Massively Increase SEO Traffic: Keyword Research

Atiba de Souza: Search engine journal just published a really great article on ways that you can double, sometimes even triple your SEO traffic with just making some minor little tweaks in terms of what you're doing. We're gonna talk about those now. They listed eight. Yep. Eight different things that you should be looking at.

I'm actually gonna add a ninth one on that, that I think will also help you a ton — now I think I know, cause it helps all of my clients generate way more organic traffic to their websites.

Atiba de Souza: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Traffic Keys. I am your host Atiba. And today, we're going to be talking about how to massively increase your organic traffic to your website.

And we're gonna go through nine things. . Eight of them came from a search engine journal article that they published just recently, and I'm gonna link to that article down below, but before we get started in all of nine, do me a favor: smash that like button, hit that subscribe and that little bell so that we can stay connected for when I create new content on SEO in helping you drive traffic to your website.

Okay. So let's jump into to these nine different things. Number one, mobile first. It's been four, almost five years now that Google really jumped on the mobile bandwagon and said, "Hey, mobile is a big deal. People are using their mobile phones." And we know it too. You might be watching me on a mobile phone right now, yourself!

People are using their mobile phones more and more to consume information online that includes your website. And so your website has to perform well on mobile. Now, what do I mean by that? The article talks about this and you've probably heard this already. This is how you have to look at your website.

Are there functions that only exist on desktop that you cannot do on mobile? If there are functions that you can only do on desktop, things like site search, sometimes there are many options that go away. Sometimes there are user experience options that you can't do on mobile that you can do on desktop.

Google's going to say you are not mobile first and Google wants your site to be mobile first because they know when more and more people are driving to their phones to consume data. So make your site mobile first. Starting now. Go test it out. If you didn't build it to be mobile first, now's a good time to redesign your site and make it mobile first.

That's number one. Number two, claim your Google business profile. So Google gives this to all of us and we can go out and claim our Google business profile and say, "Hey, Google, we are a business and we exist. And this is our website." Google wants to know that. They allow that to be a ranking factor, if you will.

Okay. That you've claimed it, that you said that you are legitimate. So go claim your Google business profile. The other thing that claiming your Google business profile does for you is when someone does search for . You. When they do a branded search, a search that includes your name somehow. Google is going to show your Google business profile.

And so you get to take more space up on page one. It helps the person who is searching feel like your business is way more legitimate. So go claim your Google business profile, today. That if you haven't already. Number two, improve page experience. Middle of 2021, or so Google released something that they called core web vitals.

They had been talking about it for a long time saying that it was coming and it was gonna make this big deal. And it was gonna be a new standard of how they evaluated your web pages. Not your entire website, but page by page. Your core web vitals. Now, here's the truth on core web vitals. They are super important, but they're not the end all be all. Okay. They're not. If, the data has shown that yes, in a highly competitive industry, core web vitals can make the difference in ranking. If you're not in a highly competitive industry, core web vitals are still important, but not nearly as important as your actual content. Okay. 'Cause content is always going to be king, queen and prince and princess.

They're the entire royal court. Okay. Content is still where it is. But the core web vitals talk about the experience that the user is going to have. And so Google put out this entire set of metrics. Okay. And a new product called lightning that actually helps to tell you what your core web vitals are.

And so, long story short, lightning is a free tool. That's part of the Chrome Browser extension. And it's a test that you can do on your website or on your webpages and to test your core web vitals. And if your core web vitals come back and say that, "Yeah, you are not very good," then you need to fix some of those metrics.

Now we're not gonna dive deep into those metrics. The article goes a little bit further. But no, you have to go check your core web vitals and make sure that they're at least decent and at least comparable, if not better than your industry. Now, the next one ties right into core web vitals. In that it's about focusing on the user experience.

So core web vitals are one part of the user experience because they talk about, one how fast the page is, et cetera, et cetera. So those are very important things, but the next side of user experience, my friends is: what does the user do? And how easy is it for the user to get to the data that they're looking for once the page loads? Once the page loads. Do they have to go hunting through multiple pages to find whatever they're looking for? Are your menus hard to use and understand. Is it because when your user experience is poor, users will leave and they'll go find someone else who gives them an easier experience.

Let's just call it what it is. Because we all want ease and comfort today. Nobody wants to work for anything. So if your site is hard to navigate, if the tools on your site, the information on your site is hard to use or digest, users are going to leave and Google's getting smarter and smarter and smarter at figuring out when users are having bad experiences on your website. 

Okay. So that's number four, user experience. Number five is one that you probably already know when we're talking about your content is that you much do your key word research, and I'm gonna take this another step further.

It's not just about keyword research anymore, guys. Keywords are cool. Keywords are great. Google wants you to start answering questions. Your customers are asking questions. They're not just typing in keywords anymore, especially with things like voice search on the mobile. Going back to point number one. People don't just say best pens into a voice search. People will say, "What are the best pens for me to buy for my business?" They're gonna ask real questions. So your keyword research now needs to expand into question analysis. Now I've done tons of videos on this, so you can find other videos on this channel on how you start to transition from just thinking about keywords into question analysis.

That's number five. Number six. Number six, you must have a well-rounded content marketing plan. You can't just create blogs anymore. Yes, 10 years ago, five years ago, even you could. Now, you need infographics. You need slide shares. You need videos. You need the blogs. You need a podcast. You need different ways to create and represent your content.

You need a diverse content marketing plan, not just, I'm just going to go write a blog every week. Users want more than that. Users want more than that now. And it also helps you because you have things like Google photos, right? So if you've got great photos in your blog, you can even get those to rank.

You've got sites like Pinterest. There are sites that rank just infographics or where you could go list infographics that you create. All of those are ways that you can drive traffic to your website organically. So you must have a robust and well rounded content marketing plan. Number seven. Actually seven and eight are really age old ones that I'm going to — I have to say, because one was in the article and the article was right. People ignore these, or forget some about these at this point, because they're so old and saying, "Oh, do people still do those types of things?" Yes, absolutely. On page optimization. You have to optimize every single page on your website.

That's the page titles. That's the headers. Okay. That's the image alt text. Image all text are still very important, my friends. Still very important. Page URLs. Making sure that the URL actually says what this pages. Yes, super important. And the one that most people miss, internal linking. Understanding how pages internally need to link to each other.

Because once you start to consider how pages internally — internally, excuse me, need to link to each other. Then you're also telling Google, "Hey, these are the pages that I think are related and are important to this page." And if Google looks at those and says, "You know what, those are important pages too. So then this page must also be important."

You can help your pages rank better with internal linking, and it really costs you nothing. It helps the reader and it helps your rankings, tremendously. There have been so many web pages that we've helped go from page four to page two, just by changing their internal linking.

I know you gonna say "Okay, Atiba, but nobody wants to be on page two." Yeah. You don't wanna be on page two, but would you rather be on page two or page four before we start doing other optimization technique? That one technique helps us jump two pages. And then when we start looking at a content, it's real easy to jump to page one.

So that's number seven on page optimization. Then number eight, my friends link building. That's ugly term that scares most of us, but link building is the one thing that can supercharge your SEO results. Having other websites say, "Yep. That content is good. Yep. That's really important stuff. Yep. We agree with them." Sends massive signals to Google that help raise your rankings and generate more traffic to your website. Now, I am never going to advocate you doing black hat or even gray hat link building techniques.

But having an outreach plan, networking with people, sharing your content on social media, et cetera. All of those are ways that you can get your content out there in front of the eyeballs of people who may want to link their website to your content. It's important that you have a link building strategy. A robust and solid link building strategy, because it will help supercharge all of your efforts.

Number nine, the bonus one. This is the one that I'm adding. Now, the article covered eight. This is the one that I'm adding because we do this all the time and it helps so tremendously, greatly. And here's why it helps. This technique that I'm gonna tell you right now, what it helps with is not just driving traffic to your website, but driving traffic to your website that actually wants to become a customer.

One of the things with SEO is as we rank, they're always going to be people who click on our links that yeah, they were never gonna be a customer. They were never actually that interested. In what we have to offer and that's fine, but number nine, number nine, the majority of the people who you generate through number nine, those people are super interested in being your customer. And my friends that is driving traffic from social media.

Yes. I know you're probably already creating social media posts and you're saying, "Well, I already do that. I already create social media posts." Yes. But getting back to number six, and this is part of number six with the well-rounded content marketing plan, driving traffic from social media is different than creating social media posts ;cause what we're saying here now is you're creating social media posts where you are deliberately asking questions or directing the reader back to your website. Driving traffic from social media. Now, why is this one so key? Because if they've consumed something from you on social media and in that consumption, they like what they consumed and then you told them, "Hey, do you wanna learn more? Go read this article. Go watch this video. Go download this lead magnet." And they go do it, their intent to learn more about you and become your customer is super high. Super, super high. 

So I have customers who tell me all the time, "Oh man, we're driving traffic from social, but it's so small compared to the number of people that we're getting from all of these other channels. Should we just ignore social?" I'm like, yeah. It may only be 1% of the traffic that you're driving organically, but it's 1% that you know is super engaged and completely wants your content and wants to work with you. So keep driving that traffic from social media. All right, guys, I'm gonna link the article from search engine journal in the description down below, but you've got my nine there. Their eight plus my one that's super important that's getting massive results right now for my customers. 

All right. Have a great day. And as always, if you have any questions, drop 'em down below, or send me an email at hello@traffickeys.com. All right. My friends talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.