I want to increase my website's traffic. Not a temporary spike but something that sustains.
The truly sustainable and long-term growth in traffic to your website comes from search engines. So, focusing on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the only reliable way to achieve it.
a. Rationale
There are other ways to get traffic to your website - social media, launch platforms, etc. - which are all important. However, these give only a spike in traffic and not long-term hits to your website.
Each day Google sees 3.5 billions searches which are performed with definite intent. So, it doesn't get better than showing up in the results whenever your potential customer searches something related to your industry.
b. Timing
SEO takes time to give results. Therefore, the earlier you start the better. Ideally, you should start immediately after building your marketing website. It is likely that you have validated your idea. Therefore, you know who your target audience is and what they want. Start writing content that they would search for.
a. Realistic expectation
As mentioned earlier, results in SEO can't be achieved overnight. It takes time. Expect a minimum of 6 months of effort.
Also, just following the below process doesn't guarantee that you will rank for every search phrase you attempt to. Some will land and some won't. Those that don't should be reworked and tweaked.
b. Process
Covering the entirety of SEO in a 5-min report isn't possible. However, the attempt is to share enough knowledge and food for thought to know what the next steps are. Always return to the report after you have executed a particular step.
I assume you know the basics of SEO for this report. So, if you are new to SEO, start with this quick article.
Now, broadly, we can break this into three steps: building website reputation, writing content, and then distributing it.
i. Building website reputation - Guest posting
- When you just buy your domain, it will have no reputation in the eyes of Google => DA/ DR close to 0
- It will be tough for your pages to rank as a consequence
- You need a good number of reputed websites to link back to your website (a.k.a backlinks)
- Writing good content and hoping that websites will link to you, is not a great bet
- Instead, writing guest posts is what works
- ~Since, you are offering other websites free content, it is quite likely they will accept
- ~Of course, the content still has to be of high quality
- ~Only choose websites that give a do-follow link to your website
- ~This is high effort but a reliable method
- ~Read this article for a step-by-step process of executing this
- ~You can also use tools like Accessily (I haven't used this tool)
- Pro-tip: Try to write a 2-part article (related topics). One can submitted as a guest post and you can link from it to the 2nd part of the article which is published on your website. This helps the 2nd article to rank for a particular keyword. Here is an example:
- ~Guest post
- ~Own article
ii.Writing content
- At the same time, you also need to write content for your own website
- Don't start writing without keyword research
- ~A keyword is the phrase that a potential user will search on Google
- ~The article topics you choose to write on should be based on such keywords
- ~Writing good content without research, is likely going to lead to an article that ranks for nothing
- ~Here's where tools like Ahrefs do a great job
- ~Read this article to understand the step-by-step process
- After choosing the keyword, next:
- ~Look at the articles that are currently ranking for that keyword
- ~Decide the article topic and the length needed accordingly
- ~While and after writing the article, keep infusing keywords in the article
- ~~Ideal keyword density (keyword occurrence as % of total article length) should be 1-2%
- ~Don't miss adding your keyword to the Page title, H1 tags and also write a good meta description
- ~~If your blog is on WordPress, Yoast helps in checking if you have followed all the best practices
iii.Distributing your content
- With the article published, there is a small chance that it could automatically rank for the keyword
- But to improve the chances, you need to distribute it
- Start with the distribution platforms mentioned here
- ~Don't forget to add a canonical tag
- Share it across all your social channels
- Starting a newsletter gives you yet another channel to distribute your content
- ~Read this article to understand how to do it right
- Lastly, you could also reach out to other websites, requesting them to link to your article
- My experience with this has been poor. It is high effort and low on output
- Here's an article to do it, but I would advice doing this only if you have the time to
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