How to Get More Website Traffic: A three-point guide

Categorised: WordPress SEO guides
Posted by David Foreman. Last updated: February 14, 2023

Are you struggling to drive traffic to your website? Simply having a website is no longer enough. You need to invest in SEO.

You need to have a constant stream of visitors to your website to make it successful, and getting this can be tricky, so here are some actionable tips you can use to get started.

There are four main points to note here before we get started.

  1. Most website visitors come from clicks to the first three results in the search engines.
  2. The more competitive your sector or niche, the harder it will be to get into the top three.
  3. Your position is as much influenced by what your competitors are doing as it it by what you are doing.
  4. Past SEO performance is not a guarantee of future success.

Just to explain these in a little more detail.

Most of the clients come from the top three results.

The top result in the search engine gets around 30% of the clicks on the page, according to Backlinko.

They state that there’s not much difference between slots 8–10 so that even suggests that if you are not in position one or two, you’re in the bun fight for traffic with the other seven sites around you.

Note that SEO results are also in constant flux – positions may go up and down by a few places in any one week (usually daily).

The higher you rank, the more traffic you get.

If you are in a competitive niche, it’s going to be harder.

This doesn’t take much explaining, but if you’re a me-too business or compete solely on price (by being cheaper), getting more website visitors is going to be hard.

Your position in the search is affected by your competitors as much as your own SEO efforts.

If one of your competitors suddenly invests several thousand pounds in getting more website traffic, this could push you down the results.

Getting more web traffic is about consistency – there’s no set-and-forget here.

Past performance does not mean that it will always be that way.

Just because you used to get a lot of visitors to your website, it doesn’t mean that will always be the case.

For example, if you were to spend some budget on a cheap, spammy SEO service, this could get you penalised in the search.

If you stop producing content regularly, you call also see the number of visitors to your website reduce.

Here are some actionable tips to ensure you maximise the traffic to your site.

The list below is really a collection of the basics, but they are things that you can do yourself or get done quickly by an affordable SEO agency.

Optimize your website for search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Get started by doing keyword research to find the keywords and phrases that your target audience is looking for.

Use these keywords in your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and general text content to make it easier for search engines to understand the content of your website.

You also need to make sure that your website’s pages load quickly and that it is mobile-friendly (this is very important as Google indexes some sites mobile-first).

How will this get you more traffic?

  1. This alone will not get you more traffic, but it will make sure your site is correctly search engine optimised.
  2. Having a solid plan around the keywords and phrases you want to use will make it easier to write more content, and more content can mean better rankings
  3. A faster, mobile-friendly site signals that you have invested in your website and hosting and has made your site accessible – all positive points in the eyes of the search engines.

Create quality content.

This might sound easy, but it’s not.

Creating high-quality content is crucial in getting traffic to your website.

Your content must be informative, engaging, and absolutely relevant to the people you want to visit your site.

You will need to demonstrate that you have experience in what you are talking about and be able to bring something new to the party – it can’t just be generic crap.

You can use different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies and whitepapers to get more visitors to your website.

Make sure your content is optimized for search engines by using relevant keywords and providing internal and external links to trustworthy sources.

How will great quality content get you more visitors?

  1. Search engines what to put the best answers to search queries at the top of the search results. If your content is better than everything else out there, it will rank high and more visitors will click through to your website.
  2. Well-written and researched content will demonstrate that your site is a go-to resource for the topic, which again can result in higher rankings.
  3. More people are likely to share and link to quality content, so you also get the chance of good backlinks to your site and social shares.

Use social media.

Social media is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website, even if it is a little transient.

Identify your target audience’s social media platforms and create profiles on them; you want to be where they are, so if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn might be a better choice than TikTok.

Share your content on social media and then hope other people share it; this can drive more traffic, but people must want to share the content, so it needs to be good!

You can also use paid social media advertising to reach a wider audience that is more targeted, but again, you need to consider the traffic you want to your site; 1000 new visitors from the USA are no good if you only service the UK.

How can social media get you more visitors?

  1. Building a solid following of people that share your content can exponentially increase your reach to new potential visitors.
  2. Buying traffic via social advertising can also increase numbers, but they may be more targeted and likely to convert.

Use email marketing.

Email marketing can be another effective way to drive your website traffic, provided you’ve built a large opt-in list.

Building a list of subscribers is hard and takes time, and overflowing email inboxes quickly become something people get stressed about.

If your product or service genuinely warrants an email list that can deliver something of value other than just a discount code, it’s probably worth investing the time in.

Create a mailing list of subscribers interested in your products or services by adding a signup form on your website.

You can then send regular newsletters, updates, and promotions to keep them engaged with your brand. Ensure that your emails are well-designed, mobile-friendly, and have clear calls to action.

Will a mailing list get you more website traffic?

  1. Technically yes, but they will be people that have visited your site before, so they will need something new to consider.
  2. If you buy a mailing list, all you are going to do is piss people off, so not the right first touch with your brand; we advise against this.

Rinse and repeat.

The bottom line when it comes to getting more visitors and traffic to your website is that there has to be something on your website that they want.

If you have an existing website that’s dead in the water, you might only ever surface in the search results with a full site and audit to see what is going wrong.

You may have too much content, or too diverse a topic range; often a cull of content that has been written solely to try and rank can work wonders.

Consistent, quality articles around a singular or closely linked range of topics will get your site attract more visitors.

You have to remember that this takes time and costs money, so you will also need to make a call on whether SEO is right for your product or service.

 

 

David Foreman

David Foreman

Dave is an experienced WordPress developer and SEO expert. He's works on 100s of WordPress sites and has been developing and optimising websites for over 25 years.

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