How SEO Can Generate Web Traffic

Using Keywords to Generate Web Traffic

If you don’t already have keywords on your website, then you will need to carry out research into the most effective keywords relevant to your business. There are millions of search terms up for grabs in the Google search network, so start by using keyword planners and researching competitors to see how you can get the right people to your site. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner and SERanking are great for identifying relevant keywords for your website.

Google Keyword Planner is free and presents you with insightful keyword data, such as average monthly search volumes, and the ‘discover new keywords’ tool. You can also tap into keywords your competitors are using, however, it’s important not to get into the habit of copying every keyword they have! Make sure to focus on the hard-hitting keywords that have lower competitor ratings and decent average monthly search volumes (around 50-250 monthly searches is a good range to go with).

SERanking offers some tools for free such as its Keyword Research tool. Simply search a keyword and it provides insights into how popular the keyword is, similar keyword alternatives, and the top websites using the same keywords.

Once you have a healthy list of relevant keywords, it’s time to decide where you would like them to sit in and on your website. Keywords don’t have to be hidden in the back end of your pages, it’s best practice to have them on-page as well. Featuring them in headings, page copy and as alternative text for relevant images are all useful.

Now that your keywords have been added, users should be able to find you on the first page of the Google search results by typing a keyword or phrase that you have added to your site. Getting your website to the top-ranking spot in the search results can take time but appearing on the first page of search results is always a good start.

Generate Traffic Through Backlinks

Backlinks are particularly important when it comes to SEO. They can help you generate a lot of traffic to your own website from another website. Top tips for creating backlinks are, guest blogs on other websites that link back to your website or adding your company logo to a website that links back to your website.

You don’t want to link your website from just anywhere, if you have clients, you can add a link back to your site from their site from areas like their web footer or through a guest blog article where you talk about working with the client. Featuring your website in local news articles about local events or a new product or service launch can be an effective way to link back to your website, or how about being added to a local business directory?

You can have more than one backlink on the same website. It’s good to have these on different pages instead of the same page so that users can find your web link on different areas of the site. Blogs may only get shared so often so having your web URL on more relevant pages e.g., service pages, about us pages etc. would help you to attract more visitors to your site.

Optimise your website for ‘People Also Ask’

Have you ever seen this pop up in your Google search results when typing a question into the search bar?

This is called ‘people also ask’ where Google suggests relevant questions and solutions based on what you have just searched for. It takes answers from different websites that have been crawled by Google to give you the best solution to the question.

The answers usually look something like this:

You can see that it gives you a snippet from the chosen website as well as a link to the page where you can view the full website. Google also picks out keywords from these websites (highlighted in the screenshot above). These might not have been included in the visitor’s original search terms, but they are still relevant and may lead to an extended search...possibly leading to your website.

In order for Google to include your website in ‘people also ask’ you must optimise your website so that Google knows where to find these answers. Optimising means using longer tail keywords (more detailed and specific) instead of using one-word keywords that have high competition. For example, if you are an insurance company, the word ‘insurance’ has a lot of competition, so try using longer tail keywords more specific to your services like ‘homeowners insurance policies.’

In addition, it’s useful to make your content easy to consume by creating an FAQ page or a question-and-answer section within a blog piece. This allows Google to crawl your site and find the answers instantly.

Implementing these techniques into your SEO strategy all help to boost site visitors. It isn’t always instant and might take a little time before you see a significant difference, but SEO isn’t something you should rush. It takes time to get to the top spot using SEO, especially if you have high competition. If you are looking to get to the top of Google a lot faster, than take a look at our blog “beginners guide to google ads.”