Tips to increase website traffic/get found on Google

Everyday millions of people browse the internet in search of products, services and information. Its hard to increase website traffic and get found! It’s important to know how your website gets found by search engines. These 10 tips will point you in the right direction on how you can be found on Google and other popular platforms.

Before I get into the tips you need to know that there isn’t a perfect formula. Google is constantly changing their algorithms to improve Google rankings. If you get to the front page of Google, you won’t stay there forever unless you keep creating content and staying relevant. This isn’t easy!

What is SEO?

SEO is Search Engine Optimisation. It means making sure your website is ready and optimised for search engines like Google or Bing. There are a few ways you can do this. Keywords in blogs, headings and generally around the website is a good start. Optimising images by using alternative text and making sure your website loads fast. Keep reading for more info!

Keywords

Keywords are how search engines find your website and content. You need to know what your potential visitors are searching for in Google so that they can find you rather than someone else’s website. You need to have a keyword strategy to rank higher than your competitors. Here are some tips to make sure your strategy works:

1. Use a mixture of keywords, don’t keep using the same ones. Head terms (Short and simple keywords like “SEO tips”) and long-tail keywords (longer more complicated like “SEO tips for start-up businesses”) should both be used. A lot of people will be searching for “SEO tips” but not as many people will be searching for “SEO tips for start-up businesses”, its less competition but less traffic. Don’t however spam keywords into your website because Google knows, only use them where they are needed.
2. Use keyword and search term tools – This is extremely powerful as you can find out how many people are searching for your terms, what ranks highest, who your competitors are and if the keyword is worth it. Most of these aren’t free but the free trails are still useful, BuzzSumo , Market Samurai  (favourite one), Moz(really good I recommend this for everyone, easy too). Finally, Google, this is a really good tool if you know how to use it, for example, if you want to search for blogs on chameleon eggs, you can simply search “blog: “chameleon eggs”, which will only return results from blogs with specifically the words “chameleon eggs” in the title.
3. Simply looking at your competitors is a good way of understanding what they are doing right. This gives you the advantage as you can find out what they are doing and improve upon it with different keywords and ones that target your audience better.

Use your network

Using your current network of friends, family and colleagues is probably one of the best ways to start increase website traffic. They trust you already, so they are more likely to go on your website regularly and use your services. This can go further as friends of your friends can share your business and reach out to even more people. Ask your friends to like and share your posts, they will (hopefully!) support you and get your name out there. This tip also comes under using social networks. Get your site on every platform you can, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ everything!

Use local directories

This is an easy way to get your website seen by more people. Local directories are simply websites with lists of businesses in the area, normally people can leave reviews. These websites are a way for people to find businesses or services so getting your name on as many of these as possible is a good way to link people back to your site. Some local directories include:

• Freeindex
• Yell
• UkSmallbusinessdirectory
• UK Web Designers – Directory of Web Design Companies in the UK.
• Bizify

There are loads more but here are a few that I have used. Some of these can be upgraded to a paid version but I’m sticking to the free ones for now. This tip not only increases the chances of people seeing your website but also adds to the number of backlinks which I’ll talk about later.

Blog unique posts and guest blog

This may not be of interest to everyone but writing relevant and unique blog posts is a good way to increase website traffic. This is a good strategy for several reasons:

• It adds to the number of keywords on your site
• It shows people you know what you talk about
• People will return to your site to read your posts

Google likes it when you add new content to your site as it shows it is active and people are using it. When you blog about something relevant to your site it will draw more people in and you will gain more business and views. You can also guest blog, which will draw in more people from another site, and increase your backlinks. Another tip is to write interesting headlines that will draw people in. A good article about this can be found here.

Guest blogging or writing for other websites is a good way to increase website traffic as it gets you to name out there to more of an audience. Huge spikes in your website views can happen if you appear on another popular website. When others guest blog on your site you they are much more likely to share your site and bring more views in.

Make sure your site is fast and responsive

Google loves it when your website is fast. It will rank higher if it loads faster. One way to make sure your website is fast is to make sure your images are small, and the quality isn’t too high. There are also a lot of plug ins to decrease the size of your images automatically. A lot of people may view your site on mobile devices so making sure your website works well on mobile is very important these days. Google can tell if your website is slow on mobile devices too!

Link internally and externally

Having multiple links around your website that direct your viewers to other pages means that they are more likely to stay longer. For example, I can mention one of my previous posts about Website Optimisation . This will decrease the bounce rate of my website. Linking externally also makes you appear higher on Google as you are seen more of an influencer.

Email marketing

This can have a huge effect on a website and its views. Having a loyal email list of even 100 almost guarantees return customers and return views on your website. Growing an email list can however be very hard. You need to use the right wording in the right places to ensure people will even care. No one is going subscribe to an email list of “our Newsletter”, you need to offer something of value. Here are a few examples of how you can increase the number of people on your email list:

• Offer them something like a free eBook, resource list or “10 tips everyone should know”, this will draw their attention in as if it’s free they want it!
• Don’t just have a subscribe in the corner of every page, place the subscribe box tactically on pop-ups, at the end of popular articles and just generally where they are most engaged.
• Don’t ask for too much information, at most, ask for a name and an email, that’s it. People can be bothered to type more than that.

There’s a lot of ways to get more subscribers, so make sure you do your research. But if you haven’t already started you should start now! It’s one of the best ways to build up an audience, even if it’s just friends and family at first, you can build an email list before you even have a website, just do it!

I use MailChimp for my emails, it’s free for an email list of up to 2000 (which is the best free email service online I believe). It allows you to keep track of everyone and lets you create email marketing campaigns easily. I really recommend this. 

Examine your data – google analytics

Signing up to Google analytics is one of the best things I did for my website. It allows you to look at pretty much every aspect of your website. This tip doesn’t directly increase website traffic, but it allows you to see what your viewers are doing, where they go and for how long. Google analytics lets you target areas, for example, I know a lot of people go from the homepage to the about page straight away meaning I need to have a strong about page that links to other areas of my site. The behaviour tab tells me my most popular posts and how long they spend reading each post. It even tells me where exactly they are reading it from (I had someone in Tokyo read my blog the other day), and from what devices.

It’s easy to set up just go to the Google analytics website, it’s easy to do and worth it.

Write for your viewers and not Google

It can easy to get caught up in the whole keywords thing. But it’s important to write content that is for your viewers and not for Google algorithms. I’ve said it before, but Google knows! They know if you put too many keywords in your article and know if you’re spamming it. When writing anything online I recommend you write first for your viewers and then once you are done make a few changes adding keywords and phrases but not too many! If you are using WordPress the best tool to use to Yoast, this looks at all the text on your site and allows you to select a keyword or phrase. It then gives tips on what you should do to improved based on what you write. It also looks at how readable your writing is, looking at sentence length, words used and more.

Back-linking

This is when one website links to another, I mentioned this earlier on in the post. They are important in SEO as it means that other websites trust yours, your website will rank higher in Google the more backlinks it has. You can get more backlinks to your site by guest blogging, on business directories and social media. But if your site is featured on a very well-known website like Huffington  or someone like TechRadar then the link will be of more value as a trusted site has linked to you. Websites like Wikipedia rank very high in Google because they have a huge amount of backlinks.

Conclusion

So there you have it! It may take a while to implement all of these tips but it will 100% bring more views to your website. Google is constantly changing the way they rank searches so it’s important to stay up to date. Let me know what you think of this article in the comments if you liked it please give the article alike so I know if you want to hear more.

Please subscribe to my email list if you want a free eBook covering everything above in much more detail. I will be giving it away only to my subscribers once it is finished. If you are not subscribed at release it won’t be free! 

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If you need professional help with SEO or websites please contact me I do actually enjoy it!