Out of 7.2 billion people living on Earth, we have more than 3 billion active Internet users. Asia accounts for 47.8% of active Internet users while the mobile penetration rate is the highest in North America (87.9%). 2014 was the year of milestones when the global mobile user concentration exceeded 50% and the worldwide social media users exceeded 2 billion.
When preparing a strategy to quickly increase your website traffic, it is essential to focus on the social media engagements, as they can also have a very positive residual impact on your search engine optimization work.
This post will cover 12 actionable tips to bring more traffic to your site in a short period of time.
1. Use Long-Tail Keywords
After the Penguin Update, Google has been evaluating web content for its quality. The quality of the content also depends on the correct use of keywords. Long-tail keywords are more beneficial in a way that they narrow down the meaning of the topic that you are trying to promote (e.g. "collectible cars for sale" is much better to use than the keyword "cars" if your website's purpose is to sell collectible cars). To come up with a list of long-tail keywords that relate to your topic you can use the Google Keyword Tool or other keyword stemming techniques.
2. Share Your Content On Social Media
As more people are using social media and social networking sites, you can give your content more exposure by sharing it on social media. Twitter and Facebook are generally the must-have social networks for all businesses. For the image-dependent businesses, Instagram is a good option and for B2B websites, LinkedIn can be the right choice. Share engaging and compelling content by choosing interesting and hot topics from in and out of the industry. It is perfectly OK to share out-of-the-box content as well. Provoke comments by asking questions and make yourself heard.
3. Produce Irresistible Content and Headlines
Content is the king. The key to having a successful social media campaign is to focus on compelling headlines, catchy images and then interesting content. Choose a topic from the hottest trends in the market and create a compelling headline with the simplest vocabulary and grammar like Buzzfeed and Upworthy.
4. Increase the Speed of Your Website
The majority of people in South Asia use 2 Mbps Internet on a daily basis. In South Korea, the Internet users use 4 to 4.5 Mbps speeds. People have been opting for fast Internet speeds because ‘they cannot wait’ for pages to load.
There are two ways to increase the speed of your website. First, choose a safe and well performing web server. Second, make sure that your website is technically optimized. Ideally, your web page should load in less than 2 seconds.
5. Use Facebook Ads
Facebook has become a centralized hub for socializing and networking. Facebook has introduced a number of new features and opportunities for targeted advertising.
Facebook marketing tools include:
- Audience Insights for feedback reports
- Compass for tracking metrics like conversions, time of customer stay on the page/post and ad frequency
- Facebook URL Debugger for recomposing the look of your Facebook links
- Headline Analyzer for tracking keyword and headline status on the Internet and receiving suggestions for recomposing the headlines
- Timeline Contest for running contests and competitions
- Realworld Facebook Ads for receiving information on more than 500 successful ads on Facebook and devising your ad accordingly
The good news is that most of the tools mentioned here are free.
6. Establish Social Media Community
In the modern digital world, every established brand has an established social media community. For example, Justin Bieber followers are called Beliebers. Foster a sense of community by a direct communication with your readers. Instead of posting your content as ‘Admin’, use your brand name or any human name. In simple words, personalize the communication and give your community a name.
7. Keep an Eye On Analytical Data
Google Analytics is the key tool to keep an eye on your website traffic stats. The traffic reports can help you to fine-tune your online marketing strategy. While analyzing your Google Analytics account, focus on:
- Tracking where the traffic is coming from
- Determine the best traffic time
- Find the most popular posts and links on your web pages
- Find the most popular topics on your website based on users' comments
- Examine the likes, shares and negative feedback on your posts
- Track the performance of promotion campaigns by analyzing the goal completions and conversions
8. Write Guest Posts On the Aggregator Sites
The content aggregator sites are the sites where anyone can post his or her content as a contributor (e.g. Buzzfeed or Reddit). These websites also provide you with a personal profile section in which you can post the link to your site. The aggregator sites have a good amount of traffic on a daily basis. Their content is also shared by considerable number of people on the Internet.
9. Produce Multimedia Content
Some people prefer saving time and watch videos. Some people enjoy reading the text content while others are only interested in images. Your goal is to produce multimedia content (photos, videos, text) and make it sharable and attractive.
10. Keep an Eye On Content Screen Optimization
For the screen size optimization, you need to do more than just making your website responsive. Optimize your content for different screens. 80% of the Internet users own a smartphone. Smart TV and Smart Watches are becoming the next generation devices for surfing the Internet. As a result, it is essential to develop one-page designs for easier scrolling and navigation as well as focus on making the content small screen friendly.
11. Get In the Blog Exchange Business
Enhance your website traffic by exchanging your content with the blogging hubs like CopyBlogger, Ezine and ProBlogger. These platforms may charge you a small amount of money at times, but can also produce great results.
12. Hashtag and BrandMention Influencers
Brand Mention is an SEO technique introduced by Google. The search engine optimizes the URLs which are not opened by clicking on links in random posts but are separately searched on search engines or typed in the search bar. Use Facebook and Twitter to hashtag and BrandMention influential brands so that they hashtag, BrandMention or acknowledge your efforts. This is a post-SEO link-building.
What other strategies do you know to increase website traffic? Please share your thoughts in the comments area below.
