Basic web marketing advice to increase website traffic

In its short thirty-year history, the internet has completely transformed the face of modern business and allowed firms big and small to compete on a level playing field. The web offers tremendous opportunities to companies, giving unrivaled market penetration and access to customers on a global scale.

However, in a world where there are now more web pages than there are people, finding ways to stand out online and capturing audience attention is harder than ever. Considerable evidence shows the majority of consumer journeys start with a search online, so just how can you get your website front and center and noticed by both potential and existing clients?

The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a highly detailed, involved, and complex process using various techniques to improve a website’s performance in the major search engines. In truth, if you’re to get the best from an SEO campaign, you would be well advised to employ the services of a professional web marketing/SEO firm that will look at every aspect of your online profile, including your site’s coding/loading times, sources of referral traffic, your site’s responsiveness, etc. In addition, there are a myriad of other considerations that can impact a site’s ranking online – aspects that simply don’t occur to the casual web user – so hiring a professional is most definitely the best route for success.

Also, it’s estimated Google now accounts for around 92% of all search-engine-generated traffic, so this is undoubtedly the platform you should target as a priority – although good SEO will have a positive effect on other search platforms too.

Tips to get higher on SERPs

Whether you decide to try and take a DIY approach to your SEO or opt to employ a professional (as recommended), there are some basic web marketing tips you should start following today to improve your site’s ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Following these practices will also help an SEO firm get you increased traffic and improve your general online profile.

Consider advertising online: Although many SEO experts have a somewhat derisory opinion of online advertising, viewing it as less worthy than other techniques, there’s no denying adverts can raise your company’s profile and can help drive traffic to your site. Nonetheless, considerable evidence shows users are 94% likely to follow search – rather than paid – links and view them as more impartial.

Craft a social strong social profile: Search engines aren’t the only option for attracting more footfall to your website and, these days, consumers also expect firms to have a strong social presence over all the major platforms. Featuring on old familiars like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube should definitely be a priority but, depending on the type of company you run, you should also consider some of the smaller players. For example, Pinterest is particularly good for companies that use photographs to promote their products and, with its high female user base, also works well for female-oriented products and services.

Spend time crafting compelling content: The saying, “Content is King,” might have been first used in an essay by Bill Gates over 25 years ago, but its sentiment remains as true today as ever. If you’re to have any hope of attracting visitors to your site, you need to first concentrate on offering users compelling, engaging, and interesting content – the kind of stuff they can’t get anywhere else. Also, as Google now employs advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its web-crawling algorithm, the company’s search bots can read and understand text much like a human, meaning it will rank better-crafted content higher. This powerful automated software even allows the search engine to assess your text’s grammatical accuracy, meaning it will penalize you and rank you lower for using bad grammar.

Optimize everything: When writing your content, be sure to drop in SEO keywords and phrases that you think your users might use to find you in search engines – and don’t forget long-tail keywords too. Also, bear in mind the importance of heading/subheading tags and internal/external links in your text. You should also add description and alt tags for all images, plus meta tags for your site pages. Incidentally, if any of this sounds confusing, that’s a pretty sure sign you don’t know so much about SEO and should look at hiring an expert. All these small things can go a very long way to improving your ranking and driving more traffic.

Write for other sites and blogs: One great way to indirectly and unobtrusively promote your skills (and those of your company) is to guest write for other blogs and websites. For example, many firms these days run a blog site alongside their main pages as a place to promote content that might not particularly fit on their more corporate, front-facing pages, and writing for one of these sites can help demonstrate your skills or knowledge – plus will give you a valuable inward link back to your site too.