How to increase website traffic:
8 most important steps you can implement
SEO Basics – A Guide For Beginners
8 steps to increase website traffic
Should you try to drive more traffic to your website alone, or do you need to hire help?
How long will it take to increase my website traffic?
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Whether you’re starting a new blog, promoting your business online, or just trying to get your website noticed, increasing website traffic is an essential goal. But how do you do it?
That’s where SEO comes in!
SEO Basics – A Guide For Beginners
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s the process of making your website more attractive to search engines like Google, so that when people search for keywords related to your website, your website will show up higher in the search results. That way, you’ll get more clicks, more visitors, and more traffic to your website.
There are certain things you can do to your website to help Google understand what kind of content you have and whether your site would be a good search result to give to users who are searching for something like “Homemade cookies online” or “home construction near Los Angeles” or whatever it is that you are doing.
Here are 8 steps you can take to help increase your SEO and drive traffic to your website
Research keywords
Before you start optimizing your website, you need to know what keywords you want to target. These are the words and phrases that people type into search engines when they’re looking for information. Use keyword research tools to find out which keywords are most relevant to your website, and then use those keywords in your website content, titles, descriptions, and other important elements.
Optimize your content
Make sure your website content is high-quality, useful, and relevant to your audience. Use your keywords in your content, but don’t overuse them. Google penalizes websites that use keywords too often (a practice known as “keyword stuffing”). Aim to write high-quality, valuable content that provides real value to your readers.
Improve your website’s load speed
People are impatient, and they don’t like waiting for slow websites to load. Make sure your website loads quickly by optimizing images, using a fast web hosting service, and compressing your website’s code. Use tools like GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to see how fast your website is, and what you can do to improve it.
Build quality backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. The more high-quality, relevant backlinks you have pointing to your website, the more authority your website has in the eyes of search engines. Reach out to other website owners in your niche, and ask them to link to your website. You can also contribute to other websites and include a link to your website in your author bio.
Use social media
Social media can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your website. Share your website’s content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Encourage your followers to share your content with their own followers, and you’ll get even more traffic to your website.
Create a sitemap and tell Google where to find it
Here’s a great article on how to create a sitemap and submit it to Google. You can do this by creating a sitemap.xml file and uploading it to your website root (public html or home) directory, or you can use a WordPress plugin to generate the file. Either way, you need to submit the location of the sitemap file to Google so Google can crawl your site
Make your website mobile-friendly
More and more people are using their mobile devices to access the internet. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices by using a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes. Use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how your website looks on different devices.
Track your results
Finally, make sure you’re tracking your website’s traffic and performance. Use tools like Google Analytics to see how many visitors your website is getting, where they’re coming from, and how they’re interacting with your website. This information will help you see what’s working, what’s not, and what you can do to improve your SEO and drive even more traffic to your website.
Should you try to drive more traffic to your website alone, or hire help?
Driving or increasing website traffic is a big job. No question about that. It can be a little confusing for sure. If you’re reading this article and it makes sense to you, and you’re comfortable doing things like building your website or you have any knowledge about web programming or development, you can do this on your own.
Research everything on Google and watch YouTube videos on how to drive more traffic.
If you decide to hire help on this, keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there who will promise you the world and all kinds of traffic improvements – but in reality, very few people are really good at this so be cautious and check to make sure the people you’re hiring really have the website traffic driving skills they say they have.
How long will it take to increase my website traffic?
We recommend using Google Search Console to manage your since SEO because it allows you to give Google direct instructions from you about whether your site should be re-crawled or any other important instructions such as changing of an article URL or posting a new site map etc.
Because it takes Google some time to decide if they’ll favor your pages or site or not, you should see the web traffic building project as something that will take 3-12 months usually.