Source: Unsplash/Windows.
Growing website traffic can often seem like a chore.
Where do you start? Is it going to be expensive? What exactly are you meant to do? And with so much competition out there, often business owners turn straight to paid advertisements just to get ahead of the game.
But did you know there are some really easy and beneficial ways to grow your website traffic organically?
Understanding how these elements impact traffic, will not only benefit your website’s visibility, but also its long-term health and vitality.
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So, let’s dive straight into a few ways you can organically, and without cost, increase your website traffic.
1. Refurbishing old content
Maintaining an active blog is a crucial element to your online presence and driving people to your website, but did you know that refurbishing your old blog posts can boost traffic by over 111%?
Just because you’ve already written about a topic, doesn’t mean you can’t rebrand it.
Whether they’re searching up how to make a good website, why logos are important, or even how to maintain healthy skin, consumers are always going to be interested in particular elements of an industry, and actively searching for the answers to their questions.
The world is constantly changing. Something you may have written in a blog two years ago, will not necessarily be the same in today’s society.
Not only will refurbishing content help with website traffic, but will further ensure that you are keeping up-to-date and providing important information for your consumers.
2. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is your best friend when it comes to website traffic, so it’s important to make sure you’re optimising it as much as possible.
For instance, are you using meta descriptions, or creating internal links? Are you coming up with killer headlines for your blogs, or using keywords with good search potential?
With over 50% of web traffic driven by organic search results, making sure that you are optimising your website’s SEO will go a long way to ensuring more people are viewing and engaging with your pages.
3. Get social
With over a billion users on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, social media can be one of the most successful and powerful avenues through which to gain traffic.
However, it can be a hard one to get right.
Each platform is different. Each has its own demographics, caters more to particular content, and has specific motivations and goals when it comes to business.
So, it’s important to know where your audience interacts most, and what sort of content they enjoy seeing.
Remember that social media often is most effective when utilised over a combination of platforms, but make sure you’re using the ones that benefit your business most.
The last thing you want to do is waste time and energy.
4. Website speed
Website speed is so important to the health of your website, but it is also a huge indicator of a viewer’s engagement and further relationship with your brand.
Everyone is constantly on the move and doesn’t have the time to deal with slow loading pages.
In fact, 47% of users expect a website to load in two seconds, while 39% of people will stop engaging if images won’t load or take too long.
Not only this, but Google is also more likely to rank your website higher depending on its speed.
You can ensure your website is efficient by down-sizing images, removing broken links, or upgrading your hosting.
Such little things can have a huge impact on bounce rates and how people interact with your website.
5. Guest posts
Writing blogs for other sites is a great way to increase your brand’s professional reputation within an industry, while increasing the number of people attracted to your website.
More often than not, publications will allow you to backlink to your own website where relevant, driving brand awareness, and in short, impacting Google rankings.
If Google can see other trusted sites pointing to your own, it will pick up on backlinks and increase the credibility of your website.
You may even like to go the other way and seek out a guest blogger for your website.
A fresh set of eyes can be incredibly beneficial every now and then, as they are able to create content you’d never thought possible.
Ultimately, this can add variety, up your rankings on Google, and overall, increase engagement.
6. Mobile responsiveness
With mobile usage accounting for at least half of all website traffic, it becomes clear how important it is for websites to be more accessible and user-friendly on a range of devices.
Mobile responsiveness can decrease bounce rates, enhance website speed, account for higher conversions, and ultimately impact SEO and Google rankings greatly.
In 2015, Google announced that it would increase ranking signals related to how responsive a website was.
As such, ensuring your website is mobile responsive will help to increase visibility, draw more traffic, and maintain it.
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