The 9 Fastest Ways to Increase Your SEO Traffic

SEO can be slow to show results.  But it's a necessary evil, right?  

Well, what if I told you there were ways you could speed up your SEO results….Would that interest you?

Of course, it would…That's why you clicked on an article titled “How to increase SEO Traffic.”

We are going to explore 9 tactics that will supercharge your SEO results.  Now, a fair warning: You must do all 9 of these to get better results. Missing one or two will make your site look and perform like your competitors.

So, if you want a recipe to supercharge your SEO results, keep reading.

Tip 1: Make Your Website Mobile First

Statcounter says 59.53 % of web traffic comes from mobile phones. This means that a large percentage of your target audience uses their phones to consume information online. They are thinking, "Why should I carry a computer all around when I can connect to the internet on my smartphone?"

This is why your website has to be mobile-first, i.e., designed to work on mobile phones. Users expect the same website features on their smartphones as they experience on their desktops. Google user wants to use all the features on the desktop version on their smartphones. In fact, since 2017, Google has been using the mobile version of your website to determine your ranking and indexing in their database. That means if your site isn’t mobile first, it’s impossible to outrank your competitors’ websites that are.

However, mobile-first is different from mobile usability. While mobile first means designing your website to be primarily responsive on mobile phones, mobile usability refers to your page being functional on mobile devices. 

To make your website mobile first:

• Work with your website designer. Ensure that the most important elements are displayed. The user shouldn't have trouble finding your page content.
• Avoid pop-ups or ads. Users don't like being accosted with pop-ups while navigating your site.
• Keep your website simple. Don't stuff your navigation menu with too many features. Use fewer web pages.
• Use white spaces to make your pages easy to read and follow.
• Test your website on mobile devices yourself.
• Check Google Search Console to monitor your mobile site performance.

Tip 2: Claim Your Google Business Profile

Why is your Google business profile important? Your Google business profile claims that you are legitimate. It is important because when someone searches for your brand ( a search that includes your name), Google brings up your Google Business Profile, showing the searcher you are credible. As such, you get some space on page 1.

To claim your Google business profile:

• Fill out all details. Ensure your NAP - name, address, and phone number - is consistent across your website, social media profiles, and directory listings.
• Upload your professional pictures. Putting a human face to your business makes people trust you more.
• Additionally, devise a review strategy to get reviews on your profile.
• Create interactive posts on your profile to drive more organic traffic.

Tip 3: Improve Page Experience for Search Engines

Google's page experience update in 2021 introduced a new page experience metric called Core Web Vitals (CWV). CWV is measured based on your site's user interactivity, page speed, and visual stability, which determine your users' experience and directly affect your website's SEO. 

Your website will rank lower if it fails to meet CWVs criteria. Make sure your CWVs are decent and comparable, if not better, than your competitors.

To improve your page experience:

• Ensure your site’s layout doesn’t shift. Your Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is the most important of your CWVs. 
• Improve your page speed. You can check your website's load time by entering the URL in Google's PageSpeed Insights.
• Fix all security issues. Use an SSL certificate on your website.
• Optimize your website for safe browsing. Watch out for malware.

Tip 4: Focus on User Experience

You can't neglect user experience (UX) if you want to increase your website traffic. Designing your website for your users before considering search engines is a failproof SEO strategy. Your UX includes user-friendly features, easy navigation, a clear logo, etc.

If it's poor, your users will leave your website after checking your landing page or home page, which sends a bad signal to Google. A high bounce rate shows a problem with your user engagement, affecting your Google search rankings.

Thankfully, Google Analytics helps determine how many people are leaving your website. You can check the bounce rates in Behavior> Site content > Landing Pages.

A good user experience increases your conversion rates and user retention. Users are encouraged to spend more time on your site, improving page dwell time.

For a good user experience:

• Optimize your content for mobile. Use the Google Mobile Responsiveness Test to measure your mobile responsiveness.
• Your pages should load within 4 seconds. Google says the probability of a user bouncing away from your website increases by 32% once the load time increase from 1 to 3 seconds. Apparently, you can't control a user's poor internet connection, but you can ensure your site makes fewer server requests to increase traffic.
• Create URLs that your users, Google, and other search engines can understand.
• Don't provide too many options that confuse your users when navigating your website. You can create categories and use a drop-down menu for many menu items.
• Your content should be exhaustive enough but presented in an interactive format.

Tip 5: Keyword Research

Keyword research provides deep insights into your audience's queries online. It helps you know what people want to know so that you can create content about it. Besides, Google wants you to fill the content gaps to fulfill search intent. As such, you need to identify the search terms for a particular topic before you start writing about it.

You can’t do this without Natural Language Processing (NLP), a switch from Google's BERT algorithm. This algorithm focuses on comprehending what the user typed in the search box and not just finding content through keywords.

Google and other search engines are switching to the NLP algorithm to process queries in context, not just words, such that it seems a human genius is providing the search results. The algorithm analyses not only the queries but also the contents that are supposed to give answers to these search queries.

As such, Natural Language Processing is very vital to search engine optimization. To implement NLP in your content, you have to: 

• Include search intent in your content and keywords: Google's NLP algorithm aims to figure out the reason behind the search query and the intent behind the different pieces of content that can answer the questions. If the intent matches the query, then the algorithm ranks that content high in search results.
• Write clearly and simply: Don’t make your words too difficult for Google and your audience to understand. Write using straightforward terms.
• Match answers with questions: Studies show that contents that give answers to questions tend to show up more in Google's 'people also ask' section. Include questions and provide answers immediately in your content so Google can easily recognize that you are answering that question.

With repeated improvements in its algorithm, Google's attempt to work towards fully understanding human or natural language is also improving. This means you have to be on your toes and ready to adapt. NLP is suspected to be the next big thing, so business owners should begin taking steps toward mastering the algorithm for SEO traffic.

Tip 6: A Well-Rounded Content Marketing Strategy

Today, content isn't only king; it's the queen, prince, and princess. In fact, it's the entire royal court. You can't increase your rankings in search results without quality content driven by a proper keyword strategy.

Your content strategy is integral to your online marketing, so it needs to be more than a comprehensive blog post. You need infographics, slideshows, podcasts, Youtube videos, Google images, social media posts, online SEO forums like Quora and Reddit, Pinterest pins, etc. You can't afford to rely on just one content channel.

To develop a well-rounded content marketing plan:

• Know your audience. SEO success starts with a comprehensive audience analysis. How can you convince your audience to buy from you if you don't know your audience? How can you position your value as the answer to their pain points? Besides, creating great content will be easier when you know who you are selling to.
• Create content that adds value to your potential customers and helps them to become repeat customers. 
• Make your content as interactive as possible. Position it to solve problems more than to sell your products.
• Repurpose existing content. Create more visual representations of your written content.
• Use the meta title and description for your content.
• Promote your content to your email list on social media platforms, Q & A forums, etc. Before you know it, you have a space in featured snippets!

Tip 7: On-Page Optimization

On-page/on-site optimization means optimizing your web pages, including your internal links, title tags, headers, meta description, page title, and page URLs for target keywords to increase SEO performance. Most website owners ignore internal linking, which is understanding how pages internally need to link to each other. 

On-page optimization differs from technical SEO, but most people think they are interchangeable. While on-page optimization deals with aligning your web page for Google to understand, technical SEO relates to optimizing site speed, site structure, etc., so that search engine crawlers can index your content properly.

Here's how to go about on-page optimization:

• Create content that answers your target audience’s specific questions.
• Use the target keyword in the title tag and headers.
• As mentioned earlier, you also need to write compelling meta titles and descriptions. Your meta description serves as an organic ad text. It is one thing for your content to rank on the first page of search engines and another for people to want to read it. Therefore, your meta description should be compelling enough to make searchers click on your page, increasing click-through rates. Also, it should be relevant to the page content.
• The meta title/title tag is the title of your content, and it plays a considerable role in search engine optimization. Ensure it is brief (not more than 60 characters), relevant to the page, and contains search intent keywords. You can use SEO tools like SurferSEO to get the proper title tags.
• Your page URL should be straightforward.
• Ensure you sign up for the Google Webmasters tool to make it easier for Google to crawl your website for indexing.

Tip 8: Link Building

Link building is an off-page SEO strategy for acquiring backlinks from other high authority websites. It is a critical ranking factor that can supercharge your search engine ranking results. The Google algorithm considers your website high quality if other websites link to your content. 

To successfully build links for your website SEO:

• Publish SKYSCRAPER content.
• Guest post on a high authority website closely related to what you do.
• Create linkable content pieces such as illustrations, short guides, infographics, etc.
• Be active on social. Don't only write posts about your content; engage with your audience.
• Add your links manually to business directories and posts on online forums. However, avoid spamming everywhere with your links.
• Whatever you do, don't fall for the black hat SEO strategy of buying backlinks. Google penalizes for that. (Internal link to “How many backlinks can you create in a day.)

Tip 9: Drive Traffic From Social Media

According to Social Media Examiner, 9 in 10 marketers say increasing website traffic is a benefit of social media marketing. Besides, most leads generated from social media are very interested in knowing what you do and becoming your customers. There will always be people who click on your links.

To drive traffic from social media:

• Write clear and compelling bios and link your accounts to your site with a call-to-action
• Post when your audience is online. Study the engagement metrics of each platform.
• Use lots of visuals, e.g., videos, infographics, etc.
• Engage with your audience.
• Encourage people to share your posts and links.
• Create good content. This will make people want to know more and drive them to your site.
• Back up your content with social proof like reviews, testimonials, feedback, comments, etc. It makes you more credible.
• Hire a social media manager if you can't handle the stress of keeping up with social media.

Conclusion

I've got a gift for you. We use a tool, SurferSEO, to help us master tips 5, 6, and 7: keyword research, a well-rounded content marketing strategy, and on-page optimization. It uses NLP to suggest keywords and proper title tags for your content. Using the recommended keywords helps you create content that answers your target audience's questions and optimizes your page to rank higher on search engines.

SurferSEO is the #1 tool we recommend; we use it for ALL of our clients. 

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