How Can You Drive More Traffic to Your Website?
Getting to No.1 on the search rankings is the hope of every website owner. Not everyone can achieve this obviously but getting as much traffic there as possible is as vitally important.
In the case of e-commerce sites when that traffic, or visitors, arrive they need to be converted into buyers. How can achieve more flow to your site and ultimately sales?
Why is SEO important?
Imagine you own a shop in a town. This shop has been stocked with the most fancy sneakers you can find. The town has a very active population with a local swimming pool, gyms, parks, soccer, and other sports teams. You know very well that you could sell a lot of equipment. However, you have one problem. No one knows where you are.
Your shop is on a side road hidden away from the main street. There are no directions for you and no advertising. No one ever walks down this street because it doesn’t lead anywhere.
SEO is a little bit like adding signs and directions to your shop. Every time someone asks about a sports shop someone else tells them to go to you because everyone knows about you. Just like searching Google and being returned at the top.
What does SEO do?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization polishes up your website and improves the overall quality of the site. There are lots of different areas to SEO but it is like giving a car a tune-up. Instead of having a car that gets you from A to B and is capable of an OK journey it is like more of a shiny sports vehicle that gets you to your destination much quicker and very smoothly.
Below are some of the areas that SEO agencies and experts will look at to improve your website’s search rankings and the user experience overall.
Google Core Web Vitals
You will start to hear more and more about this, in 2021 you need to know new SEO changes. Google as a company is always looking to improve their systems and one of these is the way their search engine ranks websites. There are lots of determinants to be considered but three new metrics are being introduced. These ‘vitals’ are designed to measure UX (user experience) so that the websites that respond poorly will drop down the rankings and be replaced by faster, smoother sites.
These new metrics will look at the loading time, the response time to interact, and the way the page appears on the screen. To be more technical the terms used are as follows:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – this means how long until the viewport can show the content of the site. Ideally, this needs to be no more, and preferably less than 2.5 seconds.
First Input Delay (FID) – ever clicked on a link on a newly opened website and nothing happened? This is FID. The response time of the site between the click and the processing starts.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – lastly you have CLS which is basically how much does the content of the page shift around in the viewport while loading.
There are other areas of SEO that need to be considered though.
Including the right words and phrases in the written content
Along with the new UX metrics your website has to be easy to find. When someone uses a search engine to look for a website they type in a few words or a phrase. They might put ‘sports shop stocks Jordans in Smalltown Nowhere’. Google then returns any relevant websites. Ie. Any sports shop that has Jordans in or near that town.
For your website to be found it needs to contain the correct keywords and phrases within relevant content. This is why content is so important. SEO agencies can advise you and help update these phrases to push you further up the rankings.
Images and videos
One area of optimization is the visual content of the site. Images should be correctly sized and of the right resolution, have alt tags, and of the right file size. When sizing images they should be correct in both physical form and file size for optimized loading. Alt tags are used by search engines as they cannot ‘read’ an image so they need text to define what they are looking at. Videos also need to be converted and saved correctly.
Optimization of your site
To streamline your site it needs to be optimized. It isn’t enough these days just to build a website, SEO agencies like Digitrio express the importance of making sure your site loads quickly, has quality content, and responds well giving a high UX.
Why is it a concern if your site is a bit slow?
If your website loads slowly then it can grow to be frustrating for the user. That person may simply leave to look for another seller instead. This is called bounce. If visitors bounce from your site too often after Google searches then you will start to drop down the rankings. Not to mention that you didn’t make any sales either.
Other ways to drive traffic
As well as SEO there are plenty more options that you should consider as complementary and in many cases vital to push traffic to your site.
Digital marketing
This refers to marketing that is delivered through online or digital channels. It can refer to social media, geolocation advertising, adverts in mobile apps such as games, or email marketing.
Digital marketing can drive traffic effectively because it is instant. In the past, someone may have seen an advert in a magazine and considered visiting that shop or making a purchase but perhaps never got around to it. With online advertising, you are only a click away.
To increase sales you can have advertising for offers on social media that takes you directly to the item you are selling. Within a couple of clicks, the visitor can be on the checkout page with a pair of Air Jordans in their basket. A lot faster than looking for a shop down a side road somewhere.
Summary
The world of SEO is getting trickier each year and to keep your site on top of the rest of the pile you need to be up to date with changes. If you are unaware of how to improve your rankings then an SEO agency may be a good step to look at building a strategy for your website.