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Okay, you did the hard work of building a page for your business, but now you need to know how to get website traffic. What can you do to make sure your business pops up in Google, Bing, or Yahoo search results and hopefully be seen on the first page? Knowing the essentials to improve your search rankings, also called search engine optimisation (SEO), will go a long way toward making your web presence successful.
Here are some common SEO tips, questions and answers around how to get more traffic to your website.
What’s the number one thing you should do to help your business show up in search?
Simply, SEO your website. This means you should create and optimise your website with the audience you want to reach in mind, not the search engines. This is because search engines’ algorithms focus more on the searcher’s intent (what the user is actually searching for) versus having content with keywords that are not in alignment. It’s important that you deliver an experience where people don’t immediately leave your page, as this can have negative results in your website rankings.
Offering a great experience for the people who visit your site will help your organic search rankings (meaning search results outside of paid advertising) tremendously. Having a content-rich site with a blog is one of the most effective techniques.
Consistently posting content is one of the best SEO tips on how to get website traffic. You’ll want to post fresh, engaging content regularly. We recommend 400- to 500-word blog posts three to five times a week. If you don’t have time to do that, start with something less intensive — a quick video of your store or an update about what’s going on at your business. It’s all about providing fresh and engaging content that’s interesting and helpful to your target audience to help build your SEO traffic.
What type of content should you post to get more traffic to your website?
Figure out the most relevant topics for your present and prospective customers. Talk to people in your place of business and observe what social media platforms your customers are using. Let that information guide your blogging and content strategy. It’s helpful to group your content into certain themes.
Also, think of the questions people are typing into search engines. What type of searches would you want your business to pop up under? For example, if you’re a local flower shop, you might want to show up when someone searches for “What are the best flower choices for Mother’s Day?” or “What are the latest trends in wedding flowers?” Then, write posts that integrate and answer those questions. Images also make posts more compelling and help SEO traffic. You can add extra SEO power by including captions, as well as image alt tags, file names, and URLs. Ask yourself if visitors will find this content useful when you’re aiming to get more traffic to your website.
How do search engines actually determine your ranking?
In the 20 or so years that search engines have been helping users find websites, ranking factors have changed a lot. In the beginning, your website’s general popularity was all that mattered. Today, search rank depends on a variety of factors. This includes relevant, high-quality content; user behaviour signals (like the time people spend on your content); and links back to your content from topically related websites or social media. But these ranking factors, much like the SEO industry itself, change constantly. For example, Google makes regular changes to its search algorithm. It’s crucial to stay up to date with SEO trends that have the most impact on how to get traffic to your website.
What lowers your ranking?
We mentioned it before in one of our SEO tips above, but if you never update your website’s content, you’ll lower your ranking since search engines reward sites with fresh content. Also, if people just read the first line or two of a post and quickly leave (what’s called a “bounce rate”), search engines notice. If you’re looking to get more traffic to your website, create content that holds people’s attention. Steer clear of practices that violate the search engines’ rules, like “keyword stuffing,” which means overloading your content with keywords, and participating in “link farms,” which serves no other purpose than linking back to content to try to boost rankings. Your site will get pushed down in search — or even banned — if Google or Bing detects those things.
As more and more Australians are using their phones to search, it’s also a good SEO tip to optimise your website and content for mobile users. If you don’t think “mobile-first” when optimizing your site and creating content, then you could end up hurting your rankings.
Are there other ways to optimise each page?
When thinking about how to get website traffic, it’s important to view every page of your site. Each page of your website offers a few opportunities to boost search engine rankings. First, write a relevant 50- to 60-character description of the page topic, called a title tag. Include your main keywords, but don’t engage in keyword stuffing. Then, create a custom meta description on each page — a relevant description of the page topic. Adding these tags helps search engines identify the most relevant content for any given search.
Should you become an SEO expert?
SEO is something every business owner can learn. Take a local class or workshop, and check out some online resources. Google has a very helpful SEO guide for beginners. And take a look at SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation), one of the industry’s most respected resources on the topic. Since you’ll get the best SEO results through a long-term strategy and constant site updates, it’s important to map out a plan for which keywords you want your business to rank for, and continually revisit that list depending on your SEO traffic results.
The key takeaway in how to get website traffic is regularly updating your site with shareable, engaging content that’s relevant to the audience you’d like to reach.
