Top 10 ways to get more traffic to your site

So you’ve got a website, you think it’s cool and you’re pretty sure other people will like it, but you’re just not getting the traffic, so what can you do about it?  Well there are a number of simple and some not so simple things you can do to get more people coming to your site.  Below we’ve compiled a basic top 10 of things to do.

1)    Optimise your page titles
Eh?  A page title is the part of the page right at the very top of the screen, it contains a brief description of the page contents and is used by search engines when deciding how to rank your site/page in search results.  It’s also part of what users see in the search results so it’s important to get this bit right.  You want to make sure you have words and phrases that accurately describe what is on your page and are also terms that people are searching on.  You can use keyword volume estimator tools such as Google Adwords to show you how much search there is on each word and choose the best ones to use.  Although it may be tempting to only use super high volume words, remember you’re unlikely to rank for competitive terms such as “football”, so try more specific phrases such as “Football news UK”

2)    Links links links
This bit isn’t so easy, but massively important so it’s worth paying attention.  Many of the popular search engines use the number of inbound links you have to your site as a measure of popularity, therefore the more links you have the better you will rank.  While there are many underhand ways of gaining more links, the best way is to promote yourself in a non spammy way and great content is a good way of doing this…

3)    Quality content that attracts attention
Having high quality, timely content that naturally attracts links is what all search engines seek to promote and ultimately reward. Having a blog on your site is a good way of creating fresh content and if your posts are good, hopefully attracts links.  Also the ability to comment on posts creates user engagement on your site which helps you connect with the users of your site, creates a sense of community and ultimately return visitors.

4)    Optimise site copy
Along with optimising page titles, it is also important to optimise other parts of the site such as H1 tags and the articles on the site.  There needs to be a delicate balancing act done here so that you don’t ruin all your articles by trying to squeeze in as many keywords as possible, but subtle changes such as changing soccer to football shouldn’t ruin the flow and will better match search queries. Jeremy explores this in depth here.

5)    Make sure your site is indexable and accessible
Search engines cannot read the text within images, and although it’s getting better at reading text content within Flash you should provide text only alternatives or the search engines will not know what search terms to rank you for. You also have to make sure  your content is accessible, i.e. outputting text content using a JavaScript function will mean search engines cannot access the text.

6)    Use site analytics to monitor your site
If you don’t know what’s happening on your site you’re dead in the water.  There is no point in attracting millions of people to your site if those same people leave straight away.   Use a simple free analytics package such as Google Analytics to monitor how people use your site.  Which pages do they arrive on, how long do they stay, do some pages perform better then others and why?  You should try to keep bounce rates down, search engines often use high bounce rates as an indication that your site is not well matched to that search query and you will loose rank, it will also affect your quality score from a paid search perspective increasing the amount you have to pay for ads.

7)    Use Paid Search to cover your gaps in natural search
Using paid search may or may not be part of your online strategy however it can be used to cover the gaps where you aren’t ranking for the search naturally.  An effective paid search campaign can often return several times what you put into it and is a lot more responsive then natural search (ie when you turn it on you see immediate results).

8)    Understand your users
Often overlooked by many sites but is unsurprisingly very important.  Many website owners think they know what their users want, or are simply happy to tell them what they want.  “I run a football site and you’re getting football news” rather than asking the people that use the site what they want.  Engage with your users, get feedback from then (e.g. Kampyle) and design your content around that.

9)    Test different versions on your site
No one, no matter how many years of experience will ever know with 100% certainty what will work and what wont, this is why doing some simple A vs B testing on your site can help you optimise your pages.  You may find that people are more interested in “trying” your software rather then “downloading” it, or that red confirm buttons work better then green.

10)    Create a top 10 list (and submit to a social bookmarking site)
Finally if you’ve done all the above, create a top ten list and submit it to a site like Digg or Reedit.  Keep the list short, 7 – 10 should do and keep the content light hearted but useful.  Adding references to popular internet memes such as the Bush shoeing or Rick Astley may help or if that fails simply pay MrBabyMan to submit your article