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One SEO Expert walks into a bar, bars, pub, inn, tavern, drinks, beer, alcohol...You’ve probably recognized this pattern if you once worked with web optimization. Practices that worked as a rule of thumb several years ago can’t increase your website traffic today. Furthermore, some of them can even negatively affect your web source ranking.
These days optimization is a complex work that’s directed towards overall quality enhancement of your web source, content, and user experience. Real conclusions about web traffic boost can be made on the basis of statistics for several months. Nevertheless, new email marketing campaigns, correctly structured blog posts, search engine ranking factors 2019, and effective advertising strategies will help you attract substantially larger audiences just in 3 days.
1. How to improve traffic with right Meta Tags
Title and description are the first things your prospects see in the search results. Thus, meta tags are the primary factors that define whether a user visits your web source or not.
To increase traffic to your website, make sure that your titles and descriptions are no longer than 60 and 150 characters respectively. Otherwise, their endings will display as “...”, which is not 'reader-friendly.'
Titles that cause the highest increase in web traffic usually contain numbers and/or trigger words like “You,” “Ways,” “How to,” “New,” “Win,” “Free,” etc.
Common mistake! In title and description, you don’t have to summarize or generalize the idea of the whole article in one sentence. The results might look boring like the glass of tap water. The idea is to hook the reader's attention for further reading.
Compare these two variants of SEO description:
“US keeps spending $34.billion on banners campaigns. Why US, EU, and CN advertisers invest the biggest part of ad funds in banners, and you should too.”
and summary-like one:
“All that you should know about banner creatives: sizes, formats, and resolutions. Learn how to start your banner ad campaign easily.”
Even though the first one might look like ripped out of context, it instantly catches the interest of the target audience and retains it. It’s concise, has specific data, and it is different from typical snippet results the one might stumble upon searching for an article devoted to ‘banner ads.’
2. How to generate free traffic with guest posts and vlogging
You may have amazing content writers on your team, but blog posts made by experts in your niche significantly expand your reach and add credibility to your blog. Furthermore, guest bloggers often share great content they write on social media. Better reach = better chances to be spotted by users.
It takes no more than one day to compose and send 10-15 emails. At least one or two influencers will agree to write for you, especially if you offer them a fair compensation: this can become a part of their blog monetization strategy.
Don’t forget to explore alternative sources of media like Youtube and guest vlogging. Making the video and posting it on other popular vlogger’s resource is underestimated but very effective strategy.
Even a small brand can become a big YouTube influencer in the narrow business niche. For this, you can attract and interview a famous industry expert or ask one of your employees to share their knowledge in the subject of their competencies. If you manage to fill the uncovered subject gap on the Internet, all audiences who make such queries are yours.
Video Title: Make an appealing headline. For starters, you can research the topics using YouTube’s autocomplete suggestions:
2. Add a video description. Using correct description you can optimize your vlog just like you do it with your blog. Use YouTube keyword tool to find essential YouTube keywords you want to rank by.
3. Finally, encourage social media shares at the end of each video. The more people will share your videos, the more backlinks you get for your site.
Make “upside-down guest” posts. This is a flip side of the previous tip: in this case, you take the role of a guest blogger on third-party sources.
The main advantage of this method is that you get their whole user base to generate free traffic to your website. Just adhere to this rule: write only for blogs that have your target audience among their readers. Ideally, these resources should feature a lot of Facebook and Twitter shares.
For example, if you run a website dedicated to social media marketing software, you may try to write for Social Media Today, Tech Crunch, and Convince & Convert.
How much traffic guest blogging can drive? If you optimized it well and the subject is right you can receive up to a thousand visitors from one blog post in several days after publication.
Writing an “upside-down guest” post is almost the same as writing an average post with a single difference. Typically the author’s bio is laying low at the end of the page where no one sees it along with a link to your web source. Here is a solution to this:
- Create a blog post like you normally do.
- Insert several sections called “Useful Resources’ inside of your post and make them relevant to your topic.
- Include your link in one of them.
According to Brian Dean from Backlinko, this link produces 78% traffic increase (compared to link in bio).
3. Build links using “link roundup” strategy
Let's steer it clear right away: backlinks are still essential for ranking in Google, and ‘link roundup’ strategy helps to maximize their number for your source. What we are looking for here is regularly posted collections of useful materials and lists that are published once per week or once per month.
If you write articles regularly, you have an excellent chance to get into one of those collections. For starters, you will have to find them in Google using query combinations:
- your keyword + link roundup
- your keyword + best of
- your keyword + this week
After you find selections you need, get in touch with editors of the section category you aim for. Finding their email will not be a problem with Hunter.io
4. Adapt to the new SERP functions
Bets are high, you've noticed how often Google adds to the search results more and more features. After putting a query to the search, the user typically finds a knowledge panel which looks like this:
As part of a test, blocks with answers started to collect information from several types of sources at once: videos from Youtube, articles, and even ads.
The majority of webmasters prefer using specific keywords that they select based on competition and the number of impressions per month. However, search widgets that Google launches distract users from initial intention to click. As a result, only 35% of people will eventually click on the organic result according to Ahrefs.
Here’s the conclusion you should draw from this, aim for low-frequency keywords in order to increase the likelihood that your target visitors click on your site instead of what Google has to suggest for the subject.
5. Launch an email marketing campaign with social media sharing
Did you know that an email with at least one social media sharing option generates a 30% higher click-through-rate? The survey on email and social media marketing integration says that adding 3 or more options skyrocket your CTR by 55%.
Getting traffic to your website is based on one simple principle. Let’s imagine you sent 100 emails to your targets. An average CTR is around 4%, so roughly four people will visit your site. But, in this email marketing campaign, you also embedded a Facebook sharing button. An average Facebook user has 155 friends who will also see your piece of content. Of course, â  of them can be inactive, so we may affirm that adding sharing options automatically equals sending another bunch of 100 emails.
6. Get more visitors republishing blog posts on Medium
Apart from the blog, Medium can be your additional website traffic generator. It is a publishing platform with over 60 million monthly readers where everyone can share their ideas. It’s focused on blog-like content, so a lot of brands (among them are The Economist, Coinbase, and Financial Times) use Medium as another method to attract the audiences.
The best thing about Medium: you don’t need to write original content. The platform allows the users to syndicate their existing blog posts to their Medium accounts. This takes less than 3 minutes.
Most important things you’ll need to make your posts stand out on Medium
- A compelling, emotional and original headline that makes people curious.
- Incorporate LSI keywords into your posts to make Google understand you’re really covering the subject instead of just stuffing it with target keywords.
- Use an interesting, thought-provoking or unusual image that catches the eye.
- Post regularly.
To get the maximum views, you need to rise to the top in your category, so you also have to always come up with a catchy headline. If you are one of those people who always need extra hours in a day, automate and simplify headline creation using headline generators, like HubSpot topic generator.
7. Make the new content from old
Take a look at the graph below: the search result #1 (which gets 33% of all website traffic by this query) is 1950-words long on average, according to Backlinko. This happens because people love great in-depth articles and long-reads, same do the search engines.
In case you’ve accumulated a good base of articles that barely rank, transforming them into new is the best thing you can do for your blog as it will demand less time than writing new. If their originality is close to 70-99%, you can work with this material and enrich it with new information the users are looking for.
Also, this helps to retain the page’s age, which is right for your blog, and gradually increase content volume to make information relevant and useful for visitors.
Expand your posts to at least 1500-2000 words, including all relevant information. Analyze trends in your industry, popular long-tail keywords, and top Quora questions related to your topic. Then write up what’s missing.
What tricks content revamping may include?
- Enriching the article with the newest statistical data from sources.
- Including the new keywords featuring a current year, for instance, “Best tips to boost your traffic in 2019.”
- Adding new information which is not covered in articles of your competitors (for example, your little survey or examples, use cases taken from your personal experience).
- Including interactive media to the article to boost user engagement. Btw, polls, quizzes, interactive infographics, and other interactive content elements you can make without coders and designers. On PlayBuzz and similar platforms, you can create them for free and embed to your page.
8. Increase internet traffic answering questions on Quora
Why don’t you prove yourself as an expert on Quora, a great question-and-answer platform on the web? For instance, if you are a programmatic expert, answering relevant questions like
“What is programmatic advertising?” or “How is programmatic different from real-time bidding” can guarantee you success.
This technique increases traffic to your website or particular web page: you may include a link in your bio or add it in the answer as a source of additional information. Those who need in-depth data on the topic will visit your site or even subscribe.
9. Enable push notifications in browser
Have you ever noticed pop-up windows on web source suggesting you get notifications from them? The good example is Facebook: if you enable this option, you will receive notifications about new messages and event reminders in the browser.
Enable this option for your web source and drive more traffic from the visitors that will return on it receiving the notification. Instead of sending newsletters to your audience, politely ask them whether they would like to receive pop-up notifications about new blog posts, product updates, and discounts in their browser.
10. Driving internet traffic by running a giveaway
Giveaways are contests popular among Instagram bloggers. They ask followers to complete a short list of easy actions — follow their account, like five latest posts, publish a specific Instagram story, etc., afterward, they promise to give away some products for free to winners. After 2-3 days a few people receive their gifts when the blogger enjoys an increased number of followers.
If your business has Instagram, you may offer one of your products or services for free. If you don’t, it’s possible to send giveaways via email address or publish as a banner ad on another web source through the Demand Side Platform. The word “FREE” is the most potent trigger for the majority of people, so giveaways always result in a higher number of visitors, sales, and subscription rates.
11. How to increase web traffic with 5 native ads
All the methods mentioned above are about 'how to increase website traffic for free.' But if you are looking for the surest way to boost site visits for business, choose digital advertising.
If you want to attract more visitors, we recommend you to shift your focus from regular display ads to native advertising.
Native ads are 52% more visually appealing to users. Appearing less pushy and more organic, native ads bring 0.2% CTR on average when display ads demonstrate much lower results - 0.05%. Use display ads for retargeting campaigns and focus efforts on native ads.
Native ads visually adapt to your website interface and functions so that they don’t irritate users and sometimes even deliver useful information that subsequently gets shared and reposted.
So, if you get 100 visitors from display ads today, a native ad will bring you 25x more tomorrow. If you publish five advertisements, you’ll get 10,000 instead of 500.
If you still place the ads manually, you have to consider an automated solution for real-time-bidding — a Demand Side Platform for the number of reasons.
DSP enables advertisers to target only relevant users across the world: the ones that meet specific criteria: location, browser type, age, and other variables. The algorithmic buying helps to determine the optimal bid for the ad impression and automatically close the deals real-time.
Moreover, through such a platform you can get access to detailed reports on your campaign, fine-tune it and optimize the media buying process based on obtained data.
Conclusion: driving traffic to websites is easy
Experiment with several tips and see which are working better for your business. One-time visiting boosts are great: they show that people find what you do interesting, all you needed was a little push forward. Still, without well-thought overall marketing and advertising strategy, you can’t guarantee the results.
You need to create a plan for each element of marketing strategy — email and social media marketing, SEO, advertising, etc. And when it comes to the last one, a Demand Side Platform is a long-term investment that comes in handy every time you deal with digital advertising.
