How to increase traffic?
-
This may seem a bit of a broad question but grateful for all knowledgeable input!
There are many things to focus on when looking at organic SEO, but where should I be spending the most time/effort in order to increase traffic.
-
What a great response!
-
Hi,
Wow, that's a really broad question! (And one that I'd love to have the secret formula too)
In all honesty, I follow a pretty simple framework for optimizing a new site or working on a new project.
-
Find out what's the main Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the site. For example, if it's an e-commerce site, then the main KPI is most likely conversions into sales ($) rather than just traffic. So in that case, the aim is to get ranked for high converting keywords. If it's a local business with no e-commerce function, then localized search ranking for relevant keywords might be best. So find out what's the KPI before anything else.
-
Do the keyword research! This is pretty much the MOST important part to me. Rankings can be worked on and improved, but if you start off on the wrong keyword, it can be a massive pain to redo the entire site, just because the targeted keyword is wrong! I've got the most experience working with e-commerce sites, and what I do typically is to run some traffic for a first batch of targeted keywords via Google Adwords (if it's not too expensive!), to see if the traffic is useful in converting to actual results. AdWords will take a few minutes to set up, but to optimize the site for organic search is a bigger project! If the traffic from AdWords pans out, then it's probably a good set of keywords to work on for organic search too.
-
Once I've established the keywords, the next thing i work on is the on-site stuff. Site architecture, URLs, domains, page titles, content relevancy, internal linkages, the whole works. It might be a while before you look at all these stuff once the site is up and running again, so you want to make sure it's all right and in-place.
-
Prep for the launch of the site by creating all relevant social media pages/profiles. Social's a big part of search too and for overall marketing purposes too. For search optimization, it's also best to ensure that all your social media profiles are linked to the site you're working on.
-
Once the site is live, tap on whatever quality backlinks you have. I'm pretty certain most of us here have a secret cache of backlinks that we secretly hoard. So tap on those to give your new born site that little bit of boost at the start. You can also consider a few (just one or two) directory links. For directory links, I'd highly recommend DMOZ since it's free (might get a link or might not, but definitely worth a try), and Yahoo's directory (paid inclusion at $299/year but actually worth it).
-
Now that everything is in place, this is where the real work begins! Ensure a constant (and quality) presence on social media, continue to create good quality, relevant and most importantly, share-worthy content for the site, build relationships and get links either organically or through social engineering, try to get PR coverage if possible (not press releases, but relevant and hopefully good coverage of the business), and grow your traffic!
Hope this helps!
-
-
Hi,
I'd first look at why you want to increase traffic, and make sure your plan links in to your final goals- whether it be to gain sales, leads, help customers find answers to questions, engage users, or display advertising content. I'd also ask how quickly you'd like to get traffic. This usually sways the methodology I'll use, so it's always important for me to understand this.
If you're after traffic very quickly, I'd recommend a Google Adwords campaign, which is a great conversion-driven way to generate traffic, right away. SEO will take a bit more time to generate this traffic. In an ideal world, a combination of both can work together for great ROIs.
With a completely fresh customer, I'll make sure Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools are set up and correctly configured, especially for goals and conversions, and E-Commerce tracking if appropriate. I'd also check for major technical issues with crawlability and indexation, there's a great Technical SEO Audit Checklist which you can use from Geoff Kenyon.
From there, there is such a wide range of tasks you can complete to increase traffic, on the SEO side, and I'd really recommend reading Moz' beginner guide to SEO from start to end, to create your plan.
I hope this helps- you're right, it's a very broad question. Moz' knowledgebase has a massive amount of information which you can use to create your plan, I'd definitely recommend you spend time reading through this!
Hope this helps,
Zoe
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Forecasting DA increases after merging domains?
Hi all, I wondered if anyone had any suggestions for forecasting DA changes after merging two domains. The context is that we have two sites and there is argument to combine them into one. To cut a long story short, one of the considerations is how much DA might increase if we migrated one domain into the other. Domain 1 has a DA in the 30s. Domain 2 (which we'd redirect) has a DA in the late 20s. Around 90% of the LRDs are 'incremental'. Surely there is a way to forecast what the increase in DA would be if we decided to combine? I haven't found anything online...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rl_uk0 -
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
Ideas to increase PA
I need to increase the page authority of a specific page, it is a fairly bog standard product with very little scope if any for content generation. It is indexed and ranking at position 20 or 30. Any ideas on how to increase the page authority would be very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Finding Ranking for search term and increasing ranking
Hi. The company that I'm working with would like to rank highly in google for certain generic search terms (dentist, dentists, etc.). Certain websites the company has used to rank highly in google for generic keywords, but has not for years now since google has revised their algorithm so many times. Moz lists that the company websites are not found in the top 51+ results in google. My first question is: **Is there a way, apart from manually searching the results, to find the ranking position of the website in google? **Ideally, I would like to find a program that will do this. Second, I've been reading a lot of the great articles and comments on Moz, and I've been learning a lot more about SEO. My focus has shifted to spending more attention on User Experience and Social Media instead of placing the exact keywords in the pages / tags of the website. What area(s) should I be focusing on to best increase the ranking of the company website for certain generic terms? Ideally, I'd like to create good quality content, so that users will not instantly click away. I appreciate any thoughts or comments. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | americasmiles0 -
Traffic drop after Facebook push
Hi all, We experienced a strange phenonema after a Facebook push, it appears the Google organic traffic was all but dead for five days after. Totally not sure why! It has since returned to about 80% of previous levels. http://postimg.org/image/3n1b7m7hf/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottOlson0 -
Why do I get India, Pakistan, Turkey traffic mostly?
Hi there, I've been wondering. Why do I get most of the traffic from these countries? My sites are english, I host in USA. I don't target a thing for those countries traffic, yet I get huge amounts of traffic from these countries. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | melbog0 -
Almost no organic traffic
Hi, We have an online store, it is up & running since January 1st. Since then we really didn't see any improvements on our organic traffic at all. About 10% of our traffic is coming from organic search, and more than 20% of organic search actually coming from branded keywords. We haven't paid a lot of attention to SEO so far. I mean, we paid attention to the practices, however we focused on a better customer/user experience more than SEO. We improved our product pages, reduced checkout process to one step, used bigger icons / buttons. According to our customers, our website is pretty easy to navigate and shop. We haven't received any major complaint so far. Except couple of products, all the content we have is original, we didn't use any manufacturer product content or copied from another website. However, looks like all these efforts don't mean a lot to Google, unless we have a solid backlinks. Currently i am considering to make category pages NOINDEX and implement microdata from schema.org. However, Is it good idea to make category pages NOINDEX for an ecommerce website? I would like to hear your comments/recommendations what else we can do to create some organic traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | serkie0 -
Tips to increase page rank in 2012
Can you suggest what are the ways to increase page rank of website and blogs? and according to current scenario, i can see google updating page rank anytime is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | surajrathore0