How to get more visitors to your website.
So you've created a great looking website? Congratulations, but that's just half the battle. Now you're going to have to drive traffic to your website so you can make some sweet, sweet money. Thankfully, we're here to help you on your quest to success. Here's our top tips to driving more traffic to your website.
1. On Page SEO
Get Your SEO in Check
What is this?
Search engine optimisation is the practice of making your website search engine friendly, which helps you climb the rankings of the Googles, and increasing your traffic. There's lots of facets to this practice, much of it being quite boring, but you need to get this in check if you want to be right up the top of the search pages. Here's a quick checklist of things you need to do to every page.
Do these things
- Page title - Make your page title snappy and include the keyword. You should be targeting a specific keyword for each page you make and including it in the title lets search engines know what you're writing about.
- Use a keyword in the body text - Take a quick look at your keywords before you start writing a paragraph, and include them in the text. Don't get carried away through, keyword stuffing can get you penalised by Google! Try and keep it relevant.
- Internal Links - Linking to other pages on your website help the Google robots find their way around your site. Make sure every page you create is linked at least once. If you don't the page might not be indexed at all.
- More is better - Write as much as you can about a given subject, although stop when you begin waffling. Bare in mind that you're not only writing content for your users, but for Google too.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly - Google will penalise you if your site isn't mobile friendly. It might be time to change platform if you're not. If you're unsure, take Google's mobile friendly test and take action if needed.
2. Blogging
This is Essential
Blogging is the most important factor of SEO and should not be ignored. Keep putting new blogs on your website at a rate of at least 1 a month. It affects your SEO hugely and because of the flexible nature of blogging, you can write about just about anything that's relevant to what you're doing. It's not all about SEO gains though; You need to write blogs that people actually want to read, and if you are running a lifestyle business it's absoloutly crucial your blogging game is on point.
Let's Get Blogging
So, you need to write a blog at least once a month, but if you have time and resources, shoot for one a week. Think of as many ideas as possible and keep them in a document that you can keep adding to. You can write about your products, news about your business, industry news, or about yourself and running your business. The more the better, you can even go back to older blogs and add more words. Add pictures too, so get yourself a decent camera. A smartphone will do just fine. Link to specific products on your website ensuring every page of your site is linked up.
If you're struggling for ideas, get your customers to write blogs for you. Collaborating with other people is great for business and links between websites gives your site more authority. If your writing is particularly good, you will find that people will share your content on social media, driving more new people to your site. Make sure you do the same, sharing everything you create.
3. Social Media
Share share share
Social media can be annoying at times, but its power is undeniable. If you're new to social media, do some research on which platforms are best suited for your business type and get stuck in. Take a look at what your competitors are doing for some inspiration. You're going to need to be at least as good as them. Post every time you've got something happening, whethers it's a new product, new blog, website update, or otherwise. Take an interest in your customers' social media too, following and liking their posts. It helps build a relationship and keeps them coming back to you and you only.
4. Important Announcement!
Write Good Headlines
It's not always easy, but getting it right can increase your views. You need something that will grabs the attention of visitors, helps your SEO and accurately represents the page too. Try to avoid clickbait as your retention rates will drop sharply if visitors are being mislead. You want people on your website for as longer time as possible, so make it sound appealing with the title, and have content good enough that keeps them there. If you're responsible for web development, use H1 and H2 tags correctly on your pages.
5. Paid Methods
Can't Win? Just Pay!
There's several ways of paying to get more traffic to your website. It's undoubtedly the quickest way to get the ball rolling, and more necerssary if you're unable to wait months and months for your SEO work to pay off.
- The Google Adwords platform allows you to big for ads that appear at the very top of search results for specific queries. You get a budget, bid on specific searches and reap the rewards. It's quite technical to get started, so either put some time aside to learn how it all works, or try something else.
- Social media platforms all have paid options where you can 'boost' your post to get a lot more eyeballs on it. It's extremely easy to do and we recommend this if you've got something really worth sharing. Perhaps a shop/product launch is appropriate. You can get started for very little, so why not test the waters first?
- Paid links or articles are common, but it's not cool with Google. You can pay people to appear on their website, or pay people to write on yours, but you may get penalised for this if you get busted. We don't recommend this under any circumstance. Instead, try any nurture a relationship with a site, and ask them if you can trade content and links.
Do's
Get stuck in! Don't just create a site and expect people to show up. Do everything in your power to get people to your site.
Dont's
Spam or use black-hat techniques. You'll probably get caught out in the end. So do some research on what constitutes white, grey and black hat SEO practices.