Improving SEO and Traffic to my Site
Setting up a website is one of the most prudent things you can do in this digital era. However, launching a site is the easiest part; next comes the uphill task of ensuring that your site ranks high in the search engine and generates enough traffic. While there is plenty you can do to ensure that your site attracts plenty of visitors, most feel overwhelmed by the many available options.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has continued to be one of the most fantastic ways of generating traffic. However, owing to its complexity and constant evolution, it has become quite challenging to know which SEO techniques to follow and ignore. If you are looking for ways to improve SEO and traffic to your site, this piece highlights a few strategies that can get you there.
- Keyword Research
Keywords are the lifeblood of any solid SEO campaign. As a business owner, you need to conduct in-depth research to unearth common phrases that people are likely to use when searching for something online. Keywords form the foundation that helps your site rank higher in the SERPs. Therefore, after launching your site, the first thing you should do is to find keywords that relate to your brand or business.
Getting the right keywords ensures that when visitors go online searching for something similar to your site offers, your website will appear among the first results on the search engine results page. There are several programs out there that you can use to discover relevant keyword, their average search volume, and competitiveness. When doing your research, make sure you settle for those keywords with high business value.
- Check your Website’s Speed
Although it’s often sidelined, your site’s speed is an integral aspect of SEO. A few years ago, visitors would wait for a website to load even for ten minutes. However, in today’s fast-paced world, nobody likes slow websites. A slow loading site frustrates users and discourages them from returning.
Regardless of how furnished and crisp your site is, if it doesn’t load faster, nobody would want to stay and see what you have to offer. Therefore, to ensure that your site visitors relish a seamless experience on your website, you should check to see if any unrequired elements are slowing it down. For instance, you can start by getting rid of clutter on the sidebar, removing unnecessary images and plugins no longer in use.
- Mind the Quality of the Content You Share
if you want to establish authority while at the same time driving traffic to your website, post quality and exciting content. Most individuals go online looking for solutions to their problems. If you can create unique and engaging content that provides answers to your visitors' questions, you can make a difference and, in turn, generate traffic.
Remember to naturally add the relevant keywords in your content for SEO and also make sure that any information you provide is original. Search engines hate unoriginal content more than unresponsive and poorly loading websites. You can add some infographics and links to authoritative websites to make your content more engaging.
- Ensure That Your Site is Mobile Responsive
Since nearly half of the internet traffic comes from mobile phones, it is your prerogative to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site is not accessible via phones, you'll lose out on a considerable amount of traffic. Additionally, search engines prefer areas that easily transition from desktop to mobile.
- Make Use of Social Media
Once you've created a curated content catalog, you need to add share buttons to encourage users to share your blogs and articles. Additionally, make sure that a link to your website is available on all your social media networks, including Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, and Instagram. All these efforts are geared at popularizing your brand and website on the internet.
- On-Page SEO is Essential
Although most people forget about on-page SEO, it is one area that can help make your site more discoverable by search engines and visitors alike. It would help if you considered things such as:
- Title Tags – Optimizing the title tags is crucial as it improves your site's performance on the SERPs. Make sure that your title tags are descriptive, authentic, and relate to the keywords. Using the same title tags and keywords over and over is not recommended.
- Schema Markup – You need to use “extra labels” on your content to help the search engines understand what the information means. Schema markup also allows visitors to get only relevant information that is organized appealingly.
- Sitemap – Make sure that you create a site map for your website as it helps the search engines intelligently crawl your content. It also displays crucial metadata about changes in your site, such as page updates.
- Internal Links and Backlinks
Internal and external links are an essential part of SEO and contribute immensely to your website's ranking. Make it a habit to link your content to other authoritative sites on the internet, and allow other sites to mention you on their websites. However, remember that faulty or broken links can contribute to your site being poorly indexed.
Running a crawl regularly helps you discover any broken links so that you can fix them. You can also use intuitive tools like Google Analytics and ahrefs to track any mentions. Once you find out mentions that are yet to be linked, you can contact the websites to convert them into links.
- Measure and Track Metrics
Once you deploy your SEO strategies, you need to determine if they are working or not. You must have systems in place to help you measure and analyze the various metrics. This allows you to know the areas of your SEO campaign that need to be improved. If you optimize multiple elements on your site without checking whether they are yielding any results, you may end up missing on traffic, clicks, and sales. Make it a habit to measure and analyze SEO elements once they are deployed and tweak them accordingly to yield the desired results.
