5 Steps to Get More Traffic from Google: Explained
Have you ever struggled to get organic traffic to your site, and all the SEO tips you tried didn't work? No worries - it happens to everyone, but with a little effort, you can easily start to gain web traffic quickly. In this short article, we will show you how to get more traffic from Google with five easy-to-follow steps. After reading this article, you should be able to boost your website's traffic significantly, without resorting to "black hat" techniques or expensive advertising budgets.
What we won’t cover (because it varies for every website) is how much you will increase your website traffic. Where you start and where you finish is based on your audience, your market, and how optimized your website is. Simply put, not all websites are created equal, and getting traffic to your website is more challenging with a poorly designed and slow website.
Step 1 - Understanding How Google works
When someone searches for a term, Google is trying to return relevant websites that answer their question. There are hundreds of factors that Google considers when ranking a website; some of them are:
- Content - Is your content answering the searcher's question? Are you providing the most valuable answer?
- Links - Do other websites link to your site? If those sites are relevant and popular, it is a good sign that you are doing something right!
- Bounce Rate - Do people stay on your site or do they leave quickly? The more people that stay on your site, the better. This means they found what they were looking for.
Some things Google will never tell you but you need to know in order to rank well:
Rank Brain has changed the search algorithm in 2016. To understand how the algorithm works and why it changed, you must first understand how Rank Brain works.
The human brain takes about 1/2 second for someone to process and respond to a stimulus (a video, image or text). This is as fast as we can go without thinking about it. Therefore, Rank Brain is designed to respond to stimuli within 1/2 second with an answer. It does this via Artificial Intelligence and is constantly evaluating relevance and User Experience (UX).
Therefore it is important to understand your audience extremely well and to ensure you optimize every detail to answer user questions quickly.
Step 2 - Know Your Audience
The more you understand about your customers, the more likely it is that you can rank above the competition. Here are five strategies to get your customers in the door:
Understand buyer personas.
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customer. They help you focus on who you want to attract, what they want, and how you can appeal to them. Focus on three main aspects:
- Who are they?
- What do they value?
- What are their pain points?
Solve a problem that your ideal customer has and offer them a solution to their problem. You can also create a buyer persona based on a competitor's customer profile that is already ranking well in Google search results. And remember, sometimes SEO isn't always the best approach — make sure personas align with your marketing strategy and business goals before diving into SEO or PPC campaign tactics.
Minimize friction.
Friction is anything that makes it difficult for customers to interact with your website or call to action. When customers experience any kind of friction, they become frustrated and look for information elsewhere. It's important to have a mobile-responsive website that loads quickly and an easy-to-use interface for users to
Step 3 - Find the Right Keywords
For any transaction to take place, a buyer must solve a problem with a product or solution. Chances are your target buyer is searching for solutions by typing in words they think they'll find an answer to a question. Therefore, it's important to find out how those questions are asked so that your SEO strategy is optimized to capture traffic.
The first thing we need to do is set up our Google AdWords Keyword Planner. It's a free tool from Google that allows us to search for keywords based on search volume and competition level (this tells us how competitive a keyword is). You can also filter by language and location.
Second, research websites that offer similar products and services to see what keywords they are focused on. This is an easy place to start and capture what others are using to target your audience. Although, this seems like the easiest way to start it is by no means where you should finish your keyword research.
Third, look for keywords that others are bidding on, but are easy to rank for (i.e. have low competition). This seems intuitive, but keyword research can easily overwhelm the best of us.
Lastly, use long-tail keywords to bypass competing for extremely competitive keywords. For example, let’s say your website offers Low Card Diet Recipes and you’re writing a blog for ‘How to Make Low Carb Pizza’ after researching the relevant keywords on Google - you would have a difficult time ranking for ‘low carb pizza’ compared to a long-tail keyword ‘how to make low carb pizza at home.’
Another free and easy way to find long-tail keywords is to use Google Suggest. It’s extremely easy, simply type in target keywords in Google.
Once we have our keyword list, we can use this list as inspiration to create focused content around our keywords or even use these keywords as the foundation of our content creation strategy.
Step 4 - Create Amazing and Relevant Content
Creating exceptional content is an art and a science. It takes time and energy to focus your content strategy on your audience. However, having a plan to create content regularly and publishing on a schedule is the best way to start your content marketing efforts.
To be successful in your content marketing endeavors, you must have a plan in place. If you plan ahead of time, you can avoid creating irrelevant or redundant content that will hurt user experience. You also will not end up with hundreds of great ideas that never see the light of day because you didn't plan ahead.
Before you begin writing, planning is essential. If you have a set schedule and guidelines for what type of content you will share, it becomes easier to create great content consistently over time.
When creating your plan, keep in mind who your target audience is. Research their blogs and social media accounts so you are aware of what types of posts they typically read. This will help when deciding on topics for your blog posts and social media updates.
Staying organized is critical. Airtable is our preferred method for planning, organizing, and staying on schedule. Plus it has great integrations to easily publish to a host of Content Management Systems (CMS).
Step 5 - Measure and Optimize Your Website
The last step to increase your traffic is to continually measure and optimize performance. Knowing what content is working, what keywords are driving traffic, and which parts of your site are driving conversions is the best way to continually gain web traffic.
Google makes it pretty easy to figure out what's working with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a must for all websites. It will allow you to track your website traffic and conversions, as well as find out what your users are doing on your site. Google Analytics tracks the number of visitors to your website and which pages they visit, how long they stay on the site and which links they click on. It also tells you which search engine keywords people used to find your website. This can be valuable information because it helps you determine whether specific pages or parts of your website need to be changed or updated. It also lets you know which keywords work best so you can optimize them in your future content.
The setup process for Google Analytics is very simple. You need to download the tracking code from Google's Analytics site, which will enable the tracking system on your site. Then all you have to do is add the tracking code to every page of your website (or if you use Webflow just install it in settings). The tracking code is asynchronous JavaScript, so it doesn't slow down the load time of your webpages.
Start Now and Watch it Grow
These tips should have you well on your way to getting more organic traffic from Google. You probably won't achieve instant results, but it's worth the effort when you know that inbound marketing is truly a long-term strategy. Be patient, be diligent, and above all else, keep tweaking your strategy and tracking results. Over time, you'll see those organic numbers climbing—and the next thing you know, people will be knocking down your door to ask how you did it.
