If
you have a website, the idea is for people to visit it. A website’s
traffic reflects how well a business is doing online. It is also an
indicator of customer behavior, and will help you formulate a marketing
strategy that will get you a better ranking in the search engine
results.
The
basic idea of SEO optimization is getting more traffic to the website.
But with 1.24 billion websites in the world, how do you ensure that your
website gets good traffic?
Here are my top seven SEO tips that will help drive traffic to your website:
7 SEO Tips to Drive Traffic
Keywords:
In most searches, at least 50% of people use four words or more. This
means that just keywords are not important. You need long-tail keywords
that are specific to the search.
When
it comes to broad keywords, there is tough competition out there which
means that you need to offer something more to stand out among the
crowd. A long-tail keyword is important so that people get specific
results for what they are looking for.
Good
Quality Content: In this competitive world, there are many people who
write on the same topic. What should you do different to get listed at
the top of the search listings? The answer is writing good,
well-researched content.
The
content on your website should also be diverse to avoid any internal
competition among web pages for search engine listings. You need to
organize your website in way that when people search for something
specific, all related information is easily accessible. Also make sure
that your content is regularly updated as search engines regularly check
for updates to provide the best result to its users. Writing good
content can boost up your traffic and ultimately affects your SEO.
Meta
Description and Title Tags: Title tags are similar to a book title.
This is the clickable link that appears on search engine result pages.
If we take Google’s example, an ideal title tag should be less than 60
characters.
A
meta description is what appears below the title in search engine
results. This is what creates the first impression on a user, and trust
me, first impressions matter. If you have a good and concise meta
description, there’s a better chance of people visiting your web page
and also good for SEO.
Optimize
Images: Images are what add color to a web page and make it less
boring. I can’t even think of a web page with images. For a better
search engine listing, make sure that you optimize the images by adding
descriptions, alt tags, and titles. Its beneficial for your website SEO
efforts.
A
search engine can’t identify an image’s content. It is the text with an
image that helps them rate how relevant a page is. For this, use
original, optimally sized, good quality images.
Backlinks:
For a search engine, backlinks are an endorsement of a website. A guest
blog on another site that links back to yours will drive traffic to
your website.
Getting
a listing in online directories will also drive traffic to your
website. The description of your business in a e-directory will have a
link to your website. Make sure you continuously update your information
in these directories to generate traffic and increase your SEO ranking.
SSL
Certificates: For a search engine, an SSL certification is important.
What an SSL certificate basically does is it changes your website’s
“http://” to “https://” that makes it more trustworthy and protected. If
you want a search engine to trust you, a SSL certificate is a must.
Mobile
Friendliness: According to Google, there are more mobile searches than
on desktops in 10 countries including Japan and the US. In order to
capitalize on this growing trend, your website needs to be mobile
friendly.
Of
course, other than these basic SEO tips, there are many other ways that
SEO can help drive traffic to your website. Below, 91 SEO experts share
their best SEO tips for traffic generation.
#1. Barry Schwartz — Search Engine Roundtable
Build something that Google would be embarrassed not to rank well in their search engine.
#2. Larry Kim— MobileMonkey, Inc
There’s
one other factor you can — and should be — focusing on. It’s something
that could double your traffic. Yet so many people are overlooking it.
Your organic click-through rate. Does your website have cancer? Do you have the symptoms?
Are people bouncing off your pages like rubber balls? Is your click-through rate ridiculously low?
If so, it’s dragging down your overall domain-level engagement metrics.
Follow these ridiculous hacks to raise your CTR (and raise your organic search rankings)
#3. Ann Handley — MarketingProfs
My
general SEO advice is: Create user-centric content that answers the
questions your prospects have, and that makes them feel like you
understand their problems, shoulder their burdens along with them, and
feel their pain. Is that SEO advice or is that Content advice? My answer = Yes.
#4. Eric Enge— Stone Temple Consulting
The
bad about this question is that people will hate the simple response,
which is to add great content to your site. People hate this answer
because everyone says it nowadays, but the reality is that it’s true.However,
let’s dig a little deeper. This is about where Google (and even others
like Facebook) are going. They’re all in a war to win the hearts and
minds of users. Their hold on market share is wholly dependent on their
ability to provide a quality user experience. In today’s world, even if
your Google or Facebook, if you fall off a bit in the value off your use
experience, overall market share will suffer.
For
Google, user experience means offering the right pages in their search
results that offer the best, most direct, most complete answer to the
users needs. My belief is that this is largely what Google’s machine
learning programs are targeted at evaluating. For
you, as the publisher of a website, the practical impact is that
improving your site content quality, and depth, offers the following
benefits:
1.
Increased conversions from users on your site.2. Increase search
traffic as Google starts to see your site as offering more value. Let
me state the tips clearly: improving the quality of your content on
your site will likely increase your SEO traffic. To be successful at
this, you need to understand how Google defines better content. Usually
that means deeper, more comprehensive, content.
(PS: doing this well will increase your ability to get featured snippets too) This
tips of improving your site content quality (and the user experience)
on your site needs to be a religion, and a continuous pursuit. It’s the key to your short term, and long term, success.
#5. Andy Crestodina — Orbit Media Studios
Indicate
relevance. This is the most important, most effective SEO tactic or
tips there is. If you expect to rank for a phrase, you need to use that
phrase in the title, the header and the body text. It sounds obvious,
but it isn’t. Go back to any page that isn’t ranking where you hoped and
give it the “Control + F Test.” Just using the find feature of your
browser will show you if it’s optimized or not…
Source: Orbit Media, SEO Advice, Keep
in mind that although the phrase may have appeared in links, these
don’t count when you’re indicating relevance for this page. Links
indicate the relevance of the page they link to, not the page they’re
on. So use the phrase in the body text here and in links there!
#6. Stoney deGeyter— Pole Position Marketing
Build
a site that meets and exceeds visitor expectations. We tend to think of
“pleasing the visitor” as something that happens after we get the
traffic, but good SEO puts this at the forefront of their efforts.
Search engines want to show only the best and most relevant websites to
their searchers. Which means that instead of trying to please the
algorithms, we should do what search engines do: try to please the
searcher. You
can’t get to the top of Google without considering what it is that
Google wants. And when it comes down to it, they don’t want “optimized”
text or “optimized” title tags. Those do provide value, but those are
just SEO signals to the bigger picture of optimizing the site for what
searchers want and need. If
you focus on the visitor follow this tips, producing both content and a
site experience that satisfies searchers’ needs, then you’re not only
going to do a better job at generating new business, but you’ll be
giving Gooogle exactly what it wants to show their searchers. That
translates into better exposure, not because you optimized content, but
optimized for the visitor experience.
#7. Arnie Kuenn — Vertical Measures
I
will assume some of the other contributors are covering more technical
aspects of SEO. Therefore, I am going to make a rather simple
recommendation or tips that can make all the difference for those of you
trying to grow the traffic to your website. My recommendation is:
create content and TITLES that people are ACTUALLY searching for. Yes,
most of us have our list of targeted keyword phrase that we have
optimized pages for, but I am talking about everyday searches related to
your industry that people conduct when researching your products or
services. Often times this comes in the form of a question. Pro
tips: don’t worry too much about search volumes. I would much rather
rank in the top 3 positions for 100 lower volume phrases, then rank on
page 3 for 100 high volume phrases.
#8. Warren Whitlock — WarrenWhitlock.com
People
will respond to your offer for a transaction but what they are really
looking for is connection and shared experiences, so make sure that they
get that in everything you do. Selling a quality product with great
service and a competitive price is just the ground floor of a successful
site. Most of the growth for the future will be in real connections
with vendors the know, like and trust their clients. For
SEO tips, this means that generic content and links are just the start.
You will get a better margin, a lot more sales, and customer sending
more referrals when you become known and the industry leader. To do that
requires outreach to industry sites, adding value to what they do,
sponsorship of blogs, podcasts and influencers to develop valuable
connections and participation in the comments, posts and sharing of
anything that helps your customers.. not just the sale you are running
this week. This
is the most powerful leverage possible in SEO. We’ve seen ROI over 10x
in campaigns like this. Start now. leave a comment on this post, share
it where think it will help your audience and reach out to me or anyone
contributing when you see something that resonates.
#9. AJ Ghergich— Ghergich & Co.
My
favorite tips would be reoptimize your old content to earn Google
Featured Snippets. Earning Featured Snippets allows you to occupy
position 0 and gain high CTRs against your competitors.
These
changes will also set you up nicely for Voice Search Optimization. 80%
of Google Home queries return answers from Featured Snippets. 1.
Look for content that has top 10–20 rankings but has not earned
featured snippets2. Reformat your content to include ordered and
unordered lists3. Use lots of descriptive sub headers to break up you
content4. Keep you content succinct with paragraphs no longer than 40–50
words5. Submit your updated content to Google via Search Console
#10. Brent Csutoras — PeakActivity
If
you want to drive traffic through SEO efforts, you have to create
something worth visiting, linking to, and ultimately sharing. For
years, marketers, consultants, and even search engines like Google,
have said they care less about the quantity of content you create, but
demand the highest quality content you can produce. Focus
your efforts on identifying topics in your industry that people are
making a concerted effort to find. Look at support forums, review
keyword tools and check the suggested search phrases in Google, to
identify topics people are actively seeking out and then create really
amazing content on those topics. Reach
out to experts to get additions or quotes for your topic, allowing you
to make the content truly unique, enlist support for your content, and
to increase its authority amongst readers. Review other similar articles to make sure your content is really the best and covers the topic in depth. Last
SEO tip, look at Reddit for getting your amazing content more visible…
think about the places on Reddit you could possible write your content
to impress.
#11. Eric Siu — Single Grain
There
is so much content on SEO out there, and it can feel daunting to begin
an optimization overhaul. I focus on tips or techniques that are
effective AND make the best use of resources, including the content you
already have. Here goes: Update
your existing content — Existing content already has authority and an
established readership. So rather than writing something entirely from
scratch, find a post already performing well, refresh it with updated
information, add visuals, and rely on existing signals to make it rank
for terms. Improve
engagement to improve rankings. Take your existing content and make it
more readable — break up any big blocks of text, dividing content up
with headers, bullet points. Focus
on topics instead of keywords — Google algorithm updates now enable the
search engine to determine intent rather than rely solely on the actual
keywords. So while keyword research is still very important, focus on
what users are searching for rather than different ways to phrase a
search query to boost up your SEO. Build
backlinks — Earned backlinks — through high-quality content, outreach
and influencer marketing — are still extremely effective. And look for
guest posting opportunities on reputable sites. We built our domain
authority on guest posts from great sites like Entrepreneur, Hubspot,
Forbes, and more. While both backlinks and guest posts will take some
manual outreach and tenacity, they’re huge for your brand recognition
and SEO.
Reporting and analytics tips — The numbers don’t lie so measure what’s working and what’s not and always continue to iterate.
#12. John Rampton— Calendar
It’s
critical to get into the minds of your target audience by understanding
search intent. By understanding why they searching and how they might
search with that intent in mind, it helps raise the results of your
keyword research and selection which will ultimately improve your seo
ranking. There are informational searches, navigational searches, and
purchase searches. Each can have their own keywords in mind while also
sharing other keywords. Do this right and you’ll get the type of traffic
that converts.
#13. Michael Brenner— Marketing Insider Group
The most effective SEO tips to drive traffic to any website is what I call the 3V approach: Volume, Value and Variety. Let’s
start with the non-negotiable: value. You simply cannot create crappy
content. But what determines whether something has “quality” or “value?”
For me the simple answer is that your content needs to answer a
question that your audience asks. If you can create a solid answer to
that question, then you can generate traffic to your site. But there are
some ground rules I like to follow: Title are important to gain
attention. Images help to support your written content. And longer
articles have a tendency to rank better. Second
is Volume: the fact is that frequency matters. That’s why committing to
a high-volume approach works. You cannot sacrifice quality but I
recommend every company commit to a frequency of updates on their
website. Daily, weekly or even posts published multiple times a day can
have a dramatic impact on your website traffic.
Finally,
you need to have a good variety of content types and formats. If you do
a Google search, you will see options for webpages, images, videos,
news, and more. So try and publish research, stats, news, videos,
infographics, lists, and more, alongside your written articles. If
this sounds like a lot of work, it is! But all good things come from
hard work. More importantly, all it takes is commitment. The websites
that have volume, value and variety rank for search terms and see higher
traffic (and conversions).
#14. aaron wall— SeoBook
At
the moment I would say whatever you do, do it under the narrative of
blockchain. It doesn’t need to be real for true believers to value it.
#15. Radomir Basta— Four Dots
There
are many things you can do out there to achieve this, but I’ll single
out a couple of foundational steps or seo tips to take, to start driving
more serious traffic from search engine queries.
First of all, make your website as technically polished as possible.
People
sometimes just optimize their website on the surface, but fail to dig
deeper and minify code, optimize the server, relocate javascript to the
footer, remove unnecessary tracking scripts nobody is using and so on. These
tweaks, when accumulated, will produce a markedly better user
experience in terms of page load speed, and this is a direct signal for
improved search engine rankings. After all, your final goal as a website
owner is to make users feel comfortable when browsing through your
pages, and so is Google’s. In
addition to this, I still can’t imagine a full SEO campaign without
deploying a proper link building strategy combined with PR/branding
efforts.
Publish
awesome and relevant resources on your websites, promote them both via
social media campaigns and manual outreach efforts, and it will work
wonders for both the page you are looking to optimize and the website
authority in general. Guest
posting is still the best seo solution for increased brand awareness
and well-targeted backlinks. Just focus on websites with a relevant
audience and you’ll be fine. Finally,
creating landing pages for all relevant topics with traffic potential
should improve the website’s keyword reach, and rank it for new and
potentially better converting keyword variations that vary across
markets, locations, language and cultural barriers, professional
occupancies or topical savviness.
#16. Donna Moritz — Socially Sorted
One
of the best things you can do for your blog SEO wise is to do a
site-wide audit, especially if you have been blogging for a while. For
me this has been so valuable in terms of transitioning my blog over from
being found by social to being found by search — which is better for
traffic growth in the long-run. Here are 6 steps or SEO tips you can
take (and the tools to help you) in order to get started with a site
audit.
#17. Shama Hyder — Zen Media
#18. Heidi Cohen— HeidiCohen
#19. Anna Lebedeva — SEMrush
#20. Jayson DeMers — AudienceBloom
#21. Kevan Lee— Buffer
#22. Myles Anderson — BrightLocal
#23. Cynthia Johnson — CynthiaLive.com
#25. Phil Rozek — Local Visibility System, LLC
Creating
more site traffic through SEO used to be all about Keywords, but now
there are many other SEO steps or tips that can be taken to increase the
overall audience.
Perhaps
the best and easiest place to start is with site content. A larger
volume of content increases the likelihood that the site will be the
best answer to a search query as a quality result. The large amount of
content provided also leads to more linkable content, which will, in
turn, increase the number of backlinks the site receives. This will also
help to boost SEO ranking.
Search
engines also return featured content at the top of a results list to
provide the best answer to a user’s search when they type in an actual
question. Increasing the site ranking to be included in this feature
content can provide another large boost to site traffic. Begin this
process by identifying what the main questions a user of your site would
be asking, as in “How do I….” or “Why does…”, and then tailor the
content to focus on quickly answering those questions.
While
keywords are not the only search tactic in today’s SEO game, they are
still very important. Use analytics and Google’s search console to
identify underperforming keywords. Not all keywords perform equally, and
while they may help your site show up in a search, the content on your
page may not be enough to support a high enough ranking in response to
that keyword. Identifying the keywords that are receiving a high number
of impressions but a low number of clicks can signal where attention
should be focused in increasing the content of your site.
Ultimately,
the key to getting the most out of search engines is by focusing on
delivering top quality content to the user. The search engine has the
role of delivering the best results to the user to answer their
question, and if your site is focused on providing those answers, you
will be able to drive more traffic to your website.
To
maximize website traffic, links and other measurable optimize content
for your 5 key audiences including their audience (prospects, customers,
fans, employees and social media followers), social media (including
amplification platforms for the short run), search (for core keywords),
influencers (including experts, frenemy influencers and
micro-influencers), and your business (email addresses, qualified leads
and sales).
SEO
is an ever-changing concept. So to talk about search engine
optimization, you really have to see what’s going on with Google and its
algorithms. If we used to talk about keywords, alt tags, URL structure
and link-building — I don’t want to be misleading, these things do still
matter, a lot — content is now gaining the utmost importance. Content
is king, we’ve all heard it. Yet, content used to be important because
it was the way to place the right keywords, to get backlinks and so on.
Yet, now when Google is all about search intent and bringing the most
relevant pages in front of the user, content becomes increasingly
crucial to gaining traffic. After
all, where does traffic come from? From users finding your content in
less time than your competitor’s content. And that’s when you have to
optimize for #1 or zero position. And you only get there if your content
meets user’s intent. That’s how it works. That’s really the end point
of all SEO tips, strategies and tactics.
So,
I’d say, instead of using tips and mere tactics to optimize for search
engines, try to really get into the user’s head. What does he mean by
typing in “fancy restaurant for Valentine’s Day.” And make sure your
content addresses his/her needs. People don’t need content for the sake
of content, or for keywords, or for backlinks, they need it for
answers — any search query is basically a question, even without the
question words, so your actual job is to answer that question.
So,
the best SEO tip is a basic content optimization to answer the
questions your users have, and for that, you really need to understand
your audience and anticipate any questions they need answers for. It’s
like a good old focus group technique used in traditional
marketing — before creating the end product, huge companies invest in
buyer perspectives and the needs they need to be covered.
Thus,
apart from mere keyword/backlink research and on-site optimization,
focus on finding the questions your potential users need answers for. At
SEMrush, we tried to embrace this trend by introducing quite a unique
feature for the SEO/content market — we developed a tool that actually
researches the most popular answers for the particular topic you are
writing a piece of content on.
I
wrote a huge post called “101 Ways to Improve Your Website’s SEO” which
has my full thoughts on this topic, but if I had to pick 3 of the most
effective tips, I’d say the following:
1.
Implement a link building campaign and stick with it. Links are the
most impactful component in the ranking algorithm that we have control
over, so leverage them!
2.
Focus on producing lots of quality content for your website. If you
want more organic search traffic, you need a reason for people to visit
your site, and that means giving free value (ie, great content). Try to
solve problems or answer questions that your audience has. If you’re
wondering whether your content is “good enough” then ask yourself: Would
you proudly recommend it to your best friend as a quality resource if
they came to you with a question?
3.
Ensure your content contains the keywords you want it to rank for. It’s
important to have the keywords in the title, first paragraph, body, and
last paragraph of your content, as well as the meta description. In
addition to containing the exact keyword you want to rank for, be sure
to include plenty of LSI keywords (related keywords) throughout the
content.
We
get about 80% of our traffic from search, and we rely on just a couple
of straightforward tools and strategies to do so. We have the Yoast SEO
WordPress plugin, which helps make sure that every post is well
optimized for search with headlines, content, descriptions, and more.
And
then we also use keywords as part of our blog post idea process, i.e.
what high-volume keywords have we not written about that might be a good
fit for our Buffer blog content? These two elements have been huge for
us. To get really granular, a couple of small tactics we’ve tried are
adding a date to a blog post title (e.g., Best Tools of 2018 vs. Best
Tools) and leading with the keyword in the headline (e.g. Facebook
Algorithm Tips vs. Tips About the Facebook Algorithm).
I’m
going to flip this question a little. We work a lot with SEOs and SMB
business owners of physical businesses. These businesses aren’t just
interested in web traffic; they want to generate phone calls (e.g.
plumbers, accountants) or footfall into their premises (e.g. retail).
So their online visibility drives offline conversions that have immense value to them.
Google
is moving to a model where they want to provide searches with all the
answers in Google and not push them out to 3rd party websites. Here are a
few examples —
1.
Answer boxes — get a snappy answer to any question right in the Google
SERP2. Knowledge panel — see business contact details, reviews &
driving directions in Google SERP3. Local Service Ads — get quotes from
verified local plumbers etc… that Google has vetted and approved4.
Google Posts — businesses publish updates, news & deals into
GoogleMyBusiness that searchers can read in Google And Google isn’t going to stop here. So
my tips to businesses that provide a physical service to their
customers is to think about how you can make use of all these new
opportunities that Google is giving you to get in front of customers and
impress them. Most of there are Free so why not?!
1.
Ensure that your GoogleMyBusiness profile is well optimised and that
you’re linking to the best page on your site that reinforces what you
offer & where you’re located.2. Write Google Posts (just 300 words)
to provide users more info about your services & any deals you
have3. Generate more reviews on your Google My Business profile (boosts
ranking & conversion). And reply to all your reviews too!4. Monitor
Google Q&A and answer any questions that are posted there.5. Get
yourself registered with Local Service Ads if you’re in an industry
& location where Google has rolled this out to.6. Find out what
questions people are asking about your type of service. Then create
detailed and unique content to answer these questions. This is helpful
to any visitors to your site and it gives you a chance to start
appearing Google Answer Boxes and ultimately boost your seo efforts.
Use
multimedia effectively. Video, images, and interactive content will
improve the user experience on your website and drive more traffic.
#24. Dave Schneider— Ninja Outreach Links
are still among the top ranking signals for Google, so, even though we
employ more than just one SEO technique to help us get more traffic,
link building is still our number one.
We have more than a few link building tactics or tips upon our sleeve, some of which we’ve written about already.
Our favorites tips are:
Competitor
link building — we prospect bloggers who’ve linked to any of our
competitors in their posts and we offer them our own content and a
request to include us in this post as an alternative or comparison. Dead
URL link building — we prospect bloggers who’ve included any dead URLs
in their posts. If whatever they’re linking to is relevant to our
business, or if we’ve written something similar, we send the bloggers a
heads up about said dead URL and offer our content as an alternative.
Expert
roundups — we build relationships with bloggers by participating in
roundups (such as this one) and asking them to participate in our own
roundups in return.
Podcast/interview
link building — much like expert roundups, participating in podcasts or
interviews earns us backlinks, so we accept invitations or prospect for
bloggers (in relevant niches, of course) looking for interviewees to
feature on their channels.
Resource
page link building — We prospect for bloggers who’ve created any
relevant, massive resource pages and ask to be included.
Guest
posting — we prospect for DA 30+ blogs in a niche or “shoulder niche”
relevant to ours. We reach out and, if the blog owner responds, we offer
our content (following their guidelines) and, if everything goes well,
we earn a backlink and exposure.
The
“create great content” and “earn great links” advice has been covered
enough for now, including by me. So my best piece of less-obvious SEO
advice is: either specialize in a narrow niche, or start offering a
really obscure service (or product or widget). The weirder and more
“niche,” the better.
If
you’re the only provider, or only local one, or the first one, you can
pick up some easy rankings, traffic that consists of people with a
specific and immediate need, and sometimes even a few easy links. Also,
some people will come for the weird little service and stay for the
more-mainstream service(s) you offer — for which your rankings and
visibility maybe aren’t so good. Go a little off the beaten path.
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