We have been talking, or shall I say, I have been writing a lot about SEO, content marketing and improving search results.
But what I have really been focusing on, as all of us are, is increasing website traffic. So let’s circle back, regroup the past few week’s posts and summarize.
Increasing Website Traffic
The goal is to (a) increase website traffic and (b) convert some percentage of traffic to sales. So how do we accomplish step a?
There are a few steps. And each should be somewhat done in the order in which they are shown below.
Help Google
Google is pretty smart. Well the engineers, programmers are smart. Which means Google by default is smart. But they still need help. With nearly one billion websites to analyze, their task is not easy.
So one way we can help Google is to first and foremost make sure our site is safe. That we have no malware or other security related issues or threats. For more please read What Is Malware.
Next, we need to ensure that our site can be “crawled” by a “bot” in order to “index” our site. For more on the language of SEO, please read Search Terminology.
Once the above are done, we can add some cool features like rich snippets, aka structured data to better present our results in search. For more, please read Rich Snippets.
Content
Google is the equivalent of match.com. They are in the business of matching two parties who share a common interest. In the case of search, it may be a unique art dealer in Boise with an art collector in Baltimore.
Google stakes their reputation, and thus their business on providing quality matches. Failure in that department means people move to Bing or Yahoo and away from Google.
So make sure you content is good. That your content is informative and helps the user learn, discover and gain knowledge. For more, please read Content Marketing, Great Website Content and Website Content.
And as I just did above, use a lot of internal links to past articles, anticipating your audience’s next question and provide as many resources as relevant. Sorry for the self-promotion. For more please read, Learning From Wikipedia.
Make It Enjoyable
Content alone is not sufficient though. Word count or blog frequency is not directly correlated to increasing website traffic. Your content must be truly engaging as should be the experience you create for your visitors.
Video and audio are great formats along with photography versus stand alone text. Run on sentences, insanely long paragraphs make reading difficult, not fun.
Write as if you are speaking to your users on an intimate level. Help them navigate content and other resources with simple to use navigation bars, links and other tools.
Give
Don’t focus on the quick sale. We are all smart. We know when we are being given the hard sell. Which makes us feel as if the sales person only cares about our money, not us. Which is likely why most of us despise car shopping.
Build relationships. Make deposits in the emotional bank account by giving of yourself and your knowledge. For more, please read Automated Relationship Building.
Once again, we are smart. We appreciate and value when someone cares about us first. That they take the time to ensure we are happy and our needs have been met.
How To Increase Traffic
Simple. Use common sense. Though we are an ever growing digital world today, the basics still apply. Treat people with respect. Offer them services beyond their wildest dreams.
Focus on the relationship today. And if you do, the sale will come tomorrow.