So you want to build a website … Or maybe your current website isn’t bringing as much traffic as you expected. That means you want to boost traffic and transform your website into a true business development tool.
Traffic is a huge challenge for websites. Obviously, without traffic, a site can’t be profitable. But why doesn’t your traffic take off? How can you boost it?
We will explain how to do it in this article!
If your site lacks visitors it’s simply because it hasn’t been correctly identified by search engines which, as a result, don’t show it in their search results.
A website audit is the first step in your recovery phase.
You can do it yourself using various software programs or have an SEO expert guide you through it.
How to audit your site
First of all, you need to analyze the data from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster, two free programs provided by Google:
Google Analytics lets you know how many visitors you have, which pages of your site are visited, how long visits to your website last, and the recorded bounce rate. When you compare your data with the average numbers, you’ll get an early indication of how your pages perform.
Google Webmaster is an essential tool that lets you know if your website has anomalies identified by Google:
– Titles or descriptions that are duplicated, too short, or too long
– Poorly indexed pages (not taken into account by Google)
– Whether your site is navigable on mobile devices (responsive design)
What’s more, Google Webmaster tells you which keywords are identified with your site in its search engine. This is significant because the choice of keywords and how they rank are both extremely important to your SEO.
So, take the time to analyze the keywords identified by Google Webmaster. They should be relevant to your field and accurately reflect the character of your business. This first step will take between 1 and 2 hours.
At this point in the audit, you should turn to professional software. All the programs listed here offer free versions that are sufficient, in most cases, for establishing an accurate diagnosis.
– Woorank, Site Analyzer, SEO grader, Yakaferci, Elkseo all give an overall quality score for your website with regard to these key analytical criteria: keywords, titles, loading speed, responsive design, meta descriptions.
Go ahead and conduct an analysis of each of these different tools. You’ll be able to compare several reports and get more information.
– Alyze.org is a tool that gives you a detailed, page by page analysis of how your keywords are used: what they are, where they’re positioned on the page, whether they’re used properly. It’s an excellent baseline tool.
There is always the option to use other, more powerful, paid software. If your website is large, it can be very fruitful to use these programs.
In addition to the cost, these software programs are also more complex to use: SemRush, MyRanking metrics.
This first step will take between 1 and 2 hours to collect the information.
Now is the time to analyze all the data.
It will take anywhere from 5 minutes to 1 day. A 5-minute analysis means your website is perfect. If the analysis takes too long, you may come to the conclusion that it will be simpler in the end to redo your website.
Note: Don’t be afraid to try to rank for long tail keywords. They account for 80% of your traffic.
You may define your priorities as you see fit. Just make sure to include all the following elements
Work on your keywords:
– Find new keywords to expand your lexical field. At the minimum, you should have 150 to 200 keywords to cover the scope of searches related to your business.
– Re-work the titles and descriptions of each one of your pages by inserting your chosen keywords. This can be more or less complex depending on the CMS you’re using. These elements are essential for search engines to understand the content of your pages.
– Insert your keywords into the text of your pages and into your image descriptions, file names, and alt tags to make your content easier to understand for Google’s bots.
It is also likely that you will need to enrich the existing content of your pages with new content.
A page needs to have a minimum of 300 words to be taken into account by the search engines. And a page of more than 1,000 words is more likely to be considered relevant by Google. But this doesn’t mean you can just string together unconnected words without meaning or interest. Coherent textual content is of vital importance. Google actually analyzes content. Remember, though, to create content with your users in mind first and Google second.
Finally, you may need to correct some technical anomalies related to your website.
The most frequent are:
– 404 errors where a link in a page sends the user to a page that no longer exists
– A website lacking responsive design
– A website that does not respect the HTTPS protocol
– A slow website (a page that takes more than 2 seconds to load is a problem)
The completion of this action plan requires time and an established method.
It is difficult to give a precise estimate the workload. It will depend on the volume of corrections to be made, the number of pages on your site, and the CMS you’re using.
After this correction phase, about a month later, it is essential to repeat the application of the various tools you used for your diagnosis. It’s the only way to measure the differences and to see if all the problems and anomalies have been corrected properly.
It is quite likely that the corrections made on your website will result in significantly increased traffic. The more corrections you make, the more dramatic the impact will be.
With quality as the baseline, it is now necessary to liven up your site. There is no magic wand for the internet.
To be indexed and to rank high, you need to produce quality content on a regular basis. Articles, photo essays, infographics, everything counts.
Ideally, you should aim to update your site once a week. Each time, make sure to validate that you’re using the right keywords in the right way. Does this seem like a lot of extra work to do every time you create content? Don’t worry, it will quickly become a reflex and fit naturally into your planning.
Once your online sales start rolling in as a result of this work, you won’t have a problem doing it.
Creating and linking a blog to your site is a proven method for gaining visibility.
By creating a blog you increase your chances of ranking well for your keywords.
Regularly creating blog content on topics related to your business activities is a great way to liven up your site.
By definition, a blog is animated and lively because it is interactive. Internet users leave comments and opinions, plus they discuss your content with each other.
A blog is also a good channel for promoting your products and/or services while using a less commercial tone. Not just obvious advertising, it’s also useful information.
So, if you don’t yet have a blog, it’s worth seriously thinking about creating one.
But that’s not all. Creating content is a great thing for your traffic, but only if your content is shared. You can start the ball rolling by sharing it on your social media networks.
Don’t have a social media page for your business yet? You need one. Social networks are a great way to interact with your users and create buzz around your website.
Your website works for you 24 hours a day.
As a small or medium-sized business, you can use your website to your advantage, even without a dedicated budget, to grow your business. All you need to do is implement a tried and true method while following SEO best practices. We recommend that you take a look at the top 100 organic SEO actionable steps to take for a thoroughly optimized site: Top 100 des actions de référencement naturel.
Now that you have the roadmap to success for boosting your website’s traffic, all that’s left for us to do is to wish you good luck!