15 ways to increase your website traffic

Building a website is the first step in creating an online presence for your business. It is also the beginning of a long journey of improving your site’s visibility in the search engine.

Google is a business like yours (just a little bigger) and their objective is to provide their customers with the best possible service. That service is bringing their customers the most relevant and credible results that match their searches. It is therefore essential that you don’t just build a website and hope that visitors will find your site. To drive website traffic, you need a clear strategy and tactics that will get you there. Here are a few to try:

1.  Optimise your website for search engines (SEO)

You can have a great website, but if it is not SEO optimised, your visitors will struggle to find it. For SEO, optimizing your website is crucial. The content on every page helps search engines understand what your website is about. So, when people are searching for topics relevant to your site, search engines know to recommend your content. Your website should also be mobile friendly so visitors’ experience on their mobile devices and tablets is just as good as the desktop experience.

2.  Research and use relevant keywords

Keyword research is all about identifying the phrases and topics your target audience is searching for, so you can create relevant content for them. You need to know what topics, hashtags and keywords your target audience uses so you can share content that’s relevant to their interests. Keyword research will also help you learn which hashtags and phrases to use in your social media posts so you have a higher chance of being found when people search for content relevant to your brand.

3.  Include internal links

To drive on site SEO, link content across your site. Internal linking is important for on-page SEO because internal links send readers to other pages on your website, keeping them around longer and thus telling Google your site is valuable and helpful. Also, the longer visitors are on your website, the more time Google has to crawl and index your site pages. This ultimately helps Google absorb more information about your website and potentially rank it higher on the search engine results pages.

4.  Use title tags

Title tags define the title of your web page and are mostly used to display preview snippets of your web pages. When writing your title tags, keep them short, clear and descriptive but don’t duplicate content from the page content. Ideally keep them between 50 and 60 characters - if you go over the 60 characters, Google will only show the first 60.

5.  Include meta descriptions

A meta description is what search engines use to understand what topic you’re writing about and the audience this is relevant for. Make it descriptive and short, up to 160 characters. You don’t need to stuff keywords in your meta description, instead use synonyms or latent semantic indexing (LSI) of your main keyword.

6.  Register your business with Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that helps small businesses create and manage their Google listings, which appear when customers find businesses on Google Search and Maps. The listing is free and will help you be found online, as well as add credibility, particularly if you have customer reviews.  You can also use the tool to publish regular blogs.

7.  Use Google Search Console

Upload your sitemap to the Google Search Console.  This is the XML sitemap that lists all the pages on your website and tells search engines about the organisation of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot then pick up this file to more intelligently crawl your site, helping your SEO.

8.  Leverage online directories

There are many free sites you can get your business listed with. The more listings, the more opportunities to be seen. Some free directories include Bing, Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, Scoot, Free Index, Hot Frog, La Cartes, 192, 118118, Cyclex, Locanto, Approved Business, UK Small Business Directory, Opening Times, Yalwa, Brown Book, Local Data Search, Business Magnet, Opendi and The Trade Finder.

9.  Publish a regular blog

Showcasing that you understand your audience, industry and the market can have a great impact on how your brand is perceived. Google also loves fresh content and a blog on your website helps to drive traffic to your website and serve as great source of content for your social media. If you are struggling to come up with ideas for your blog, Answerthepublic.com is a great resource to find out what your target audience is searching for.

10.  Encourage social sharing

Allow your website visitors to easily share your post and find your social media accounts by having the icons visible on your homepage so they can follow your company for regular updates. Anyone sharing your post on social media helps you reach new people. Even better, as the share comes from someone they know and trust, it’s more likely to trigger their interest.

11.  Create blog alerts

Allowing your visitors to subscribe to an e-newsletter or alerts when a new blog goes live gives you extra exposure. Not only are you building a list of loyal readers, but emails can also be easily forwarded. An email also provides a quick reference point and makes it easy for the recipient to revisit your blog.

12.  Leverage Pay Per Click advertising

Pay per click (PPC) is a paid advertising tactic where the advertiser pays a publisher for every click on an ad. It includes a variety of text, rich-media or social media ads and has an advantage over cost per impression in that it conveys information about the ad’s effectiveness. Cost per click is calculated by dividing the cost of a paid advertising campaign by the number of clicks using the following formula: Cost per click = Advertising cost / number of clicks.

13.  Create a professional email signature

Very simple, yet very effective if you think about how many emails you send every day. Use your signature to highlight any relevant contact details, link it to your website and keep it up to date. Include your logo and links to your social media profiles to build brand awareness and connect with others.

14.  Use news aggregators to boost your traffic

News aggregator sites make it easy to find relevant content based on your interests. And if they can help you to find great sites, they can also be very effective when it comes to promoting your own content. Some of these are available as apps, some of them will require a plugin and for others you just need to submit a link to your blog or website with relevant tags.

15.  Add video content

Short, informative videos keep people engaged with your content significantly longer than text and pictures. In fact, people stay on websites with videos 60% longer than sites with just text and pictures and Google likes pages where people spend time. In addition, they are also great for storytelling.