Increase Traffic to a Website – One of the most popular questions I get as a website designer is, “How can I increase traffic to a website”? Typically this question is asked within a few weeks of launching a new website design and the client has grown comfortable with my blunt website advice.
A quick note: I don’t think of website or blog ownership as emotional – it’s a business and should be treated like one. Therefore, my responses are always going to be business-directed and with a 3-4 step process to get from here to there.
So, if you want to know some quick and easy ways to increase traffic to a website, keep reading!
3 Easy Ways to Increase Traffic to a Website
There are several easy ways to increase traffic to a website, but there are only three that I am going to share with you today. I selected these three because they are easy to do, easy to track progress and use free tools.
In this article we are going to go over 3 ways to increase traffic to a website:
- Utilizing Emails Newsletters to Drive Familiar Traffic
- Optimize Your Top Google Analytics Articles
- Check out Ubbersuggest and Start Optimizing Keyword Phrases Like a Pro
Let’s dive in!
#1: Quickest and Most Effective Way is Daily Email Newsletters
If you haven’t already started to collect email addresses from your website visitors — STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND GO SIGN UP NOW! Then, come back and skip to step #2.
If you already have a growing email list – all you have to do is begin sending out regular newsletters. If you’re a 1x/month kinda business or blog, increase it to 1x/week. If you’ve been sending out newsletters 1x/week, try for 2-3x/week. Be sure to include the main “call to action” back to your website in some way. Whether to your homepage, a single post or a contact page.
A Personal Example: CleanCuisine.com
A few months ago, I was chatting with one of my amazing clients, Yvonne from Stone Gable Blog about ways to increase traffic to my website called CleanCuisine.com; a clean eating recipe blog. We were already sending out 3-4 emails each week to our readers when she encouraged me to go to 6x/week.
At first I was concerned I would be over-sending to our readers because I did not want to annoy them. But Yvonne reminded me that our recipe fans will appreciate it and will be consistent traffic to our site. SHE WAS RIGHT! We increased sending our newsletters and have increased our website traffic by about 4,000-5,500 return visitors each week.
Suggested Design for a Simple Newsletter:
There is a simple and easy way to design a newsletter to drive traffic to your website. Here the the three must have elements to your newsletter along with some examples.
01. A simple navigation bar at the top helping your newsletter receiver to find different areas of your website quickly.
02. One GREAT photo that grabs attention quickly and drivers the reader to want to learn more about what you’re promoting.
03. A SINGLE call to action button. Yes, just one. If you include too many, you can overwhelm the reader. They will be more apt to click off of the newsletter rather than click on your website.
Keep it simple stupid is my tried-and-true philosophy. There’s no need to make it complicated.
Some Simple Newsletter Examples from CleanCuisine.com:
- The Best Non-Toxic Baking Pan – Simply designed newsletter with direct call to actions.
- Spirulina is Better Than a Multi-Vitamin – An educational-based article as the primary with secondary linking to more nutritional-based recipes. All links lead to my website.
- Try Daily Harvest Smoothies for $4.65/cup – A high converting promotion for a brand we love to work with. This direct marketing pitch helped drive traffic to our website and several conversions to purchase from Daily Harvest. A win-win.
#2: Select Your Top 20 Posts to Optimize for Google Organic Search
You know by now that I can’t write an article without using Google tools somehow, some way. Although I am NOT a big fan of google search (Yes, we use DuckDuckGo), we do use a lot of Google’s free tools to find what we need for business.
The next step in increase traffic to a website is understanding how to find your top 20 posts on your website and then optimize them for Google Organic Search.
If you’re familiar with Google Analytics — then, go find your top 20 articles. Be specific to select SOURCE and note that the articles are already converting organic google search to increase traffic to a website and optimize them.
If this sounds like a foreign language to you, don’t be alarmed. Less than 10% of my clients knew what this meany when they first begin working with me. But I guarantee you, if we build a website together, this is one of the many things you’ll learn in the process.
So, let’s start at the beginning… Google Analytics is your friend. Through the next few steps, you’ll learn how to find those top organic articles to optimize them in order to increase traffic to a website.
Don’t Have Analytics? Set up a FREE Google Analytics Account Today!
Google Analytics is a FREE web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and is currently a part of their Google Marketing Platform brand. Following these steps to activate analytics on your website or blog today.
Once you’ve got your UA Code plugged into your site and then give Google a few days to update your analytics. You know your dashboard is working when Google provides real-time information on what pages and posts on your site are getting traffic.
How to Use Google Analytics to Increase Traffic to a Website
The next thing you need to do is go find these articles. So, if the above direction didn’t make sense, the go through the next few steps.
- Log into your Google Analytics Account
- Go to: BEHAVIOR > SITE CONTENT > ALL PAGES
- If possible, change the date to reflect back 3 months. For example: January 1, 2021 – March 31, 2021. This will give you 12 months of data to reflect top articles on your site.
- Next you want to select Page next to Primary Dimension then select: Acquisition > Source
- This will sort out the main referral sources of traffic to your top pages. For the purposes of this post, we will only be discussing GOOGLE as the aquisition source. Open a new dropbox paper doc and google doc and begin logging down the 20 top article gaining traffic by Google. This is our focus!
- Optimize the top 20 pages gaining google organic traffic – then push through Google Console so that Google will re-track them.
- Continue optimizing (convert to block editor and use Book Block, if possible??) old posts that are seasonal for the summer and fall so they optimize over the next month or so.
Ways to Optimize Your Top Articles
You guessed it – there are three simple ways to optimize your articles that are ranking high on organic google search. Here we go…
01. If you haven’t already, convert the article to block editor (stop using classic editor). Block editor will automatically update for browsers and devices and streamline the usability of the articles.
02. Expand your article by writing 2-3 additional headings and paragraphs to broaden the reach of the article while maintaining the core information. For example, this 14 Health Benefits of Spirulina article was very short at one time. As I noticed it gaining traction on Google Search, I expanded it to include by favorite spirulina shot recipe, more information about the health benefits and even the taste of spirulina.
03. Replace the photos, add more photos and/or add meta tags. All images loaded to a site carries meta data. Make sure you are utilizing this space on the image to include details about the image description that represent the post. It’s an easy and efficient way to optimize your article for Google Search.
Now – there’s one more way to increase traffic to a website — but it’s a bit more involved so it has it’s own heading. Don’t worry – if I have done it successfully this past year and seen incredible results on my own sites, then I KNOW you can do it too!
#3: Optimize Highest Trafficked Articles on Your Website Using Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest, by Neil Patel is an incredible tool for optimizing your articles, identifying keyword phrases that you can rank for and website competition comparisons. Ubersuggest has all the tools you need to be successful when writing articles on your WordPress website.
This tool can be a little tricky when you are using the free search option. Searches are limited to no more than 10 a day in a 24 hour period. So, use it wisely — or, check out pricing options for an upgrade if you need more searches. You can also look for a lifetime license that is available sometimes and pay 1 flat fee for a lifetime use of Ubersuggest. Trust me, it’s totally worth it.
In early 2021, I bought the lifetime license for this business to help our customers with organic google search audits and tracking. Not only have I made incredible improvements using the Ubersuggest Website Audit tool, but now I have more insight on what searches are being used to access our website.
Last month, I shared 2 Free SEO Tools. If you think you’re ready to dive deep into organic search optimization, then head over there right now and dive in.
It’s important to not only build a well-developed website, but to also maintain relevant content that your audience will enjoy. If you implement these ways to increase traffic to a website, in a few weeks you will see improvement.
Ready to have your site audited for Core Web Vitals or Google Search Engine Optimization? Send me a message and let’s schedule a chat.
