It is easier than you think to start a website but not quite as easy as you imagine it will be to run a successful one. After all, a website is nothing but a series of online content and perhaps inventory you want to sell, right? Unfortunately, that’s not all there is to it. If you want to run a successful website, you need traffic. But how do you get people to your site? These four tips for boosting website traffic can help you keep a constant influx of traffic landing on your pages.
1. Understand the Importance of Traffic
The first tip – and perhaps the most important of all – is the fact that traffic makes or breaks your site. Without traffic, your website is like a tree falling in the forest making no sound unless someone is there to hear it. Whether you are selling products or running a monetized blog, you can’t hope to turn a profit unless there is the traffic you can convert. Also, traffic is part of the algorithm Google has established which ranks websites. Unless you rank highly on the first page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you’ll never be found. So, as you see, the first ‘tip’ is to understand how traffic drives your site towards success.
2. Utilize On-page SEO
Another huge part of Google’s algorithms is SEO. If you optimize each page for the search engines, you have a fairly good shot at ranking highly with Google and other search engines. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and by this point, you understand how important that is. The more points in your favor you rack up with Google, the higher they will rank your site, making it easier to be found.
3. Don’t Forget the Power of Mobile Access
Did you know that more people find new brands and products through mobile searches than through searches conducted from a PC? This statistic changed about two years ago, and mobile searches are so far outnumbering those from a home or office computer. If you want to boost traffic to your website, make it mobile-friendly with responsive web design. This works in two ways. Can you guess what they are? That’s right! If you enhance the UX (User Experience) with a responsive design that can be seen on a tiny screen, you will attract more visitors who stay once they arrive. The second bonus is that visitors boost your rank with Google, as mentioned. As a result, more and more people will find you. Isn’t it amazing how that works?
4. Remember – Content Is Still King
If you are running an e-commerce site, it pays to start a blog. There are two ways of going about this. You can either start a blog on your e-commerce site or you can start a separate blog that links back to your site. Either way, it’s that content that will ultimately drive visitors to your site. Make the content informative but always with the effective use of SEO keywords and phrases. Don’t forget that images need to be optimized for the search engines, as do product descriptions. Content is going to be one of your driving forces and so you need to internalize this fact. Content is still king and nothing ranks better or worse than content with Google. Well crafted and informative content earns you points. Poorly constructed content sans competitive SEO keywords can not only be ignored by the search engines but it could earn you penalties as well.
Understand that it is easy to start a website but it is not as easy to start a successful website. Keep these tips at the forefront of your mind and you will understand what it takes to drive traffic to your site. You’ve learned why you want to drive that traffic, now explore these tips to learn how to do it. It’s a winning formula every time.
Very informative and seems to be all easy things to look out for. Thanks!