Five Smart Ways to Increase Your Website’s SEO Traffic

All businesses, no matter the size, are always looking for ways to increase visitor traffic to their websites. The greater the traffic, the greater the number of potential customers and sales. More traffic can also boost your website’s visibility on the web if your new visitors share your website.

At times, it can be challenging to increase the traffic to your website. But when you apply the correct strategies and remain consistent you’ll eventually see a payoff from all your hard work. 

What makes search engine traffic so great is that it is both targeted and relevant. A visitor is coming to your website because they have a reason to be there: they either have a question or are curious about your result in their search query. So you first need to rank.

Here are five strategies that you can implement into your SEO plan to help increase website traffic, leading to more visitors and potentially more sales.

#1: Don’t just optimize for the Search Engines

The most important thing you can do to increase traffic to your site is to write for your audience. As much as we want to focus on making pages work for search engines, we’re ultimately making content for our customers. This content should be valuable, informative, and engaging. Content that’s easy for search engines to index and crawl might not be what your users are looking for.

You should also know exactly who you are addressing in your content. Think about the feedback you’ve received from your customers about your products. Who’s buying? And what kind of content would they want to engage with? Make it a priority to understand the central issues and interests of your audience, then utilize specific keywords of subjects that they’ll want to consume more of. By creating quality, valuable content that resonates with your targeted audience, your SEO will naturally improve over time.

It’s important not to stuff your website or blog with keywords. Always have your audience in mind so that your use of keywords is natural and related to the industry you’re writing in. Search engines reward useful content.

One of the ways that search engines know that your content is useful is by the length. So when writing blog posts, you shouldn’t write a post that is too short. Aim for at least 1,500 words, but no more than 3,500 words - you don’t want to lose your reader! 

#2: Use Keywords

The most fundamental aspect of SEO is to include keywords in your header tags, title, meta descriptions, and the body of your content. These tell search engines what your site and individual pages are all about. 

When users search for something on a search engine, it will use the pages it has indexed for those particular keywords and show them on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The titles (and slugs - the part of the URL that comes after the backslash) of your pages and blog posts will help both users and search engines understand what’s on the page. Not only that, but the keywords you choose for each page will help guide your content. Keywords guide search engines, guide your visitors and guide you. No wonder they’re so important!

There are two main types of keywords: short-tail and long-tail. 

Short-tail keywords are… you guessed it… short. They’re typically only a word or two long, and they’re more general. This might look like “fast car” or” paint.” Typically these keywords have high traffic volume but a lot of competition. 

Long-tail keywords are more specific. They’re usually longer and have less traffic but less competition. Something like “recycled plastic plant pots” is a long-tail keyword compared to “plant pot” which is a short-tail keyword.

Your aim should be to use long-tail keywords, as they make up the majority of web searches these days. This means that if you're not targeting them as a part of your SEO efforts, then you're missing out on potential traffic.

Don't merely use the most popular keywords in your market. You need to use keywords that are specific to your product or service. With time, Google and other search engines will recognize your site or blog as a destination for that particular subject. This will substantially boost your content in search rankings and allow your ideal customer to find your business.

#3: Use Backlinks

Your website is also ranked by the number of unique domain names that are linking back to your site. 

The number of backlinks to your site indicates that other site owners are referencing your content on their websites. It’s like a vote of confidence: they’re willing to say that your content is so good that they have a link to it on their website. Search engines recognize both where your pages are linked and what text is anchored to the link to help determine who would want to go to specific pages on your site.

There are two important areas to focus on with backlinks.

Firstly, it’s the main pages on your site. Backlinking your Home Page, your About Page, and your main blog page is a good way to start building out your SEO rank. These pages will likely be already indexed. Making sure these pages are highly optimized for SEO is key because they lend their credibility to any new pages that get created on your website (e.g. blog posts).

That brings us to our second focus area for backlinks. You can increase the number of backlinks pointing to your site by creating content worth sharing. Over time, people will use your content as a reference for their blogs and articles. Not only will this get more sites to point back to your site, but it is also a great way to increase traffic and grow your audience. 

While there are plenty of ways to gain backlinks, sometimes search engines will negatively mark pages that receive too many backlinks at once, so allowing your pages to slowly and steadily increase in backlinks will help gain the trust of search engines.

#4: Use Internal Links

The health of your site's link profile isn't only determined by how many other sites link back to yours, but it can also be affected by your internal linking. 

As you build up a decent back catalog of content, you want to start linking to those pages in your blogs and throughout your website to guide your audience to more relevant content. Adding internal links can keep your visitors on your site but also helps search engines find other pages on your site too. 

If a specific subject is gaining traction, why not find ways to logically link it back to older content? When you create and publish content on your website, be sure to look out for opportunities to place internal links. Not only does this help your SEO efforts, but it will also result in a better experience for your visitors.

Be warned, though. The internal linking should feel natural and shouldn’t be just done for the sake of internal linking. Think of it as a map that can be followed around your website.

#5: Blog Regularly

Once you understand what subject you should be creating content about, blogging is an easy first way to create informative content that can improve your search engine optimization.

By creating a consistent series of blog posts about your niche, search engines will establish you as a trusted source of information, giving a boost to your SEO. The key to unlocking this is by including each blog in a sitemap. A sitemap helps the search engine review your site, index the pages, and make it easier for them to be found through search engines.

Regularly blogging is one of the most effective ways to increase organic traffic to your site, mainly because it is easily shareable. It allows you to go more in-depth than on your “main” website and creates an extensive catalog of helpful, audience-optimized content, which is centered on your niche market. This sharing then naturally grows your backlinks (see above).

To ensure you create regular content, prepare a schedule of when you’ll release blog posts to keep your company consistently writing content. Not only that, but blogging can even help sales by pairing the release of new products with blog posts that use keywords about that subject. Be smart and strategic when writing and publishing blog posts.

However, poorly written, spammy content will do more harm than good. Repeated and misleading content might end up hurting your SEO score. Tools like GrooveBlog™️ can help organize your blog posts in a way that lets you better understand the blogs you have and the ones you still need.

Optimize your content, which leads to improved linking and a better SEO rank.

You can create long-term, consistent traffic growth by optimizing your pages and content for your customers and the audience you want to reach. 

By providing valuable, optimized content, search engines will start to consistently rank you higher. This will mean that your users and customers will see your company as reliable and trustworthy, perhaps more than just a place that sells a product. Their loyalty will help spread the word and drive new potential customers to your site. This, in turn, will translate into better search engine results too. It’s a continuous loop. Get started and start to see the results build.