Almost everyone wants to increase website traffic, unless your site is called Quicksprout or Zenhabits. You simply can't have enough traffic when you want to be successful with your business.
More traffic usually means more attention to your site and to your products and thus more revenue - though you'll want to have targeted traffic as well.
I published the first article on this blog at March 28th about my goals in internet business (actually it could be time for the first review). Since then this blog grew to 350-400 daily unique visitors, several #1 and #2 rankings in Google, and for July I'm approaching 12,000+ pageviews. Hooray!
When you take a look at my Google Analytics you'll see that I managed to constantly increase website traffic.
Optimizing your posts and pages for keywords isn't only important for niche sites! You can also increase website traffic on blogs, online shops, or personal websites with this technique. I'm getting at least 60% of my daily traffic from Google searches. That were 226 unique visitors on July 9th 2013!
This means that I'm doing a pretty good job on search engine optimization. I wrote an in-depth article on creating content for niche sites and as a blogger you can use those principles as well to increase website traffic.
Now it's time to share the methods and hacks that I've used to manage the search engine optimization for this blog, so that you can grow your blog as well!
Those techniques are only white-hat, which means that I'm using no stuff that betrays Google or could potentially damage the rankings of my site. This is very important, since this blog is part of my business and I need to make a living from it.
Let me share the process how I do keyword research:
Most times I already have an idea of the topic I want to write about. This functions like a seed keyword. I'm opening the free Google Keywords Tool and enter some possible names for my topic as seed keywords. Those will be the foundation for the next phases.
The filter I'm using for my blog keywords are at least 2,000 local searches in the US and a CPC > $2. Since I get most of my traffic from the US, it makes sense to focus on that country. Google will display different results for different countries, so you'll want to care about your country when you're using keywords to increase website traffic!
After I found keywords in the Google Keyword Tool I export them to a textfile and import them in Long Tail Pro. You can analyze the competition within the Google Keyword Tool as well and waive Long Tail Pro. Though this is a complex process with a high likelyhood to make wrong decisions - that's why I recommend using Long Tail Pro.
When I start the keyword research it's incredibly easy to decide on which keyword will help to increase website traffic. When you're using the Platinum Edition of Long Tail Pro (it's $19 per month) you can calculate the Keyword Competitiveness. The software aggregates all SEO relevant data of the top ten pages ranking for your keyword and comes up with one single number showing you, if you can outrank those sites easily.
I'm only targeting keywords with a keyword competitiveness less than 25 - 30.
The reason why I use both the Google Keyword Tool and Long Tail Pro is, that it's likely to happen that those two show different results for local search volume and CPC. If you want to increase website traffic with keywords, you need to make sure that you have enough monthly local searches. Don't rely on global searches, just focus on local searches for the country you're most popular in.
You're on safe when you first use the Google Keyword Tool, compare the local search volume to the results of Long Tail Pro for the same keyword, and then calculate the keyword competetiveness with Long Tail Pro.
Unfortunately I made some bad experiences with selected keywords, so please follow this process!
When I've selected a keyword that I want to target with a post, it's time to create the content and optimize it for the search engines. There are several criteria you need to fulfill to increase website traffic with On-Site SEO, but luckily there are WordPress plugins to help you with that 🙂
Basically there are two free SEO plugins for WordPress that are really high quality. It comes close to the discussion whether you like Apple or Microsoft when you take a look at the conversations. Their names are All in One SEO and WordPress SEO by YoaST. Both are awesome helpers to increase website traffic - my personal favourite is the YoaST plugin. You can read my tutorial on how to use it here.
To increase website traffic it is incredibly important to consider the On-Site SEO. The YoaST plugin guides you to the right keyword density, links, length of the posts, alt-tags for images, and lots of more stuff that Google loves.
Those are the most important factors: keyword density; mentioning the keyword in headlines, meta description, title, and URL; links; images; ease of read.
Besides optimizing your content for keywords you should speed up your website. Google likes fast websites, that's why I use the WordPress plugin Use Google Libraries on every site I own.
Another great way to boost the speed of your website is to use caching plugins. Again, there are two plugins sharing the market between themselves: WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. I'm using WP Super Cache, but I also have used W3 Total Cache before and was totally happy with it. Though you have to be careful with the minify settings, those can break badly coded themes!
You can also use Content Delivery Networks to increase website traffic, a good example for this is the LifestyleEntrepreneurBlog run by my friends Jesse Krieger and Navid Moazzez. Since their content is awesome they have to prepare for a TON of hits and with using a CDN they will be able to manage lots of visitors - I'm talking of 50 visit per minute and more, you can do the math what that means for daily visits!
You have to build relationships with other bloggers nowadays to increase website traffic. You can start by connecting to other bloggers in your market on social media and by commenting on their blog posts.
No, it's NOT about getting backlinks! Most of them are no-follow links anyway. It's about getting in touch with others.
When you regularly leave useful comments that enrich the discussion, you'll start getting feedback. Connecting with bloggers will create a multiplier effect for your content, since those bloggers will start sharing your content with their own network when it's useful.
And of course comments on other blogs increase website traffic by driving the readers of other those blogs to your site (I'm getting almost 50 daily visitors from Webmasternerd!) - though that's not the primary intention but rather a welcome side benefit!
You can also submit guest posts to other blogs. It's heavily discussed whether guest blogging is Google's next target or not. What I've experienced is that the success of guest blogging totally depends on the traffic from the other blog. I submitted one single guest post to Webmasternerd and I guess that this drives some traffic to my site (not only the comments), but I also submitted guest posts to other blogs and get 1 visitor per month from them.
Anyway, see guest blogging as way to build a strong relationship with the host of the other blog. It's a token of appreciation to the host and thus most likely increases sympathy on both sides.
That's it. Those are my hacks to increase website traffic on this blog.
I hope you've learned something new and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this post!
So go out and increase website traffic 😉
Jan
