Growing your business in the online landscape is a never-ending task, with constant analysis, changes and further analysis following said changes. Therefore, it can be a rather daunting task, especially if you have little to no expertise in what you should be looking out for. Hence in our latest post, we will highlight how to increase website traffic by providing a guide for you to double your growth.

Firstly, if you are new to marketing in general, allow us to explain:

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an amalgamation of tasks that will result in your website(s) ranking for multiple search results across search engines. Conducting these tasks and having your site(s) rank will result in a lot more traffic visiting, alas becoming prospective customers/clients.

The tasks that are required are plentiful, hence our list of the top ways to increase your website traffic below. However, we recommend that the first thing that you do is conduct a website audit of your website(s). To do this, we recommend two ways. Firstly, you should use SEO automation tools such as SEMRush, SiteBulb or ahrefs (as these tend to be the favourite auditing software) and conduct a site audit. Conducting the website audit will allow you to get an understanding of any issues and opportunities that you change – thus improving the health and condition of your website(s).

The reason that we recommend using an automation tool first, is that this is considered to be a fairly entry-level approach for website analysis. True SEOs and digital marketers will apply a more advanced methodology – this being manual analysis. Manual analysis is paramount as you can review the condition and opportunities of a website with the users as the focal piece. For instance, you can review the layout of a page, and the links being implemented and even read the content to assess whether these examples have the users in mind.

Over the years, there have been a multitude of updates, additions and features being removed from a digital marketing aspect but the sole purpose has always remained intact – digital marketing is to connect your website with the user. Once you have a solid idea of any changes that you need to carry out, these are the next areas that you should aim to focus on:

Rigorous Keyword Research

Conducting keyword research can be rather intimidating for the uninitiated – especially if you are hoping to rank for these keywords (as everyone will be hoping to do). Therefore, it is important that you take your time with this research and truly grasp the goals and ambitions of the website(s) that you are trying to rank. You also need to review this by being realistic, for instance, let’s say that you recently launched a website 2 weeks ago and are expecting to rank for ‘buy cheap shoes’ in which you plan to rank a 3,000-word article about the best cheap shoes. It is with this example that you have completely wasted your time and amazing article, the reasoning behind this is simply being blind to the user’s intentions.

Simply put, if you want to type ‘buy cheap shoes’ into Google, you expect to find a website that sells the aforementioned shoes and not read a 3,000-word article about the topic. Hence it is crucially important to have an understanding of the right keywords and how to use them. Bringing us to our second point:

Create Insightful Content

Now that you have your keywords and are confident about the keywords you hope to rank for – next comes the content. The phrase ‘content is king’ has never been more prevalent as it is today, especially given at the time of writing, Google has released a recent update concerning the condition of content.

With the above phrase in mind, however, what does this mean exactly? You want to make sure that your content is not only written well, but you want it to be insightful, explanatory, descriptive and coming from a place of expertise. Ticking these key components, you can rest easy that you have written a quality blog, service, product description.

On-Page SEO

Following the influx of quality content entering your website comes On-Page SEO. On-Page tasks can cover everything from content changes/updates, the implementation of fresh links (both internal and external) as well as other tasks such as image optimisation. This is also a key task that requires time and effort as you want to make sure that search engines are happy with these changes. More importantly, you need to ensure that the changes you make serve the users – making their time on your website(s) as streamlined as possible.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is exactly how it sounds. Off-Page SEO tackles tasks that benefit your website without exactly making changes to said website. For instance, social media will likely be the most popular example and for good reason. Social media allows you to market your services/products by offering updates, descriptions and links to your main money pages – allowing you to obtain an influx of new traffic from an external source other than VIA search engines.

Another great opportunity is elevating your link-building strategy by obtaining quality backlinks that are trustworthy, relevant and have high authority. This plays into our fifth point:

Internal and External Linking

In order to execute effective internal and external linking strategies, you need to think of the journey that you want your users to go on. Thinking of your website in such a way will allow you to craft the other points above into a cohesive hub that users can land on and feel satisfied with the time spent. Hence the importance of internal and external linking. Providing relevant links in smart ways will reinforce this factor.

Share Email Newsletter

If you aim to keep your users informed with the latest blogs, services and/or products (sales for example) an email marketing campaign will greatly benefit your digital marketing efforts. Best of all, with GDPR today, users will need to manually enroll to obtain your newsletters – meaning that you know that they are at least semi-interested in your offerings already.

Influencer Outreach

The amount of marketing opportunities that has arisen since Gen Z can be baffling, but one of the most prevalent is the introduction of influencers whether it be bloggers, vloggers or social media influencers. If you offer products/services and are targeting a specific demographic, there’s none more potent a marketing avenue than influencers.

Building a stream of influencers who are eager to promote your business VIA the use of Awin etc is a great way to monitor the progress of your affiliate campaign.

Submit to Media Publication/Press Release

You would be wise to partner with PR companies also. Doing so will grant your website(s) an additional level of professionalism as you will be able to be seen in a corporate sense whilst also being applicable for awards or nominations at the very least. There are places who can control your PR on your behalf, however, if you prefer to build your own relationships – that is also a viable option.

Content Repurposing

Remember when we said content is king? We meant it. Hence the importance of content repurposing. If you are unsure as to what content repurposing is, let us explain. Let’s say you are 7-8 months into a digital marketing campaign and are sitting on quality pieces of content that was written within the first month or two – you can essentially recycle this content. Doing so will allow you to present it in a new format and even expand the post with fresh content. The common example is turning a top 5 list into a top 10-15 for example.

Or, if an influx of new information has come to light, it would be wise to update it with the most recent information available.

Conclusion

Those are our thoughts and tips on how to increase website traffic. If you have any lingering questions or would like to have an award-winning digital marketing agency tend to your marketing efforts on your behalf – we would love to hear from you.