Not getting enough website traffic?
If that’s the case, it’s time to double down on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your marketing and sales strategy.
It’s all about earning the highest ranking on Google as possible, which is a goal for most businesses. Who doesn’t want to the #1 result on Google for search terms that are relevant to your business, products, or services? Investing time and money in SEO focusing on improving your ranking factors will help you pop up earlier in Google results and trounce your competition.
But first, you need to make sure you get a proper and thorough website audit done. This will help you understand what you need to change on your website to get better SEO.
Improve your keywords
You need to have a keyword-rich website – it’s as simple as that. While you may write the most relevant, informative information on your website, if you are not packing your content with keywords, you are missing the boat.
Keywords can be confusing if you are coming up with them for the first time. Here’s a quick shortcut: Think about the words your target audience would type into Google or another search engine to find a company like yours. Those are keywords you NEED to focus on. For example, if you own a bakery in New York City, your potential customer may type into Google “Bakery near me” or “Manhattan bakery”. It is important that you use the correct keywords on your web page so that your potential customers are able to easily find you in a sea of other similar businesses through relevant results.
In addition, you need to have strong meta tags and meta descriptions along with strong title tags. This will also help your website to be seen as credible by the search engines, which will positively impact your rank.
To get a better idea about which keywords your competitors are using and which ones you should use on your website, try popular keyword research tools such as SEM Rush. With a tool like this, you are also able to see your overall SEO performance and receive suggestions on what you can do to improve your SEO. Also, these tools offer lots of educational opportunities and robust Help sections to fuel your knowledge.
|Get More SEO Tips and Strategies by Subscribing to Our Newsletter|
Watch your website speed
NO ONE wants to wait forever for a website to load. If your site isn’t loaded within 5 seconds, people will go to your competitor and never think twice about your company. And a high bounce rate = a lower ranking on Google.
That is why it is crucial that you have a low bounce rate on each page of your website. So, how do you know if you even have a high bounce rate in the first place? Check your analytics.
If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can easily see what your overall bounce rate is, and (even more importantly) your bounce rate for each page. So, if you have a conversion piece and you’re paying for people to get to that page, but your bounce rate is too high – you’re going to want to work on bringing that bounce rate down.
On Google Analytics, you can also see the average amount of time visitors spent on each page. If visitors are spending little to no time on each page and your bounce rate is through the roof, it’s time to think of some new tactics.
First, you will want to make sure that your website loads properly on both desktop and mobile. If not, this needs to be fixed immediately. When all of the pages on your website are able to load in a reasonable amount of time, the focus should then be on keeping your customers there. Remember, just because they visit doesn’t mean they’ll stay.
Want to reduce that bounce rate? Keep visitors engaged! To do this, include incentives such as popups that offer a free download. You might also want to utilize a chat feature so that visitors can immediately be greeted upon their entrance to your website. Here on our website, we’ve included a social proof pop-up at the bottom of our page that constantly cycles through our reviews. It’s just another way to keep website visitors engaged, even if it’s only for a few more seconds.
Make sure your site is easy to navigate
Is your “contact us” form on a random page of your website? Are your menu options unclear? These elements of your website need to be easy to find and easy to use. Without it, you risk visitors bouncing or moving on to your competitor’s website.
Go through each page on your site to make sure that everything is in the right place. Start by looking at your homepage. Is the font too small? Are there so many pop ups that it becomes distracting? Make sure that your homepage is as neat as possible.
When it comes to your menu options, make sure that these work and are linked to the correct pages on your website. If visitors can make purchases on your website, you will want to also make sure that the checkout process has no hiccups. These are just some of the ways website visitors can have the best user experience.
Include backlinks
You’re able to receive a stamp of credibility when your website is linked on other sites. For example, if a blog post shares a link back to your website, it is not only benefiting you by increasing the number of people who will visit your site, but it is also helping with your Google ranking.
It is also important to build links on your own website. For example, if you have a blog on your website, link to other high-quality articles that are already considered to be credible. Link building allows you to show that you have important information to share on your website as well.
Why all this stuff matters
Have you every really thought about what it means to be at the top of the search engines for your most effective keywords?
Obviously, it means you’re going to get a lot more traffic than you would otherwise, but it goes a lot deeper than that.
When customers see your website listed at the top of any given search, they will immediate assign some kind of authority to your brand. It’s only natural. Without even realizing it, their brains are saying: if Google believes this website should be at the top, then they’re obviously doing something right.
It’s also important to remember that SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve already talked about your competition several times in this post, but it deserves to spelled out clearly once again:
If you’re not doing SEO, your competition is.
And they’re going to be happy that you’ve decided to skip all that keyword research, link building, and other important optimization strategies.
The Go! Agency’s team of sales and marketing professionals is skilled at crafting integrated marketing campaigns that combine the strengths of SEO, social media, email marketing, and other forms of online ads. If you’re ready to generate real results, sign up for our newsletter or reach out to The Go! Agency today.
Editor’s Note: This blog has been updated and republished to reflect current information. The article was cleaned up, recommendations were reassessed, and references refreshed.
