffic or not, the site's owners need to have a firm grasp on where the current sources of website traffic are coming from in order to diversify these sources.

In a recent article, Neil Patel discusses the importance of non-SEO marketing techniques. He tells readers that a solid SEO strategy is a crucial part of what makes websites succeed yet having solid search engine optimization isn't the only way to go. In fact, Patel warns readers about the danger of relying completely on SEO strategies alone. He goes into detail when he cites BuzzFeed for having five times more traffic through social media outreach than traffic from web search engines. They understand this pattern and tailor their content appropriately.

Website Traffic Trick #7: Targeted Traffic Beats Untargeted Traffic

Having quality leads is always better than having a higher volume of leads. Keep this idea in mind when you see your website's traffic increase. If users aren't actually interested in shopping when they reach your website, their traffic isn’t valuable for your bottom line. The main thing to consider when analyzing the traffic that finds your website should be whether or not those clicks are converting into dollars. If they aren't, you might want to restructure the way in which you're getting traffic.

Website Traffic Trick #8: Backlinks Improve Ranking

The sites that people link to the most generally get the most traffic. But how do you get people to link to you?

An article from Backlinko details ways to increase the response you are getting from your backlinks. There are plenty of useful tips there. Most readers don't bother looking at the author links at the bottom of a blog, and search engines don’t place much value in them either.

This means that writing those guest posts that link to your website might have been a big waste of time. The article suggests making a change to the way that you link to your site by linking to your own resources earlier in the article. You should try to give room to mention other helpful resources earlier on in the post and linking to your own site in that section.

Knowledge Is Power

Whether you successfully implement the tactics discussed in this article or look for help from a professional, this information can help you set a roadmap to increase traffic. Knowledge is power when it comes to creating and running successful marketing campaigns.

If a website owner puts some of these tactics to use, there is a good chance that the website will receive more traffic. If you need help, consider hiring a professional to take a look at it. The value of knowing this information will come in handy when figuring out which areas of the marketing plan need attention the most.

 

About the Author

Scott Langdon is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of internet marketing experience, and currently serves as a Managing Partner of the nationally-recognized digital marketing firm HigherVisibility. Scott has written for Entrepreneur on numerous digital marketing related topics and is often cited for his expertise by publishers such as Forbes, Huffington Post, Search Engine Journal, and Marketing Land.

 
 
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