5 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website

Traffic to your website is the most important start for any business that operates online. Ultimately, of course, your goal is to generate more traffic, reach your target audience faster and more often, and then grow your sales. Without traffic to your website, you are almost certain that your website will eventually become irrelevant. Fortunately, we have discovered 5 relatively easy ways to make your website more visible so that your company gets more traffic.

Then it is of course important that the traffic will convert but without traffic no conversions. 😉

1. Improve the user experience

We’ve all heard this phrase as an entrepreneur: “the customer is always right.” The same goes for today’s online businesses. What matters is that potential customers visiting your website have a good experience. Here are some tips to improve the user experience on your website.

Don’t ignore the bounce rate

The bounce rate is the number of times users land on a page and leaves the page without taking any other action. While your Google SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) rankings aren’t just based on bounce rates, a page’s bounce rate is an important factor to consider when assessing the usability of your website. Bounce rates can help rank in Google because it directly relates to the user experience (UX) within your website.

In addition, Google sees a low bounce rate as a good signal that a page is valuable to its users. If users stay on a page and interact with the site, it is assumed that they have found the right product, service, or information that they wanted from the site. In return, Google will reward your website by ranking it higher in the results. Of course, there are many more factors that play a role in your ranking. 😉

Most landing pages are designed to trigger an action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a free whitepaper, or filling out a contact form for a free quote. If you don’t get the expected action, you’ll want to dig deeper to find out why users are dropping out.

High bounce rates may seem like something you want to avoid at all costs, but there are times when a high bounce rate can be “good”. If you designed the landing page to inform the user, a high bounce rate is expected. At that moment, the visitor does not have to perform any additional actions. When a visitor lands on your page and leaves after about a minute, you assume that the user has received the information he or she wanted and left the page satisfied. One way to confirm if they’ve had a good experience on your website is to ask them to rate their experience on your site through a pop-up notification.

Write easy-to-read content

Marketing research indicates that we only have (about) 15 seconds to grab a reader’s attention before that person decides to bounce.

One way to keep someone on your website for longer than 15 seconds is to create content that is easy to read. Smoothly written texts that tell a fascinating story and are also well presented in a way that is visually appealing are simply much more fun for your visitors.

Observe how users use your website

Solving problems around the user experience (UX) takes time and attention to detail. Fortunately, there are plenty of (free) tools available these days that take the guesswork out and give you results that you can directly translate into actions. Implementing improvements is suddenly a lot easier.

Here are some of the SCOPEWEB UX team’s favorite tools for finding out how visitors interact with our website:

• Hotjar – Hotjar allows you to record videos of users using your site to get a better understanding of how they interact with it. In addition, you get access to a Heatmap with which you can see where users click most often.
• Google Optimize – Google Optimize has A/B testing and personalization features that can help you find ways to better engage users. Another advantage of Google Optimize is that it works hand-in-hand with Google Analytics and Google Ads.
• Optimizely – Optimizely allows you to test changes on a web page to see how users react to the smallest changes.

2. Tackle common SEO technical issues

Websites that are secure, responsive, and mobile-friendly generate more traffic than websites that aren’t. Today’s websites are constantly faced with cybersecurity threats from hackers, malware, and viruses. Your site needs at least an SSL certificate (HTTPS). HTTPS is the secure version of the standard hypertext transfer protocol used by all web pages. In 2014, Google made HTTPS a ranking factor, making sites that use HTTPS rank higher than sites that don’t.

We’ve all experienced the disappointment of clicking on a site only to get a ‘page not found’ or ‘404’ error. If visitors can’t find the information they want on a specific page of your website, they often stop visiting your site altogether. With these broken pages, you could be missing out on thousands of visitors every month. One solution is to redirect these pages to new pages similar to the missing page. This can be done by having your hosting provider implement 301 Redirects to redirect these links. This way you don’t let your visitors leave the website empty-handed.

3. Become the king of content marketing

Having a content marketing strategy ensures that visitors come back again and again for new content, such as blogs or videos. We recommend starting with a publishing schedule. This will help you plan your future content requirements and keep you on track. It also raises expectations for your visitors. If your blog is well-written and relevant, visitors will plan to view your content as soon as it’s published. They are also more likely to notify friends about your site and share the content on their social media platforms. This is good for backlinks again!

The type of content you publish should meet the needs of your target audience and grab the attention of search engines. Here are some formats you can use:

Long content

Long content is the best type of content to convert readers into customers. Generating lengthy content allows you to thoroughly answer questions that aren’t covered in depth by the competition. It has also been shown that the longer the content, the more successful you are on Google (in general).

List posts

If you only need content to attract new casual visitors to your website, list posts that work best. They have been proven to attract readers who like to read the headlines for quick information. Sites like Buzzfeed have popularized this type of content over the years with their catchy headlines and easy-to-follow messages.

4. Write and publish guest blogs

Another great way to get more traffic to your website is to write blog posts for someone else’s blog. Bloggers are always looking for fresh, well-written content (and for them, getting that content without spending any money is a plus). In exchange for the free content, you can usually insert a link in the post that points back to your website. A nice bonus for that free backlink. 😎

Maybe you’ve read this before but are you wondering how to find a blog where you can post a guest blog? So I’m going to explain that to you right away.

Here are the steps you need to take to make your first guest post:

Step 1: Find relevant guest post opportunities on existing blogs
Search Google for people talking about your product or services. A quick way to do this is to search for your product/service + “guest blog”. It does not have to be your exact product, it can also be the category in which your products or services fall. For example;

Step 2: Write your blog
After you identify a guest blogging opportunity, write a post that is relevant to your product or service and that will add value to that blog’s audience. Keep our tips above in mind. Be sure to read the blogger’s requirements. Most guest posts should be informative and contain a minimum of 500 words. Also, don’t forget to link to your own website in the message. You can link to your homepage or any other page you may want to direct traffic to.

Step 3: Get started, get in touch!
The last, but equally important step is to actually reach your target. Most sites have a special contact form to accept messages from guests. However, if you can’t find the blogger’s contact information, we highly recommend using Hunter.io to track down their email address. Then create a catchy headline and pitch. Check out HubSpot’s list of email outreach templates for some inspiration. Send your “pitch” and make sure to contact us within five to seven days if you don’t hear anything.

5. Researching keywords

Improving your website’s SEO should be a goal for every business. Let’s say you have a great piece of content, but it’s not generating any traffic. It’s likely you’re just not using the right keywords. By using a keyword research tool, you can discover the keywords and phrases that people are searching for. Here are some of our favorite keyword research tools:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
• SEMrush
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• UberSuggest

Use long-tail keywords

Over the years, people have started to use phrases more often when searching. Ten years ago, it was common for someone to search for “pool cleaners” to find products to clean their pool. Now, the same person is more likely to use voice search to search for, “How do I clean my pool?”. That’s why we recommend using long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are three words or longer phrases. By adding long-tail keywords to your content, you increase the relevance of your content by answering the specific question someone is looking for, increasing your traffic. To find long-tail keywords, just go to Google and search for your keyword.

Be smart and target Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords

Search engines are smart. They may display pages that use keywords or phrases related to your search. These phrases are often known as latent semantic indexing keywords; below is an example of what these look like. We recommend using these keywords in your content.

Prevent cannibalization of your keywords

Most business owners often make the mistake of optimizing the same keywords on two or more pages of their sites. When a site has two pages competing with itself for a particular keyword or phrase, it’s called keyword cannibalization. To find these pages, do a Google search for the “keyword” site: yourwebsite.nl. Shows pages that appear in Google for the same keyword. We strongly recommend that you review this list of pages and update the pages for unique keywords or phrases to avoid cannibalizing your keywords.

Conclusion

Many companies make the mistake of launching an attractive website that only depends on its appearance. If you want to get the most out of your site, we recommend that you design your website using the strategies above. When used well together, our tips yield amazing results. Feel free to contact us to discuss your next project.