With so many options for driving traffic to your website, how do you know what works and what doesn’t? To help you find the tactics that work for you; we have compiled a list of 18 proven steps to help you boost your traffic, improve lead generation, and grow your revenue. And what business doesn’t want to grow?
Before we get started, let’s look at what SEO is. SEO is the way you optimize the content on your website to help your site show up in searches and create a better user experience. SEO practices that worked a few years ago are obsolete today. So, are you ready to make your site SEO friendly?
1) User Experience (UX)
User experience is the new buzzword and search engines like Google rank sites based on user experience signals. Google RankBrain is a part of the Google Hummingbird algorithm that uses machine learning to determine the type of content that best serves the users’ needs in a search. Google uses RankBrain to help build your sites brand reputation as a trusted resource for search engines. The best way to optimize for RankBrain is to focus on the user experience. Keep your content fresh, try to avoid patterns (Google can pick up on them), avoid keyword stuffing, and keep your engaging (the more engaging, the better), and use medium tail keywords to help search engines rank you for those terms.
2) Rethink Your Posts that Don’t Quite Make a High Ranking
Sometimes our posts are not as engaging as we would like them to be, and their rankings are lower than expected. Take the time to rework them by using more. More information, images, statistics, details, quotes, anything that makes it stand out (and longer). Focus on key phrase usage that is natural and be sure to answer questions that people may ask. By doing this regularly, you can help improve the traffic to your site.
3) Video Is Key
If you haven’t started using video on your site yet, you are missing out. High-quality videos that have meaningful content help improve user engagement. If you have videos on your website, consider updating the titles, quality, and content to improve their search ability.
4) Rethink Your Posts that Don’t Quite Make a High Ranking
Sometimes our posts are not as engaging as we would like them to be, and their rankings are lower than expected. Take the time to rework them by using more. More information, images, statistics, details, quotes, anything that makes it stand out (and longer). Focus on key phrase usage that is natural and be sure to answer questions that people may ask. By doing this regularly, you can help improve the traffic to your site.
5) Say it in a Snippet
Featured snippets are a simple way to help your site rank higher in search results. Use them with videos, images, or tables. Paragraph formats or list formats have different search results, so be sure you know which one you are trying to rank for, use clear language to help improve search ability, and have strong headers.
6) Always be Evergreen
Evergreen content is content that is always relevant. That means keeping your data or material up to date. Keep your content fresh by updating if necessary, use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords find relevant information and research, use long-form content (about 2,000 words) and use visuals that represent your topic.
7) Voice Search is Growing
Optimizing your site for voice search really is a thing. Use keywords that help search engines focus on your location. Most voice searches are local and can provide you with a targeted audience.
8) Focus on User Engagement
User engagement can make or break a site. Make your content easy to read, offer relevant links that can provide additional information or answer a user’s questions, use LSI keywords (keywords or terms search engines use to understand the content on a web page), and offer different mediums to help users understand your content.
9) Is your site Mobile Friendly?
If not, it needs to be now. Google has begun to focus its rankings on how mobile a site is. Most users are searching on their smartphones or tablets, and if a site isn’t mobile-friendly, it will be ignored.
10) Headlines That Grab a User’s Attention
Use headlines that evoke emotion and can grab a user’s attention.
11) Your Meta Description Does Make a Difference
If you haven’t updated your meta descriptions in a while, do so today! Make sure the content in your meta description is relevant to the information on your page and isn’t just stuffed with keywords.
12) Hook them above-the-fold!
Above-the-fold exists. Use images, content, and video above the fold help capture your users’ attention, creating a better user experience.
13) The 404
A customized 404 page helps users find what they are looking for on your site.
14) Linking Internally to Guide Users
Use internal site links to help guide users to other pages or information on your website. Building your engagement and reducing your bounce rate.
15) Schema Markup What?!
Structured data (schema markup) helps to classify the content on your page and helps search engines like Google, understand what your page is about. Schema is based on semantic vocabulary (according to Moz.com https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data) of tags that can be added to your HTML to help improve the way search engines interpret your page.
16) Have an XML sitemap
Search engines “crawl” your page and without a sitemap, they may miss important features that can help rank your site. An XML sitemap lists the URLs for your site and helps search engines know which pages are available for crawling and provides additional information about each URL.
17) Track your site
Google Analytics can help you see where users are dropping off of your page. Knowing where users drop off can help you improve the user experience in those areas of your site.
18) Inspire trust
SSL certificates and HTTPS headers help show that your site is a safe site to visit and builds trust with your users.
Remember, SEO isn’t what it used to be. Optimizing your site for a better UX and better engagement can help you boost your site traffic.