Traffic is vital for any successful business. Just as a typical brick and mortar sore needs people walking around to see their products, an online business needs eyeballs as well.
The problem is that for many new online businesses, they lack the financial budget and technical know-how to generate tons of traffic for their businesses.
This article will show how you can a method called SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) marketing to generate lots of free traffic to your website.
Introduction To SEO
SEO is a method of generating traffic for your online business.
One of the good things about SEO marketing as it has the ability of creating passive traffic. Which means, you’ll be getting traffic without having to activelybe there.
This is an excellent option for most businesses, especially for those who are on a shoestring budget. The essence of SEO marketing is that traffic generation relies on the optimization of web content to draw free traffic through search engines such as the big “G” (Google).
Google is the biggest search engine in the world with millions of searches going on daily. By tapping into SEO, your website will attract lots of traffic.
SEO is essentially the art of getting your page on the first page of Google for search terms relevant to your online niche business. Let’s say you are in the dog-training niche… Hence, when people search for terms like “dog training tips” or “dog training guide”, you want your web page to appear on the first page of the search results – and that is what SEO is all about!
The better you are at SEO, the more traffic and hence, more sales you will get. Of course, if you have a huge marketing budget you can spend it all on advertising
and totally forego SEO, but if you are on a shoestring budget, you can always tap into the powers of SEO to get tons of free traffic!
Google ranks how relevant a website is to its searches in terms of Page Rank. By boosting your page rank, you stand higher chance of getting in front of the search engines.
Facebook has a page rank of 10, meaning it is one of the most highly sought after and visited websites on the web. When you first start you website, you probably have a page rank of 0. So it will take some time to build your page rank, but with the methods revealed in this article building page rank will become a walk in the park!
Now let’s look at the importance of keyword research for SEO.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is an essential part of SEO. You will need to find what keywords are the most sought after in your niche and target them in your web content.
That way, when the majority of people search for something on the net, everything will lead to your website
The best place to do your keyword search is at Google Adwords Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
The winning formula for good keywords are:
1) High search volume
2) Low competition
As a general rule of thumb, getting about more than 1000 organic searches a day is a good bet for a highly searched keyword. If you want to check out your competition, get the Google toolbar and see what are the “page ranks” for search results are in the first page.
These keywords and key phrases will then be targeted to draw you massive free traffic via SEO. There are also long tail keywords, which are longer key phrases with less search volumes but virtually no competition. These should be targeted as well.
SEO Basics
As mentioned earlier, SEO is the art of getting your web content highly optimized so that Google “likes” it. So how do we optimize your website
The Basics
There are two type of optimization techniques: Onsite optimization and Offsite optimization. Onsite optimization deals with the things you can tweak and modify on your own website to make it more relevant to Google searches.
Offsite optimization deals with interactions with websites outside of your own. This could be in the form of getting backlinks or social interactions, which we will go into more detail later.
The SEO trends are constantly evolving. That is because people are constantly finding ways to exploit SEO and make their websites on top of the search ranks. But Google is a smart company, and they have a team who constantly evolves Google’s algorithm to make sure that searches remain relevant and not bring spam sites in front.
People who exploit SEO in the wrong way are called “Black hat SEO” artists and their practices should be avoided at all costs. That being aid, let’s dig a little deeper into SEO the right way and how we can start applying it to your businesses immediately!
Onsite Optimization
Onsite optimization deals with the things you can edit on your own website to make your web content more likeable by Google.
The first thing you must know is keywords. In short, every page should have about 2-5% keywords density. So sprinkle your keywords where it’s due but don’t overdo it.
For total optimization, keywords or key phrases should be present in the titles of blog posts, the first sentence of the first paragraph and also at least once in the body.
Keywords should also be bolded or italicized every now and then. Links should be worded with anchor text links (keywords and phrases).
Also, onsite links are highly recommended. Meaning, you should link your blog posts and web pages together if they are relevant. These small steps contribute to SEO and should be applied when convenient.
One more thing about on site SEO, people say that images don’t contribute to SEO. This is wrong. Images should be given alternate texts or descriptions. You can also link images to blog posts. They will be picked up by the search engines.
Stick to these good practices and you’ll be on your own to attracting lots of free traffic.
Offsite Optimization
Offsite optimization deals with the stuff outside your website that can contribute to SEO. One of the main components of offsite optimization is getting backlinks (other sites linking back to your site). Backlinks is one of the main components of offsite optimization.
A backlink is basically someone else’s website linking to you. Obviously, pages with higher page rank that link back to you give more Google Juice. The key is to get as many high page rank, RELEVANT websites linking back to you.
You should be aiming for quality over quantity.
To help you it would be a good idea to find websites that are not in completion with yours, but compliment it and request a link exchange.
Another important component is social interactions. As mentioned earlier, Google’s algorithm changes from time to time, and recently they implemented a new ruling that social interactions are important for SEO. This could be things like sharing on Facebook, Twitter, comments etc.
Advanced SEO Tricks
Okay, so we have covered the basics of SEO domination. Let’s look at some advanced techniques for boosting your Page Rank.
Tagging, Categories & Organizing
If you have a blog, get in the habit of tagging, categorizing and organizing each one of your blog posts as this can greatly improve your SEO rankings.
Related Pages Plugin
Plugins like these work great if you are blogging and helps users navigate your site better, as well as create a ton of onsite links within your website.
Speak a different language.
Did you know that many other people are searching for information in other languages? You’d probably get a much higher ranking targeting a different language.
Create a Mini Sitemap
This is great for helping people (as well as Google spiders) navigate your map and creates a ton of mini links.
SEO Mistakes To Avoid
SEO marketing can be a very powerful tool for generating massive passive traffic. But if you use it incorrectly, you’ll end up doing more harm than good. Here are some SEO marketing mistakes you should avoid at all cost:
1) Over-doing the keywords. If you put too much keywords in your article for SEO purposes, you’ll end up coming off as spam by Google and this will hurt your rankings.
2) Dabbling with black hat SEO techniques. These techniques are bad and can get you banned or “Google Slapped” so that you will never get a good ranking.
3) Not having good coding. If you are designing your website yourself and mess up the coding in your website, Google spiders won’t be able to read your site efficiently and this can hurt your rankings as well.
4) Becoming a link farm. Getting backlinks are important but if you get a ton of useless backlinks from irrelevant spammy sites or use “link getting software” you’re doomed.
In short, success in SEO marketing lies in adhering to good SEO practices and avoiding silly mistakes. There are no shortcuts to success! Don’t forget, content and are king so you have to place a huge focus on those as well, while not overlooking the small stuff.
SEO – The Way To Passive Traffic
SEO-ing your web content is a great way to generate easy traffic. That being said, you won’t get traffic instantly by writing a few blog posts.
The process to traffic building via SEO marketing is a long one, and you’ll have to consistently produce good web content, which meet standards and also is up to date with relevant information.
So how does one generate passive traffic through SEO? There are a few ways. For one, you can hire a ghostwriter to post articles for you. This cuts you out of the equation and can give you more time to focus on the marketing aspects of your business.
You can also pay to have your blog posts featured in websites or directories. This is a faster way to get a boost in your traffic by having your featured article put in front of the website.
Another way is to hire an SEO consultant to optimize your web content so that the SEO will bring in long term steady passive traffic for your website.
Here to Help
Remember, you don’t have to do everything yourself.
Traffic generation is a tedious process, but can be enjoyable if you have the passion to learn and give to your followers.
SEO marketing is great way, especially for young online businesses on a shoestring budget to get their niche business up and running.
However, if you don’t have the time or inclination to do this work yourself, we can help you, just as we have for other local businesses.
Contact us today to find out how we can drive more traffic to your website.
