How To Be SEO Smart To Drive Traffic To Your Website

How To Be SEO Smart To Drive Traffic To Your Site

As the biggest Search Engine in the world with more than 2 billion searches a day, google presents an incredible platform for reaching an audience and tapping into this immense search traffic. The aim for any business online – big or small – is to be top of mind when someone is actively searching​, so your business shows up at the top of search results.

Reaching the top of search results takes consistent and careful Search Engine Optimisation – an SEO strategy. And when done correctly, SEO can really put your business on the digital map to drive more traffic to your website and ultimately ​generate more leads and sales.

If you are not working on improving your organic search ranking, you are missing out on business opportunities. Certainly AdWords and pay per click means you are seen by customers at the very moment that they’re searching on Google for the things you offer – but competing against much bigger brands with greater budgets can be tough.

While our tips take time and require consistent process and patience, they are straight forward and effective – and save you money. We show you How To Be SEO Smart To Drive Traffic To Your Site.

What Is SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

The SEO Secret

The secret to SEO success can be achieved by frequently publishing relevant and fresh content through your website, online listings, blogs and social media.

By paying attention to at least one of these areas on a regular basis, and optimising your content for search, google will reward you by increasing traffic and your search engine ranking.

Setup Google Analytics 

There is absolutely no other tool that delivers data for your website like Google Analytics to help you track and understand your organic traffic, where it comes from and what device is most used to visit your site. You can use Google Analytics to make informed business decisions about your marketing, specifically to identify where the majority of your website traffic comes from – be it google, social media or digital listings and help you understand your visitors and ​how they interact with your site.

Get Listed

To be found, you first need to be listed. Check, fill in or update the details of your business name, address contact number, contact email address, website address and opening hours with all the main Search Engines, such as:

>Google My Business
>Bing
>Yahoo Local Listing
>Yelp 
>Foursquare
>Tripadvisor (if in hospitality/ travel)
>Superpages
>Yellowbook
>Manta 
>True Local 
>Yellow Pages
>White Pages

This task definitely takes time but is one of the most effective forms of promoting your business – for free. Aim to complete and update a digital listing per week or fortnight. This task alone can improve your google ranking within 6 months.

Keyword Selection

Given search engines are based on words, it all starts here – selecting your Keywords. A great free tool for keyword ideas is Ubersuggest, you just type in a keyword to start generating more suggestions.

SEO Keywords range from lone words to phrases, and are designed to attract relevant, organic search traffic. Keywords act like a funnel to initially capture your target audience’s attention, then draw them in to your website.

Let’s look at how we choose the right Keywords.

We first need step into the shoes of our customers and ask

• why would they want to find us?
• how would they find us?

Case Study – Granola cereal brand – home-made, sugar free and chocolate

If you google “healthy granola brands Australia” the search returns more than 440,000 search results.

As we read through the first page of results, we’ll notice the same repetitious words popping up. These include “muesli, healthy, wholegrains, gluten free, low sugar, organic, wheat free, fructose free, dairy free, weight loss,” and “nutrition”, along with a lengthy list of ingredients from “chia” to “fruit, cinnamon, oats, almonds, sunflower kernels” and more.

These are all the significant keywords and phrases that direct a customer towards finding relevant “local granola brands.

How to use Niche Keywords

By using the right keywords and undertaking some research your brand can be shown to lots of potential customers. This is where Niche Keywords are useful for your brand as they generally have less competition then the signiticvant keywords, which also means a lower search volume BUT you will have a greater opportunity to be found and your customers are also more likely to be further in their buying cycle.

Returning to our “healthy granola brands Australia” search, we start seeing other words stand out – they’re uncommon and infrequent which makes them ‘unique/niche.’ In this case, these words are “paleo, vegan, biodynamic, activated, protein-packed, insecticide-free” and unprocessed”, while listing unique ingredients such as “activated buckwheat, goji berries, pumpkin seeds, honey, cold press macadamia oil, burnt fig” and more.

So in the case of our granola brand, by undertaking keyword research, and using low competition niche keywords which apply to their product; sugar-free, chocolate and home-made, the product will have a better chance of being found in the search engine results page.

Blog

One of the most effective ways of consistently pushing out fresh content across google is through writing blogs. The immense benefits to blogging are:

• low-cost to produce (especially if you write them yourself)
• drive new traffic to your website
• work closely with search engines & social media
• exposes your business
• converts traffic to potentially generate leads
• establishes your industry expertise and authority

Google particularly loves blogs with 1,500+ words because it has lots of words to play with, so focus on quality rather than quantity;

• aim to publish a blog at least once per month
• address problems with real solutions to add value to your readers and customers’ lives. If you find yourself repeating the same content in emails or continually answering Frequently Asked Questions, answer these questions as a blog.

You can also use your blogs to nurture relationships with your clients through your e-newsletters and drive traffic to your site from social media.

• Design your e-newsletters around your blogs to drive your subscribers back to your site
• Link and share your blog across social media – Facebook remains one of the top platforms for sharing blogs

Social Media

Google loves socialising – so connect your social media platforms to your website. One often forgotten but valuable platform is Google+. While Google+ is not as popular as the other platforms, it is a google product so google will reward you for using it – even if you only use it for publishing content.

Your Website

Google has developed algorithms that now punishes businesses with badly designed, unsecure and slow functioning websites. Websites need to be

• responsive and optimised for desktop, devices and mobile, and
• secure with an HTTPS

Strong URLs 

SEO loves Keywords – whatever form they take. This also includes using your keywords in your URLs for your landing pages and where possible for your blogs.

Backlinks

Just as tags in social media mean greater social reach, links from other sites pointing to yours push you up on google too. These are known as Backlinks.

• ask partners, suppliers, customers and friends to link your site from theirs – and you can do the same for them too
• focus on producing quality blogs to encourage others sharing it across social media, their own sites and e-newsletters.
• include relevant backlinks in your blogs

Images

Optimise your images for web so they don’t slow your website down – google rewards efficient working websites.

Create Alternate Tags and label images to also include your brand and service.

As an example, the image for this blog is labelled how-to-be-seo-smart-to-drive-traffic-to-your-site-markeingsense-blog.jpg

While it takes a little bit of extra time, it’s tips like these, where the devil is in the detail, that you can drive your organic SEO google ranking up, at relatively little cost.

Do you need SEO assistance?
We’re only a click away to bring you to the top of Google.