Advertising
You can create the best looking site on the web, but what good is it if no one can find it? This is where advertising and promotion comes in. By promoting your site in the right channels online, you will see that it takes a bit of muscle and a lot of knowledge to get the public to know about your products or services.
There are a few ways to advertise your site on the internet, like paid search (PPC), which will basically generate instant traffic, but again, you have to pay for it. If you want instant visitors to your site, this may be the best option for you at the time.
SEO and social advertising are usually free options, but it takes much longer to find your keywords organically in your chosen market. If you want to attract visitors who are interested in your brand, you will need to target high traffic channels and high PA / DA sites that already have a huge amount of traffic.
Writing content on Web 2.0 profiling sites is another form of advertising. Make sure to write long content (1000-1500 words) and use meta descriptions and internal link plus external links to promote other pages on and off your website. On-page content optimization is great for SEO and will help drive not only your website traffic through organic search, but also your Google Page Rank.
Social marketing
You may have the most attractive site in your market, but unless you market it so users can find it, what’s the point? Certainly one of the best and cheapest ways to increase traffic to your website is to produce website content and then share it on social media channels.
Use as many social media pages as you can to market your content … for free! Facebook and Twitter are the immediately obvious choices because they are widely used and have millions of users.
Content marketing is all about making your headlines and titles short and nimble so that people click on the link provided to see your content right away. Headlines drive traffic, or let me say, the right headline will drive traffic. You have to increase the interest so that a visitor wants to know more about the publication.
The theme should be clear and easy to read with some great graphics and a call to action (CTA) if you want them to click on the backlink that leads to your website. Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vimeo, and YouTube are great for promoting products through infographics, images, or videos. Don’t forget the title and description! This is what grabs your attention in the first place. Who knows, your content may even go viral!
LinkedIn is the largest professional social network on the Internet today, so don’t forget about LinkedIn when looking for good places to post your content. Your LinkedIn profile will get noticed and all your posts will eventually get website traffic due to the links they contain. It’s about posting quality content on a regular basis to grow your following. As soon as you write new articles, your followers will be notified and will review your content.
Remember to also vary the length of each post and mix it up and write about the things that people really care about or are looking for a solution for. There are literally thousands of people every day in North America who Google your services and / or products online. They search for specific keywords, so make sure they find your site and not your competitor’s.
Guest blogging
Yes, guest blogging is alive and well, and as long as you’re in your “related market,” search engines won’t penalize you for promoting your website in this way.
Posting content on related websites will increase traffic to your site or blog. It will help build brand awareness and drive traffic and sales in the process. There are rules for guest blogging, so be sure to keep the topic in a related context and only provide a link or two to your money site, landing page, or services page.
If you don’t follow Google’s Best Practice Guide when posting to other blogs, you may be penalized, so be careful and proceed accordingly.
There is another way to guest blog, which is to get other people to post content to your site. Again, this has to be related to the niche you are already in. Linking to another page with related content is often seen as a good thing in the eyes of search engines, and you can even earn valuable page ranking points for your efforts. When it comes down to it, make sure all articles and blog posts are quality content, not spam in nature. You will be penalized for any low quality content or massive backlinking tactics on the web, so again be careful when blogging as a guest.
Target the right keywords
You may need to hire a local SEO company to learn how to target keywords for your market. The company will first do an SEO analysis of your website to determine how well it is optimized for search engines and then create a list of keywords to use in an upcoming SEO campaign for your brand. Remember, you want to be found organically in search engines for your products and services, in your chosen market, for your specific set of keywords.
Some of these keywords may be just one or two phrases, while others may be long-tail keywords. These types of long-tail keywords are the ones that account for a large percentage of daily searches on Google. People write what comes to mind at the time, looking for a product in their market. Guess what? They will find your product if your site is optimized using the right keywords for your brand.
Get a free SEO analysis of your website from a local SEO services company, just as a starting point. This part will cost you nothing and will let you know if you need to hire someone to fix your site page SEO.
Web optimization for mobile devices
More and more Internet is being surfed on mobile phones. Years ago, it was done mostly on desktop PCs and Macs, but those days are long gone.
People want a quick way to search for products, services, restaurants or book a tuna charter in PEI. They want to respond quickly and they want it now. That’s where smartphone search comes in.
Basically everyone has some kind of iPhone or Android phone these days with a data plan so they can always have the internet handy in case they need it. With that said, as a web developer, you better ensure that your website is responsively optimized for mobile devices of all shapes and sizes. Your website should be accessible with easy-to-read content.
Search engines have adapted their algorithms to award points for responsive design. In fact, in the last six months since the last Google update, if your site is not optimized for mobile devices, you receive a penalty, or that or you will not receive positive ticks.
One tip: make sure your visitors can find you on the web and view your business website on any smartphone, iPad, or Samsung device. You will get valuable page ranking points from Google and you will also get more website traffic and possibly more sales in the process.
Fast loading website
You will earn points from Google and other major search engines like Bing and Yahoo if your site loads quickly. Who wants to spend 20-30 seconds for any website to load?
Usually large images or code blocks will cause your page to load slowly, causing visitors to leave quickly before the first page loads. This is what they call “bounce rate”. Your bounce rate will probably be high above 50% if your site is not designed to load quickly.
Look at all the header graphics and other photos and videos on their main page. Are they all necessary? What’s its purpose? Do they have the lowest resolution possible so they not only look good, but your page loads faster because of it?
Optimize your pages, technically, so that your site works well and the site not only loads faster, but users stay longer on your site reviewing your products or services. Your bounce rate will decrease and your website traffic and sales will increase, conversely. Check out all your third party plugins for SEO and social sharing. Are they all working well and are they producing errors? Check with an SEO professional if you are unsure.