How To Increase Traffic To Your Website With SEO

With the Coronavirus pandemic affecting every business across the globe, we are starting to see many businesses transition into digital as well as invest a lot of time and money into their digital strategy. In other words, a website has become the new brick and motor store, especially since everyone is required to quarantine at home and practice social distancing for the unforeseeable future due to COVID-19. So, it's extremely important for businesses to create a website in order to maintain a digital presence, and for those that already have a website, it's important to optimize your digital marketing strategies in order to increase your overall traffic to your website which could lead to more customers or subscribers, and in return, become additional revenue for your business in order to stay afloat during this uncertain time.

When it comes to using digital marketing in order to increase your traffic online, there are two ways to go about this - Paid Online Advertising Campaigns (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc) and Search Engine Optimization or SEO. If unfamiliar, search engine optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages and it's content to be easily discoverable by users or potential customers searching for terms related to your website, and when done correctly, search engines are able to find, scan and index your site more easily. When you're able to utilize both strategies effectively (Paid Ads and Organic SEO), there's really no limit to your growth online and it can make all the difference when it comes to scaling your website and business to the next level. However, if you're just starting off and had to choose between the two, I would suggest planning and executing effective SEO campaigns in order to create a good foundation and digital footprint for your website which will help increase the quantity and quality of traffic going to your website through organic search results (especially if you have no experience managing paid ad campaigns as you could waste money really fast with poor results). Not to mention, there are billions of searches being conducted online every day which means a ton of specific, high-intent traffic. And the best part about SEO is that it's "free" and extremely effective when executed properly, but keep in mind, this is a long-term game. Furthermore, there are a lot of free and effective marketing tools online that will help make sure you're optimizing your website's SEO correctly and efficiently which will help maximize traffic to your website as well as create brand awareness for your business. I'll dive more into paid advertising, SEO and other digital marketing strategies in future blog posts, but for now, here are four straregies to increase your organic traffic online:

Post Unique and Engaging Content On Your Website:

Create content that will naturally attract your visitors to your website by providing high-quality, relevant content. This has been one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website for a long time and one of the most commonly used SEO strategies (which is one of the reasons why I have a blog page on this website). Also, if your website business monetizes based off the number of subscribers and/or total number of website visitors (e.g. affiliate marketing), this is another great reason to post fresh and high quality content in order to increase your organic traffic such as having a blog page. A good general rule of thumb is to make sure your content is unique to who you are as well as provides value to your audience. Here are some common ways to post content:

• Blog Posts
• Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Google My Business Page
• Video (e.g. YouTube)

Keyword Research and Planning:

When it comes to search engine optimization, it's important to understand what you're actually optimizing for. This mean identifying specific keywords people are searching for that you want your website to rank for in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. A few key factors to take into account when determining keywords you want to target on your site include: Search Volume, Relevance and Competition. And once you understand your prospective customers and audience, what they're searching for, their interests, their problems as well as other competitors sites they're visiting - this will help you build an initial seed list of possible keywords which you can use throughout your website, and in return, can help increase more quality traffic to your website, optimize your ranking in the search engine results page as well as help with your overall SEO. Also, there are tons of great SEO and Keyword Tools available such as Google's Keyword Planner, and if you already have a website, Google Search Console, just to name a few.

On-Page Optimization for SEO:

As you try to figure out how to drive traffic to your website from search engines, here are some basic on-page elements you'll want to understand:

• Page Title (or Title Tag) - this is one of the most important areas you can place your keywords and plays a big factor for an optimized SEO page. This is a short description of a webpage and appears at the top of a browser window and in the search engine results page (SERP).
• Meta Description - this can usually be found under the page title and briefly summarizes the contents of your page. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others often show the meta descriptions in the search results which can play a big factor in your click through rates.
• Backlinks - this is essentially when one website links to another website and is important for SEO. Backlinks play a vital role when it comes to SEO because it signals to the search engines that other websites approve your content and vice versa - the more backlinks you have the better.

Technical SEO, User Experience (UX) and Mobile SEO:

The following three factors also play a big role when it comes to optimizing your website for SEO, and as a result, help increase traffic to your website:

• Technical SEO - this is simply talking about improving the technical aspects of a website in order to improve the ranking of it's pages on search engines. This includes things like making sure website speed and page speed is fast which makes it easier for search engines to crawl.
• User Experience or UX - this is also very important when it comes to SEO. You need to make sure your audience is having the best experience possible overall, from their initial interaction with you from the search engine results page, to their experience on your website and/or landing page, and even after they leave your site (e.g. email marketing campaigns, remarketing campaigns, etc)
• Mobile SEO - this is pretty self explanatory since the majority of your audience are using mobile phones and tablets today so it's essential that your website is mobile-friendly and tablet-friendly - from speed to the overall user experience. 

These are just a few of many different ways to help increase traffic to your website using various SEO strategies, and by taking action and executing properly, you will start seeing great results and growth online and to your website. Lastly, make sure you are researching and taking advantage of all the free marketing tools online as it will help you save tons of time, and most importantly, work smarter and not harder. Good luck!

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."