If you want to grow your business then you need to know how to get more search engine traffic for your website. Read on for some helpful SEO tools.
Search engines are still the number one way in which people find websites. The most recent stats suggest that almost 30% of global web traffic comes from search engines. That’s nearly a third of all traffic, with the rest split between things like social media, adverts, links, and so on.
Long story short, you need to focus on search engines if you want to deliver lots of traffic to your website. Whether you run a blog or a business, traffic makes you successful.
As you might know, I started my career working for some of the biggest ad and marketing agencies in New York. I now work 1-on-1 as a consultant with people to help them grow their business. For bloggers, traffic equates to readers, which can help you make more money through advertising, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing. And for businesses, traffic equals leads, which can translate into sales and loyal customers.
How to Get More Search Engine Traffic
So, how can you generate traffic to your website via search engines? Naturally, it will be extremely competitive, but there are a few approaches and ideas you should zero in on. This guide will help you understand more of these nuances and how to use them.
1. Keyword research
Before you do anything else, you need to conduct some keyword research. In short, this helps you figure out the sort of words or phrases most associated with your website. To put it another way, what will people search for if they want to find your site? Put yourself in the shoes of an internet user and think of what you might type into Google to find a site similar to yours. If you’re a business, it could include certain products you sell. For a blog, there might be phrases relating to topics you cover.
The purpose of all of this is that it lets you know the searches to target. This way, you can start adding your keywords to your website, titles, page names, tags, and so on. It will ensure that you have a higher chance of being found when people search for these terms. There’s still a lot more to do, but all will be discussed in the next point. For now, check out the video below for more information on keyword research.
2. On-Page SEO
As you’ve been reading this guide, you have probably been waiting for the s-word to come up. SEO (search engine optimization) is the process by which websites become more suitable for search engines. As a result, they become easier for search engines to find and understand, which improves the way they rank in the results.
That’s the key thing here: you are trying to make your website appear as high up the search engine results pages as possible. Your initial goal is simple; get onto page one. How many times have you ever scrolled beyond the first page of Google search results? You never do it, nobody ever does it, so you miss out on traffic by not being on the first page. Once this has been done, your second duty is to rise as high up the first page as you can for your relevant keyword searches. The higher you are, the more clicks you get. If you click here, you’ll notice it states that a third of all clicks are on the first organic result alone! This is because people associate the top results with the best and most trustworthy sites. It’s almost like they expect the top Google result to be one they should click, so they do!
We can’t run through everything to do with SEO, and this specific point is about on-page SEO anyway. Here, you’re looking at every internal aspect of your website that can improve your search engine ranking, such as:
Keyword placement
Title tags
Meta descriptions
Site structure
Content quality
Internal linking
Fast loading speeds
Good user experience
The list can honestly go on for a long time, but you get the point. It is worth working with an SEO expert or company to help you with this as it can be confusing.
3. Off-Page SEO
Following on from on-page SEO, there’s also off-page SEO. Now, if the on-page stuff refers to everything internally, what do you think off-page means? Correct, it’s all the different things you can do externally that will impact the way your website performs in search engines, helping you get more traffic.
The list of factors is not as exhaustive, but it includes things like:
Link building
Local SEO
Business listings
Online directories
Social media
Link building is arguably the biggest factor here, and one that a lot of people neglect. There was a huge misconception that link building died a few years ago, but that’s not true. All that happened was Google stopped people from spamming links to boost their rankings. If you can generate quality backlinks to your site from other sources, especially with Getmentioned — a link building service agency for local business, it will improve your performance. Not only does it generate more traffic, but it shows search engines that you’re trustworthy. Lots of links directing people to your site show Google that you must be worth visiting, so you get bumped up the ranking spots.
4. PPC
All of the above points have related to generating organic traffic from search engines. However, there’s another way of getting people to your site; PPC. This stands for pay-per-click, and it is one of the best marketing or advertising techniques out there. Certainly, in terms of cost-effectiveness, PPC beats a lot of other methods.
Essentially, you will bid on advertising space in search engines. You have seen these before, they show up at the top of the search results and are usually indicated as ‘sponsored’ or an ‘ad.’ PPC works by bidding on certain keywords and then paying for every click your advert gets. If nobody clicks, you don’t pay – simple!
It’s highly effective as you’re guaranteed to be on the first search results page, and you’re also one of the first results someone sees. So, it’s well worth looking into PPC if you want to increase search engine web traffic.
By all means, focus on other traffic sources to get even more people to your website! Still, if you only have enough time or resources for one source, search engines are clearly the best.
Get more support to grow your traffic and business
Think about subscribing for free weekly tools here.
No SPAM, ever! Read the Privacy Policy for more information.
50% Complete
One last step!
Please go to your inbox and click the confirmation link we just emailed you so you can start to get your free weekly NotSalmon Happiness Tools! Plus, you’ll immediately receive a chunklette of Karen’s bestselling Bounce Back Book!