How to maximize your website traffic: 6 steps to increase visibility
To optimize your website and getting it working for you, the first step is to understand exactly what your website is doing for you and it isn't.
Here are 6 things you can start with in order to start the process of maximizing your website's potential.
1.- Understand where your traffic is coming from
Many sources of traffic exist, and what works for one person may not for another, so you can capitalize on a source your competitor cannot. Google Analytics gives valuable insight into your website users, and is easy to set up; simply insert code and verify. It tracks traffic daily and aggregates over time, so you can analyze data by season/year. Knowing how it works and tracking it is essential.
2.- Find what is your audience's preferred Social Media platform
Use Google Analytics to see what social media platform is bringing more traffic to your website. Besides looking into Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, you want traffic from sources like Quora and Redditt and Google Analytics can tell you this. You might be surprised on what you find and this will help to make decision on what social media platform to focus on and which you should stop putting effort into. A 3, 6 and 12 month trend analysis will help you see changes in your traffic.
3.- Is your website "Optimized" for the top three keywords?
Having keywords in your website is not enough. Your website must be optimized by including them in headlines as well as in the content in order to be ranked.
4.- Does your website have the "right" keywords to generate traffic?
Traffic to a website is different for each keyword. You must do an analysis to find the best keywords for your business using Google Analytics and Google Console. These tools help you find the keywords that rank the best, meaning, the keywords most people are using when searching for your service, and also, how competitive they are and what keywords are a good opportunity to start using that have little competition and you can use in your blogs to start ranking for that keyword.
Consistent organic traffic is highly dependent on raking on the first page in Google and the top three keywords.
5.- Find your competitor's top high-traffic keywords and snatch them for your own website
Your competitor might be ranking first for a keyword with a terrible piece of content that you can easily beat by writing a better article and optimizing your site for that keyword. There are tools like Semrush that SEO experts use in order to "spy" on competitors websites and find how your website can beat theirs.
6.- Google is King, say Hail to the King!
Over 80% of search traffic is owned by Google so you want to look good on the eyes of Google so it wants to show you to the people searching for your product.
SEO (Search engine optimization) by Google can be intimidating and I agree, there are a lot of factors that affect the ranking of a website and their algorithms change constantly. But the good news is that as time passes, Google is becoming more user friendly and has a lot of information and free training to understand how to rank and optimize your website.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The success of your business is highly dependent on your online presence if that is how you want to acquire clients. You must take your website and SEO seriously to generate organic traffic before you start spending thousands of dollars marketing to audiences who are NOT looking for your services.
You want to be FOUND by people who are INTENTIONAL about finding or learning about your services and gone are the days when people relayed on recommendations by friends, they go to Google first to research and read reviews so, get to work on your website!
If you want help finding the state of your website, I offer women business owners my consultancy services to get clarity about what their website is doing or not doing for them. Finding where you are is the FIRST STEP to move towards your final vision for your business.
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