Advertising
You can build the best looking site on the web but what good does it do if no one can find it? This is where advertising and promotion comes in. By promoting your site on the rigth channels online you will see that it takes a bit of muscle and a lot of know how in order to make the public aware of your products or services.
There are a few ways to advertise your site on the internet such as paid search (PPC) which will bring in instant traffic basically, but again, you have to pay for it. If you want instant visitors to your site, this may be the best option at the time for you.
SEO and social advertising are usually the free options, but it takes much longer to get found for your keywords organically within 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 an enormous amount of traffic.
Writing content on Web 2.0 profile sites is another form of advertising. Make sure you write lengthy content (1000-1500 words) and use meta descriptions and internal linking as well as external links to promote other pages on and off your website. Optimizing on-page content is great for SEO and will help boost not only your website traffic through organic search, but also your Page Rank on Google.
Social Marketing
You can have the best looking site in your market but unless you market it so that users can find you, what is the point? Certainly one of the best and cheapest ways of increasing traffic to your website is to produce website content and then share it on social media channels.
Use as many social networking pages as you can to market your content.. for free! Facebook and Twitter are the obvious choices right off because the are widely used and have millions of users.
Content Marketing is all about making your headlines and titles short and snappy so that it will get people to click through on the provided link in order to check out your content right away. Headlines drive traffic, or let me say, the right headline will drive traffic. You have to peak interest in order to make a visitor want to find out more about the post.
The subject matter should be clear and easy to read with some great graphics and a CTA (call to action) 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, pictures, or videos. Don’t forget the title and description! This is what captures their 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 this medium when looking for great places to publish your content. Your profile on LinkedIn will get noticed and all your posts will eventually get website traffic because of the links they contain. It’s all about publishing quality content on a regular basis in order to grow your followers. As soon as you write new articles, your followers will be notified and will check out your content.
Remember also to vary the length of each post and mix it up and write about things that people are actually interested in or are looking for a solution to. There are literally thousands of people each day in North America searching Google for your services and/or products online. They search for specific keywords, so make sure they find your site and not that of your competitor.
Guest Blogging
Yes, guest blogging is alive and well, and as long as it is in your “related market”, you won’t get penalized by the search engines for promoting your website in this manner.
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 to guest blogging so make sure you keep the subject matter in a related context and only provide one or two links back to your money site, landing page, or services page.
If you don’t follow Google Best Practices Guide when posting on other blogs, you make get penalized so be careful and proceed accordingly.
There is another way to guest blog, that is getting other people to post content on 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 the search engines and you make even get valuable page ranking points for your efforts. When it comes down to it, make sure all articles and blog posts are quality content, not spammy in nature. You will get penalized for any low quality content or mass backlinking tactics on the web, so again be careful when guest blogging.
Target The Right Keywords
You may have to hire a local SEO company to find out about targeting keywords for your market. The company will first do an SEO analysis of your website to determine how well it is optimized for the search engines and then create a list of keywords to use in an upcoming SEO campaign for your brand. Remember, you want to get found organically in search engines for your products and services, in your chosen market, for your specific set of keywords.
Some of these keywords can be just a one or two word phrase, while others can be long-tail keywords. These type of long-tail keywords are what accounts for a large percentage of daily searches on Google. People type in a whatever comes to their minds at the time, looking for a product in your market. Guess What? They will find your product if your site is optimized using the right keywords for your brand.
Get a local SEO Services company to do a free SEO analysis of your website, just as a starting point. This part won’t cost you anything and will let you know if you need to hire someone to fix the on-page SEO on your site.
Web Optimization For Mobile Devices
More and more internet browsing is done these days on mobile phones. Years ago it was done mostly on desktop PCs and Mac computers but those days are behind us.
People want a quick way to search for products, services, restaurants, or to book a tuna charter in PEI. They want to answer quickly and they want it now. That is where searching on a smartphone comes into play.
Everyone basically has some type of iPhone or Android phone these day with a data plan so that they can always have the internet at hand should they need it. That being said, as a web developer, you better make sure your website is optimized responsively for mobile devices of all shapes and sizes. Your website needs to be accessible with easy-to-read content.
Search engines have adapted their algorithms to give points for responsive design. In fact, in the past six months since the last Google update, if your site is not optimized for mobile devices you make receive a penalty, either that or you won’t receive and positive ticks.
A word to the wise – make sure your visitors can find you on the web, and view your company website on any smartphone, iPad, or Samsung device. You will get valuable page rank points from Google and will also get more website traffic and possibly more sales in the process.
Quick Loading Website
You will get points from Google and other major search engines like Bing and Yahoo if you site loads quickly. Who wants to way 20-30 seconds for any website to load?
Usually large images or blocks of code will be the route cause of your page loading slowly causing visitors to leave quickly before the first page even loads. This is the what they call the “bounce rate”. Your bounce rate will be high probably above 50% if your site is not built to load quickly.
Look at all the header graphics and other pics and videos on your main page. Are they all necessary? What is their purpose and are they at the lowest resolution possible so they they not only look good but your page will load faster because of it.
Optimize your pages, technically, so they your site functions well and the site not only loads faster, but users will stay around longer on your site checking out your products or services. Your bounce rate will go down and your website traffic and sales will go up, inversely. Check all your third party plugins for SEO and social sharing. Do they all function well and are they producing errors? Consult with an SEO professional if you are unsure.