6 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Traffic To Your Website
As a Christian author, it is vital to understand how Search Engine Optimization SEO techniques drive traffic to your website? If you’ve been blogging for some time, you probably know what SEO is and how important it is to rank your website. Today, every business has gone online, and the competition to the top spot of the search engine results pages (SERPS) is becoming tougher.
Traffic and SEO can’t be discussed in isolation, which is why you need to understand both terms to succeed in your online book marketing business. Webmasters use different SEO and traffic techniques to rank and drive traffic to their websites. While some of these techniques are good, others are outside what Google loves and values.
The truth is traffic improves SEO and affects Google rankings, but understanding SEO and how to use it effectively in driving traffic to your website is far more critical for webmasters and bloggers.
What Is SEO?
SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. You will find many definitions online about SEO, but I would like to use this all-encompassing definition by Wikipedia. “Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.”
Going by the definition above, it’s clear that SEO is a process targeted at increasing website traffic from search engines. So, you understand it up to that stage, right?
Ok. Let’s move on.
How SEO Works
Search engines like Google are software systems designed to carry out web searches. They deliver relevant and high-quality information that matches what searchers are looking for. Search engines want to ensure high-quality services for their users. To achieve this, bots undergo search engine processes. They scan or crawl through websites to gain a better understanding of what each website is about. That way, when a web user types a particular keyword into the search bar, search engines return results based on the relevancy of the websites in their database. Relevancy is a way that Google search determines the best content to serve up to a web visitor.
What Is SEO Traffic?
SEO traffic refers to the number of customers visiting your website from either paid or organic search traffic. As mentioned earlier, website traffic improves a website’s SEO and Google rankings. So the more traffic you have, the more relevancy it gains from search engines.
Types of Website Traffic
Traffic refers to visitors to your website. In determining which traffic your site is getting, you need to consider the source of the traffic. By analyzing traffic this way, SEO traffic can be classified into the following:
Organic Traffic
Organic is otherwise known as natural search results. Ranking on the top spot of the natural search results is what SEO is all about. Organic traffic is the type of traffic that results from a web user clicking on one of the links on the search engine results page. To get organic traffic or improve your current traffic, you need to implement SEO techniques.
Direct Traffic
Directs traffic occurs when any of these actions take place:
- When a visitor enters your author website URL directly into their browser search bar.
- When a visitor bookmarks your URL and comes to your site using the bookmark.
- Clicking on a link in an open email or in a no-indexed document (not all content is indexed by Google).
The best way to make sure people come to your site through this type of source is by using a clean, short, and easy-to-remember URL.
Referral Traffic
This happens when a visitor lands on your website by clicking on a link from another website. Do you remember a time when you were reading a blog or forum and found a link that caught your attention, so you clicked on it to enter another website. When you land on a website via a link from another site, you have become referral traffic to that other site. You can increase your website’s referral traffic by using link-building techniques like guest blogging or submitting your site to directories.
Traffic Via Email Marketing
By leveraging an email marketing campaign, you can increase traffic to your site. Traffic generated through this source is what is known as email marketing traffic.
Traffic Via Social Networks
Social networks are another great source for traffic generation. This happens when a web user enters your site after clicking a link on a social media post. To generate this type of traffic, you need to have an active page on various social media networks, especially those on which your audience loves to hang out.
Paid Media
The paid media traffic is traffic sourced from the pay-per-click ad on a social media network. A typical example of this traffic source is Facebook Ads.
Why You Need Traffic Analysis?
Knowing the number of visitors your site is receiving is not enough for your marketing campaign strategy. You must also know where those visitors are coming from so you can segment your audience and understand what particular strategies are working to generate the traffic.
How Much Can SEO Techniques Increase Traffic?
Although traffic is very important in SEO, it’s not enough for increasing revenue if you’re not getting the right traffic. Since SEO helps your website become visible through organic searches, and since over 50 percent of web traffic comes from organic search results, you need to invest in SEO to increase your traffic generation.
If you’re wondering how SEO can get more traffic for your site, here is the answer.
Once properly implemented, SEO will help rank your site to the top spot (page 1) of search results where people searching for the service or product you offer can easily find you. No longer will your site be hiding on the tenth page of the peoples’ Google search. According to statistics given here about search engine optimization in general and organic traffic in particular, 53 percent of web traffic is trackable to organic search results. This, invariably, means the remaining 43 percent of web traffic is attributable to other sources, most of which are paid traffic.
So, you already know where the most traffic comes from, but how do you increase your organic traffic generation? The simple answer is by looking more closely at what search terms or keywords people are using to find your site. To do this, you need to invest in some paid tools like SERPS, Proranktracker, Monsterinsights, Search Console, SEMRush, etc.
Although these tools will help you track your keyword performance, you need to pay the most attention to attracting the right audience. There are many actions you can take to do this correctly. Below are some of the most essential ones:
- Carry out an extensive competitor analysis.
- Research both your current customer and customers in your industry.
- Design a dynamic user-friendly website.
- Adapt to changes in trends, especially trends in SEO.
- Network with other high-authority websites in your industry.
- Build content around your buyer’s journey.
Does Website Traffic Improve SEO?
In a simple explanation, SEO is basically about ranking. Many people think that traffic is primarily what they need to rank their website. This is far from the truth. Many ignorantly attribute your poor ranking performance to low traffic generation. If you asked me, “Does website traffic improve SEO?” my answer would be, “Traffic plays a key role in where your site appears in search results. The total amount of traffic your site receives or loses isn’t going to influence your search rankings.” If you’re wondering what factors influence your rankings, you need to look at this post by SEMRush. To give a peek into some of these ranking factors, here are 17 key factors to consider when trying to rank your website:
- Direct website visitors
- Time on site
- Pages per session
- Bounce rate
- Total referring domains
- Total backlinks
- Content length
- Website security (HTTPS)
- Total anchors
- Keyword in anchor
- Keyword in body
- Keyword density
- Keyword in title
- Keyword in meta
- Video on page
Although from the list above, traffic is one of the key ranking factors to consider, Google doesn’t place much significance on how much traffic your site is getting. Instead, Google is interested in how users find your site and what they do on it.
However, this isn’t in any way to disregard the relevance of direct website traffic in the ranking. In fact, direct website traffic remains an influential factor in ranking a site. As mentioned earlier, direct traffic is when a visitor comes to your site directly, not being referred. To Google, this is a big signal that the domain has super high quality and value.
All in all, website traffic does matter for ranking a website.
SEO Techniques That Increase Website Traffic
So far, we’ve covered what SEO is, what traffic means and their various types, how SEO works, among many other things. Let’s discuss the basic things that SEO needs to increase your website traffic.
Keywords
In the old days of website ranking, webmasters could rank a site by simply inserting different keywords in different places on web pages. It didn’t matter whether the search terms used were relevant or not to the website. Google quickly reversed the old process, refined their algorithms, and now values only websites with high-quality content. So as many web owners are adapting to this change, they’re trying to learn the proper way of optimizing their site with target keywords.
What’s a keyword in content? Keywords are those search terms or phrases that people use to find a website on the internet. Keywords tell Google a lot about your site. They help Google understand what your site and pages are all about and whether your website’s keywords are relevant to the keywords used by others when searching for information on the net. For example, the keywords for this website, ChristianPublishers.net, include self-publishing, how to self-publish, how to publish a book, Christian book(s), Christian authors, best selling Christian authors, book marketing, indie book, indie publishing, Christian publishers, Christian writers, indie author resources, small publisher resources, indie authors, and independent authors. Get the picture?
There are so many things to learn about using a keyword in the content, but the basic SEO practice is to include your keywords in your title, header tags, Meta description, and body copy.
Currently, optimizing for keywords can be very challenging and competitive. One way you can easily rank for your keyword is by focusing on long-tail keywords (keyword phrases). Keyword phrases are easier to rank than shorter keywords. For example, a site dealing in “yoga” may think the word “yoga” is enough to rank for this term. This may not cut it, especially if you consider the possibility of having hundreds of other sites about yoga.
Instead, you should try using long-tail keywords like “Yoga for ladies.” This makes it easy for your site to show up quickly in the search results when people use those search terms.
Again, if you consider the searchers’ intent, people searching “Yoga” aren’t specific about what they’re looking for and may not likely be in the buying stage. But people using “Yoga for ladies” are more likely to know what they are looking for and may be ready to buy your yoga products or guide.
So by focusing on long-tail keywords, you have a better prospect of ranking your site and attracting qualified visitors to your site.
Content
Content, they say, is king. Including keywords in your content isn’t only for you to rank your site; you need high-quality content to rank well. You may be thinking about how a search engine could know when a site has quality content, but the truth is search engines do have certain signals for determining whether a site has quality content. Some of the signals search engines use for determining whether a site is worth recommending to users includes content length, the freshness of the content, off-page signals, guest blogging, and internal linking.
Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Traffic to Your Site
Let’s talk specifics. You need to drive traffic to your site but don’t know how. Panic no more, as you’re not alone.
If you’re wondering why Google algorithms keep getting smarter, the answer is simple: The better and effective Google is at answering search queries within the SERPs, the more money it makes. Unfortunately, this poses more difficulties for us who rely on Google organic traffic as a major traffic generation source.
So, what is the solution for marketers? We work harder to create high-quality content, user-friendly websites, and web pages.
Now let’s look at how you can use SEO to drive traffic to your site.
Improve User Experience on Your Website With SEO Techniques
User experience is what Google is trying to achieve by ranking websites. They want to continue serving the users with high-quality information. So if any website is not user-friendly, such sites will find it difficult to rank in searches.
How would you feel if you land on a site and it takes minutes for the site to load? You will definitely bounce back to the SERPs, wouldn’t you? That is exactly why user experience is very important. So try and make sure your site is updated, professional, and loads as fast as possible.
Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
Today, the world has gone mobile. Both young and old see their phone as their best companion, which they can’t do without for a second. Below is what mobile marketing statistics look like:
- 52 percent of all website traffic is generated from mobile phones.
- 61 percent of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from mobile-friendly sites.
- When searching on mobile devices, 96 percent of people use Google.
- 52 percent of pay per clicks comes from mobile.
More importantly, with Google’s official announcement about starting the use of its mobile Smartphone user-agent for crawling sites, you should be ready to make sure your site is designed for mobile.
Focus on User Intent Instead of Keywords
Focusing on keyword-oriented content alone wouldn’t be enough. As you’re looking at keywords, don’t forget to consider the context around them. Doing this makes you appear as writing for human users and not for the Google bots. To create content that focuses on topic clusters instead of keywords, you need to design what is called users’ persona and organize your content into clusters. You have to know your audience so you can create content that best suits them.
Increase the Length of Your Content
Writing longer content tends to help website owners accumulate more backlinks, which helps you rank well and attract more traffic. However, writing longer content (2,000+, for example) might not be your butter and bread, and besides it can be very time-intensive and strenuous for most people. Let me make something clear here. You don’t have to always write longer content especially when you think fewer words can convey the message better. What you should always look at is user intent.
Without being told, you should know that certain topics are better explained using long and detailed content. While others can be described with few words and you’ll still be able to pass the information across to your readers more effectively. For example, what blog word count do you think you’ll need for a topic like “SEO techniques for bloggers,” shorter or longer? I think longer. But for people searching for a phrase like “SEO do’s and don’ts” might not be looking for a comprehensive guide. So before you decide whether you’ll write longer or shorter content, ask yourself what your user intent is likely to be.
Wrapping Up on How to Drive SEO Traffic to Your Website
So, there you have all there is to know about using SEO to drive traffic to your website. What you need to do is to keep this article handy as you’re most likely going to be coming back to review its content. Good luck!!!
About the Author
PJ Germain is a successful online marketer, webmaster, and SEO expert. He has helped many businesses create an online presence, drive traffic to their website, and get websites’ ranked on page 1 of search engine results. To contact PJ to help you improve your website’s Google rank, visit PureResiduals or Magnum Marketing.
