You have the best products or services. Your customer service is top-notch. Your team is knowledgeable and friendly, and you’re an expert in your space. So what? If prospective customers/clients cannot find you online… So what? Sounds harsh, but the bottom line is that most major purchases, even if completed in person, start with internet research.
If people cannot find you, you are losing out on significant opportunities to grow your business. Implementing smart SEO tips to increase traffic is a game-changer.
SEO Tips to Increase Traffic
- Start with Your Website
When was the last time you did a deep dig into your website? When you first set it up? Or if it’s new, did you use a website builder and call it a day? Understandable! You have a business to run. But when it comes to SEO, it’s a good idea to examine it.
- Do you have a sitemap? This gives search engines like Google the information they need to crawl and index pages, audio, and video content efficiently.
- Is navigation easy and user-friendly? It should be streamlined and intuitive.
- Does it contain relevant, helpful content aimed at your target audience? Does it address their concerns, needs, challenges - does it scratch their itch, so to speak?
- Is content, including web copy, blogs, articles, etc., optimized with targeted keywords? Do these keywords appear in strategic places, such as title tags, headers, footers, and meta descriptions?
- Is your URL optimized?
- Is your site clean and attractive?
- How’s your page speed load? This has a huge impact on both your search engine rankings and on user experience.
You are working on increasing traffic to your website; make sure you have a website worth visiting.
- See What Your Competitors Are Doing
Running a competitor analysis is a helpful step. Your goal is to build the best experience for your audience, but if you’re not getting the traffic you need and want, the question is why? Your competitors may have some answers. What types of content are they putting out? What topics are they exploring? What are they doing - and how can you do it more effectively?
The objective here is never to copy or replicate. It’s to gain insights into what works in your space and how you can tailor strategies for your own use. Always make sure any content you create is original and high-quality.
- Focus On Content
One of the most critical SEO tips to increase traffic to your website is creating high-quality, original content that is relevant and useful to your audience. And doing so regularly! Consumers are voracious in their appetite for information, news, and entertainment, and they put in the time to research products, services, and businesses. Try:
- Conducting a content audit to see which of your pieces perform well and which do not. What are some insights you can draw from this?
- Refresh older pieces to make them more relevant to today’s consumers. A post from two years ago may be chock full of great information but look and sound dated. Revamping it can make it into a traffic-generating powerhouse.
- Publish long-form content. Posts, articles, white papers, and guides that hit the 800-word mark (and extend past that) are beneficial to your search rankings.
- Repurpose content. If you have a great article, for example, create different types of content around it. Pull from it and make infographics, a short video, a how-to guide, a LinkedIn post, social media posts, etc. The “same” piece can work in many different ways.
- Integrate keywords, including LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords. These are keywords/phrases that are closely related to your main keywords. So, say your target keyword is “LSI Keywords.” LSI keywords for that phrase include: what are LSI keywords, LSI keyword examples, how to use related keywords, etc. (Note the last example doesn’t even use the keyword but a “semantically related” keyword.)
- Syndicate your content on reputable sites like Medium.
- Make sure your content is easy to share.
- Integrate Social Media
Social media has a somewhat indirect impact on SEO, but it is worth taking steps to shore up your presence in order to drive traffic. You can:
- Post links to fresh, relevant content on your social media profiles.
- Incorporate “Click to Tweet” type links and social sharing buttons.
- Share posts, articles, and videos on LinkedIn and other platforms.
- Retarget Facebook users (i.e. reach people who have interacted with your site in the past through targeted Facebook ads).
- Conduct a Basic SEO Audit
In many ways, this is the first step. A basic SEO audit will help you analyze what you are doing effectively, what could be better, and where your opportunities are. This way, you know where you are starting, which is essential in getting to your destination (i.e. the top of the search engine results pages!). You can then implement sound SEO tips for increasing traffic without wasting time and resources on ineffective steps.
Start now, and get more in-depth analysis and recommendations. Contact THAT Agency for an SEO audit.
