But this isn't an easy task. With so much content flooding the web, many sites, both old and new, a lot of bloggers struggle to get people to pay them a visit and because of that a lot of great blogs have failed.
How to Increase Traffic to Your Website for Free and Fast ?!
There are a lot of ways you can increase traffic on your website, but today, I'm going to tell you the best proven strategies that the best SEO experts use on their site's.
Here is the best way to generate website traffic for free:
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<p><strong>Please include attribution to www.seobasics.info with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.seobasics.info/2016/03/increase-site-traffic.html"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9x0rpEtRLyc/Vv0dmwQLdGI/AAAAAAAAFO0/2EHSiFZHN9ErxfMfBd6Ahvg6fgud3MNaQCCo/s512-Ic42/infographic-increase-site-traffic-min.png" alt="Increase Site Traffic" width="300px" border="0" /></a></p>1. Use Google Alerts for New Content Ideas
Your content should contain high-value researched text information and with unique concepts. Your content needs to be timely, relevant, inspiring, educational or exceptional.
But first of all, you need to pick a topic that attracts traffic-a trending topic. You are probably asking yourself how to know what are the trending topics ?
So to know what to write on your blog or your clients blog you can set up industry-specific Google alerts.
This way you will be informed in time from Google for anything that happens in your industry and what is trending now. So you will have a lot of info on trending topics and a lot of trending topic ideas for your blog posts.
How to set up specific industry Google alerts?
Setting up Google alerts is pretty easy, just head over to Google alerts page, and in the search bar type the specific industry you are interested to be alerted from Google.
For example, if you are interested in SEO, just type SEO on search bar and hit search,than you will be presented with SEO topic, click advanced options and choose what's the best for you and type your email where you want your alerts to come from Google.
On advanced options I would prefer to choose these answers:
How often? At most once a day - This way you will get one email per day and you can easily read it.
Sources: Automatic - You have the option to choose from blogs,news,forums,etc but automatic is the best because you will not lose anything this way.
Language: English - You can choose any language you want or fits you the best in this option.
Region: Any region - Any region is the best.
How many: Only the best results - Let the Google choose what is the best content in your specific industry.
Deliver to: Write your email.
Image: How to set up Google Alerts
By reading every day the best and popular stories of your specific industry, for sure you will gain a lot of blog post topic ideas to write for, so don't wait anymore and go to Google alerts to get help from this amazing free Google service.
2.Add viral components to your web site or blog
What are viral components?
Social Sharing buttons: Make the social buttons within the content very visible to make sure that the visitors will be forcefully lured to share your content.
Reviews and Ratings: Reviews and Ratings are usually used on e-commerce sites about reviewing and rating the products there but a lot of bloggers are also using reviews on their blog articles also.
Visitor comments: Comments are very important for blog posts in SEO aspect and for creating a community on your site.
Make linking to your posts easy: See at the end of articles on my site there is a text area where it says Link easy , this is very useful for other blog authors to link easy to your articles.
Make sure you add the URL link,HTML code for linking and BB code for Forums. If you can also you can create a small badge or banner for your site with an HTML code below for someone who wants to link in that way for your site.
Info graphics: are a great way for creating viral traffic on your site because usually people like images way more than text content. Make sure also you make info graphics embeddable by placing an embed HTML code below your info graphic.
3. Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines and Create Eye-Catching, High-Quality Images
SEO strategy can be liven up just by writing attention-grabbing headlines and creating high-quality images. Some headline types get more traction than others for social shares, traffic, and search engine ranking.
List, “how to”, and question headlines typically see the strongest results for click-through.
Research proves that readers share emotional and positive headlines with their social networks.
Research studies have shown that the most clicked-through words are:
- How to
- Tips
- Tricks
- [List-related numbers]
- Free
- You
- Blog post
- Why
- Best
- Great
You can experiment using these word on your page titles.
Also there is one great free tool to analyze headlines which I use very often myself.
With this tool you can analyze headlines for their emotional,power,common and uncommon words , etc..
Where do you look first after seeing a page’s headline?
Most of the visitors look at the image, which usually determines if we are going to stay to read or if we are going to hit the back button.
So make sure that you include great images or info graphics on your site.
Also, use keyword rich captions,alt descriptions and title's with your images.
Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions.
4.Use Social Bookmarking Sites and Pinterest for Social Media Referral traffic
Understand social marketing. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
Image:Use Social Bookmarking Sites
Join popular social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.ico.us or Stumble Upon.
If one of your posts is posted on any one of these sites, people can vote or rate it.
If your content is good, problem solving and emotional it can easily go viral and bring huge traffic to your site.
Use Pinterest: People are naturally drawn to attractive, magazine-quality images.
Information can be processed very quickly when it’s seen as an image.
Pinterest makes it possible to leverage beautiful, sharable images to drive more traffic to your site.
According to Mitt Ray on Social Media Examiner there are 6 steps to bring more traffic on your site with Pinterest:
- Optimize your page
- Design Content to Support Goals
- Be Strategic With Your Pinning Schedule
- Design Skinny Images
- Write Detailed Descriptions
- Test Various Pin Times
5.Create Content To Provide Value & Solve Problems
Create content that will offer value to the targeted audience or your content can offer solutions to the problem they are already facing.
The majority of people who come to your blog for the first time are there for one thing only to find answers to their problems.
So that being said, you have to create ‘problem solving content’ for your readers as often as possible.
6.Optimize Existing Pages Before Creating New Ones
Audit your existing pages with On Page SEO Audit tools that are available on the Internet and make the necessary changes to those pages.
After you complete that step, than head over to Google Search Console at Search Traffic, Search Analytics section and filter your queries with Impressions, Clicks,CTR and Position.
Image:Search Analytics-GSC
The top of the chart will be keywords that you’re on the first page for, but forget about them, set the number of rows to show to “500” and scroll down until you see an about average position of 11 to 20, then look at those queries that are ranking for those positions.
Impressions and CTR will tell you how much those queries are searched in Google and if is worth it to try ranking for those keywords.
If you find any keyword that has decent search volume and is worth it than you can click on that exact keyword in Search Analytics section of Search Console and then select Pages to see the top pages for the current results.
That will show you the page on your site that’s ranking for that keyword.
And include that keyword as part of that page’s SEO, and try to optimize that page even more for example: by inter-linking from other pages that have higher reputation on your site and try to earn some external back links directly to that page of the site.
7.Incorporate user experience UX into your SEO strategy
User experience has managed to grow from a mere factor to a major influence when it comes to SEO.
Image: UX and SEO
Crafting a thoughtful, empathetic user experience helps ensure that visitors to your site perceive it positively, encouraging sharing, bookmarking, return visits, and inbound links.
Pay attention to:
- Website speed,
- Responsiveness,
- Cross platform compatibility,
- Constructive internal linking,
- Proper content structure,
- Lower your bounce rate
- Avoid using pop-ups and interstitial ads
- Consider readability
- Fix Broken links,
- Set up friendly 404 page and
- Minimize down time.
8.Contact influencers to share your content
This is very important strategy and you should implement it carefully.
Reach out to influencers and discreetly ask if they will be interested to see your content, but never directly ask them to share your content, because if asked directly and if you sound pushy than you risk of being considered as a spammer from them.
If some of the top industry influencers reviews your content, don't forget to thank them, if it happens so that they also share your content than great.
9.Remove any type of duplicated content on your site.
The websites with www.domain.com and domain.com should resolve to the same URL.
Also configure the server so that your site IP is redirected to the site domain name.
Common homepage variations: Check the link to your home page throughout your site, redirect /index.html, /index.htm or /index.php , back to your domain.
10.Use Google’s Change Of Address Tool When Redirecting A Domain
If you have any old domains 301 redirected to your current domain and if any of these old domains *have not* been verified through Google Search Console than verify them.
Image: Change of Adress Tool-GSC
You can verify them with the advises given from Search Console, in this case the best slution is by setting up a DNS TXT record.
Then, use Google’s Change of Address tool to tell Google the new address for these old domains.
This process works better for SEO than just a 301 redirect.
11.Add a call-to-action at the end of your posts
Add a solid call-to-action at the end of your posts that urges your readers to either read another of your posts, subscribe to your list, click a link to a landing page or - do something.
You can really ask your visitors anything that will be valuable to you and if they are satisfied with the article that they have just read than most of them are going to respond positively on your request.
12. Build up your professional brand on Community Sites
This is old strategy but still works if done properly, but you shouldn't do it for links though because you would be easily considered as a spammer by community members.
Best place to start is by answering questions that people have on Quora and by helping those members fix their problems and offering solutions to their problems
Same can be done also on Yahoo answers, which is also a great community site that can bring lots of traffic.
You can also become a member of related niche Forums or Blogs and be active in there and to get noticed.
There are Forums on the Internet for almost every niche you just have to find them.
The easiest way to find related niche Forums is by googling with this search string:
Image: How to find niche-specific Forums
- "Keyword" + Forum"
- Keyword" + Forums
Replace "Keyword" with the topic of your site.
13.Include internal links on your 404 error pages
Doesn't matter how much we try to reduce broken links there always will be some internal or external broken links to your site.
That's why it's important to have custom 404 pages that will help your visitors to navigate better on your site and sometime instead of using a generic 404 error page, you could try to design something that is also entertaining.
But what if your custom 404 page is entertaining for your visitors and also helpful because you can place some internal links of your site on your 404 page.
SEO Expert Neil Patel in his blog explains that he always creates custom 404 pages that display a creative image and link out to 25 to 50 random internal pages on the website.
He says, this way you can increase the number of pages that get indexed from search engines.
14.Join HARO and answer relevant queries
Try to use HARO: "Help a Reporter Out" to achieve this task and if any of reporters will link to your site, this can give you valuable back links from huge media companies.
SEO Expert Brian Dean on his Backlinko blog post explains how to use HARO to get back links from domains with great authority:
Image:Join HARO as a Source
a. You need to sign up to HARO as a source,
b. Than you will get three emails per day from reporters looking for sources,
c.You only need to respond to those queries with your credentials (don't forget link to your site) and with some helpful tips.
So don't wait JOIN HARO ASAP :)
15.Update Your Already Published Viral Content To Rank For Competitive Keywords
If you have already published a “viral content” type piece to earn rankings, strongly consider how you can make it update-able on a regular basis, so you’re not just relying on that first push.
Reasons for updating is to make sure that you’re constantly creating opportunities to promote, market, and earn links/shares.
This way after some time and some republishing you can rank with that content even for some highly competitive keywords.
Now seriously these strategies are very doable and if you really want to increase traffic on your site there is no reason for you to not start doing these tips now.
You don't need to do all of them, but start with at least one of them... it's up to you to do it.
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