Anna Rud — June 20, 2018 — June 20, 2018
Trustworthy links are important. Unique content is crucial. Mobile friendliness is becoming an essential factor. Is it really that simple? Apparently, it’s not. There are so many factors determining a traffic volume on your site, and every factor has its own nuances. Is this possible to take account of everything? Not sure, but we have to try.
In this post, I’m going to share 7 ideas that will boost your search traffic. You might be aware of some of these tactics, but I’m sure you’ll find at least several new ideas to implement on your site.
On-site improvements
#1 Loading speed
Both search engine and an audience will appreciate a website that works fast. First of all, loading speed is indeed a ranking factor. According to the upcoming July 2018 update, it is becoming an important ranking factor in mobile search as well.
Thus, sites that load pages swiftly have a greater chance of high ranking. And high ranking always brings more traffic to your site.
As to behavioral factor, even 1-second delay may cause user’s decision to leave your site and choose another one for his/her purpose. For instance, Pingdom’s study shows how loading speed affects bounce rate:
Without this small improvement, you can lose a lot of traffic, customers, and, as a result, a lot of money.
So what do we do?
For starters, check your site’s loading speed using PageSpeed Insights.
Maile Ohye, a former developer from Google, pointed out:
“2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half second.”
So if your website’s loading speed isn’t under a half second, you might what to find a reason for it and try to speed up your website. The reasons could be:
- Wrong image optimization (wrong size, format, image tag, etc.)
- Outdated elements on the page (flash elements, you should replace it with HTML5)
- Not using cashing;
- Not using compression;
- Slow server response time;
- Usage of the external media;
- jQuery & JavaScript issues;
- Unclean code;
- Too many ads and pop-ups;
- Bad hosting;
- And more.
So if you see that your page loading speed isn’t fast enough, go through this list of issues and check if you do everything right. Improving your loading speed, you can boost your conversions, traffic, and revenue.
#2 Time on site
The time users spend on site is also an important ranking factor. Time on site depends on the type of site (store, service, blog), but in any case, you should strive to reach at least 4-6 minutes.
One person could spend half an hour on your site, but 5 people could spend only 2 seconds each. And since it’s an average time, 6 minutes is a quite good result.
You can check this metric using SimilarWeb plugin:
Also, you can use Google Analytics as it usually shows more accurate data.
So if your time on site is under 30 seconds, you have something to worry about.
So what do we do?
- Make it easy to read/watch your content by keeping a good structure. Break big chunks of text with images, screenshots, subheadings, lists.
- Interlink your pages, insert links to related content within your content or somewhere across your website.
- Avoid clickbait/false promises in the title;
- Make it easy to understand what your content/page is about.
- Create proper navigation on your site.
- Don’t use too many ads and pop-ups (again);
- Create attractive CTA on your pages;
- Engage your audience.
These few tips may help you make people spend more time on your site and visit several pages during one session. And this, in turn, will help you win the trust of Google.
#3 Mobile optimization
No secret that people surf the internet via mobile more frequently than via Desktop these days:
So if your website isn’t optimized for mobile phones, you’d better have a good reason for it. Use mobile-friendly test in Google search console to find out how well your mobile optimization is.
Pay attention to:
- Site speed;
- Mobile UX;
- Mobile HTML sitemap;
- Use schema.org;
- Optimize for local search;
- Mobile site configuration;
- etc.
There are so many factors you should take into account that this topic requires a separate article. I won’t go into details and recommend you to find a detailed checklist and do everything you can to make your site convenient for mobile users. Without this step, your site will become outdated faster than you can say “why.”
Content
#4 LSI and long-tail keywords
Latent semantic indexing helps search engines identify related keywords and synonyms to deliver more accurate search results. It means that Google’s algorithms are capable of understanding the context of the page.
The same word can have several meanings. Thus, synonyms, different variations of words and phrases, related keywords help the search engine understand what your page is about (for instance, aviator – the movie or aviator – sunglasses)
Using these keywords, you will be able to optimize one page for multiple keywords, avoid keyword stuffing, rank for the right keywords, make your content look more naturally.
There are tools like LSI graph, Ubersuggest or Serpstat that provide you with a bunch of LSI keywords.
Serpstat gives you related keywords, search suggestions, and search questions. For instance, for the keyword from the screenshot, it gives us 757 related keywords, 12918 search suggestions, and 201 search questions.
Use long-tail keywords and LSI keywords in your content and optimize your pages for multiple keywords.
#5 Syndicate content
Sharing your content on the social media networks isn’t enough to promote your content properly. There are a lot of places where you can republish or promote your content to get more links and exposure.
For instance:
- Medium;
- Linkedin Publishing;
- Google+;
- Quora;
- Reddit;
- Growth Hacker (for certain niches);
- Hacker News (for certain niches);
- Business 2 Community;
- Social Media Today;
- Relevant forums;
All these platforms allow you republish your content with a link to a blog where this post was published originally. Medium, Linkedin, Quora, Reddit, Google+ are websites every blogger can use. Additionally, you can find websites that republish posts specific to your particular niche.
This graph made by Scoop.it may convince you to start syndicating:
This approach will bring you more links, shares, and traffic.
Social Media
#6 Linkedin or Facebook groups
Linkedin/Facebook groups aren’t places for spammers and advertisers. You can’t publish and promote every single post from your blog/10 posts per day.
You can use these channels only if you:
- have an article that may spark debates;
- have some related questions to ask or discuss with other specialists.
- want to ask for feedback.
Find relevant groups on Facebook and Linkedin and become an active member. Comment, share, speak with other members, help them solve some problems.
After a while, you’ll be able to post your articles in these groups from time to time. Before promoting your content, it’s super important to find and read rules of the community.
It’s quite difficult to share your articles there, but sometimes it may bring awesome traffic.
#7 Pinterest pins
Social media sharing may bring a lot of traffic. Pinterest pins may also bring you a lot of links! Pinterest creates a URL for each pin and repin. So if you promote your articles on Pinterest, you’re getting not only another one source of traffic, but also a great chance to get additional links.
It probably won’t be extremely beneficial if you pin the only one article. But if you pin 10 articles per day, and other people repin it hundred times, you may increase your traffic significantly.
Over to you
Well, SEO is an endless marathon, not a sprint. You might think everything is perfect, but you always can find some avenues for improvement. Here are some of them:
- Speed up your website;
- Work on your content to make your users spend more time on the website;
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly (as much as possible);
- Use LSI and long-tail keywords to optimize one page for multiple keywords without keyword stuffing;
- Syndicate your content to get more links, shares, and traffic;
- Be a part of a community! Share your post on Linkedin/FB groups;
- Pin your articles on Pinterest to get an additional source of links and traffic.
This is it. Hope some of these tips are new to you. Do you have any other ideas to improve SEO strategy? Share it in the comments below.
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