When you create a website to represent your brand or business in the digital space, your ultimate goal is to get as much user attention as possible. This is why you keep looking for ways to drive traffic to your website. The reason behind this is very simple: the more visitors you get on your website, the easier it will be for you to build a loyal audience.
How to Get Traffic to your Website using SEO?
Certainly, there are a lot of ways to drive traffic to your website but if you want to win the never-ending race of remaining on the top of Search Engine Results Pages, you have to take new and unique approaches.
In this blog, we are going to share a few tips that can help you to improve your website’s SEO and get more user attention.
SEO Tips to Drive Your Website Traffic:
We are going to explain different SEO strategies. Each strategy has its own benefits and undoubtedly, all of these will take some time to show results, once implemented.
Choose a Reliable Hosting Service:
When it comes to choosing your hosting service provider, it is important that you pick a reliable one. This way you will not have to worry about a few small but very important things like website speed, uptime, security etc.
The speed of your website has a direct impact on its SEO performance as users never want to be on a website that takes ages to load. And a website with poor uptime and security vulnerabilities can also result in some serious quality issues.
While making the choice, you will come across so many options that are relatively cheaper but do not make this decision on the basis of price only. If you do not want to suffer from performance issues in the future then invest in a good hosting service.
Use an SEO-friendly Theme:
Right after installing WordPress, you will see the platform’s default theme. There is absolutely no issue if you want to stick to this one but for better SEO optimization, it is recommended that you use an SEO-friendly theme. WordPress gives you an option to choose from thousands of free themes.
To check whether a theme is SEO-friendly or not, you can run its demo through Google’s web.dev tool before installation. This will give you a clear insight on potential performance and SEO issues. This makes the decision-making much easier for you.
Install a SEO Plugin:
Manual optimization can help a lot but using a SEO plugin can make things easier for you. There are a few good plugins for this purpose like: All-in-One SEO, Yoast SEO etc. These plugins can add a whole suite of optimization-focused features to your website.
You May Also Read: How To Use Yoast SEO Plugin?
Set a Preferred Domain:
You can choose your preferred domain as either ‘https://domain.com’ or ‘https://www.domain.com’. It does not have any impact on your website’s SEO but always make sure that your website is accessible on just one of these. If you keep using both of them then Google considers them as two different URLs.
Once you set your preferred domain, the other domain version will be redirected to this one.
Check the Website’s Visibility Settings:
In WordPress, you have an option to discourage the search engines from indexing your website. This way, your website will not get ranked. You can use this option when your website is in the development phase.
Sometimes, the visibility settings remain this way even after the website is complete and launched. So you should always check the visibility settings of your website and make sure that it is ready to be indexed by search engines.
Enable SEO-friendly Permalinks:
Permalink is the permanent URLs that points to your website’s individual posts, pages, and other content. WordPress gives you different options for the way in which these URLs are structured. You have to make sure that you are using a SEO-friendly structure option.
By default, WordPress structures the URLs like: ‘https://domain.com/?p=123’. This structure is not SEO-friendly because the URL does not give any hint what this page is about. You always have an option for choosing a custom URL structure. Using links that describe their content are easier for search engines to make sense of. This way you increase your chances of getting a ranking boost. The most search engine friendly permalink structure is the Post name setting so it is recommended that you use this for your website.
Create a Sitemap:
In simple words, sitemap is an organized list of all the pages and other content on your website. This gives a quick idea how the website is laid out and what all it includes. The primary purpose of creating a sitemap is to inform about the website’s pages and sections. So it is very important that you create and submit the XML sitemap of your website. You can use a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps to add one for your website.
Create Engaging Content:
No matter what SEO strategies you use, creating unique and quality content is most important. To drive more and more traffic to your website, you have to make sure that you are providing your audience with the content they are actually looking for. This is the only effective way of creating a loyal user base.
Perform Keyword Research:
While running a website, it is important that you have a fair idea which search terms you should be optimizing your site’s content for. For this, you have to carry out keyword research. This helps you to plan your website content better. There are different tools that you can use for keyword research.
Use a Caching Plugin:
When you use a caching plugin, it will generate static HTML files instead of the PHP files that are normally required to run WordPress. This way the number of requests between the server and your user’s browser is minimized and it results in a faster loading website.
There are so many good options of caching plugins available like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. You can choose the one that fits your requirements.
Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions:
The title tag of a page informs the users and search engines what your page is about. So it is considered as an important ranking factor. When you use a SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, it will automatically set your page’s title tag using the page heading. But you always have the option of changing it according to your requirements.
Meta descriptions do not have any direct impact on your website’s ranking but they indirectly impact your website’s organic performance. So it is recommended that you write an enticing description for your page. Make sure the description you use is within the already specified character limit (160 characters).
Use Interlinks:
Every page of a website gets a score by search engines. This score is also called page authority. Although nobody has a clear idea on what basis this score is given, it has been observed that pages with more no. of links get higher scores.
This is why it is very important that you add internal links on your pages. Interlinking also helps you to establish topical relevance between different pages of your website. This is a proven way to boost the pageviews and increase the time users spend on your site. Ultimately, this will improve the SEO of your website and drive more online traffic.
Optimize Images:
How do you make your website’s content more engaging? The simplest way of doing so is, using images and rich media within the content. This improves the way your content appears on the website and keeps the user engaged for a longer time. But every time you upload a media file, make sure you are using optimized file names. The name you use for your image should give a clear idea what it is about. The name you choose for the image should reflect what it shows.
Adding ALT tags to each image is also important. Always make sure that you are adding ALT tags to every file you upload each of them. These tags give context and a description of your images to search engines. The ALT text you choose should have a clear description of what the image shows.
Wrapping Up!
Hopefully, this article has helped you to understand how to drive traffic to your website. If you use the right SEO strategy at the right time, it can do wonders.
Still have some doubts about this? To get some expert advice you can call us. Our team of WordPress experts will assist you with all your queries.
FAQs:
QA: Name a few good SEO plugins.
Ans: All-in-One SEO, Yoast SEO,SEMRush, Ahrefs are a few plugins that can help you improve your website’s SEO.
QA: Can misconfiguration from the server-side can cause your website to become slow?
Ans: Yes, sometimes an issue related to the server can make a website sluggish..
QA: Name a few tools to reduce the image size before uploading.
Ans: A few good image optimization tools are TinyPNG, JPEG Optimizer, Optimizilla, Optimole, ImageRecycle etc.
QA: Can broken links affect a website’s ranking?
Ans: Yes, broken links can have a negative impact on your website’s ranking so it is important that you always get rid of them.
QA: What is the most preferred URL structure type for permalinks?
Ans: The most search engine friendly URL structure is the Post name setting so it is recommended that you use this.
