Every blogger or business owner wants more visitors to their site and more sales, but increasing the number of visitors is not always a quick and easy matter unless you go down the expensive route of using Pay-Per-Click Ads from Google or other search engines; or paid advertising on Social Media platforms. Even then the quality of visitor may not be what you were expecting and the return on your investment could be disappointing.
A better return on investment (ROI) can be had by embarking on a search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign but SEO is not a quick fix so results can be slow to make an impact.
Of course, a combination of both can work well but what if money is tight and you simply don’t have the budget to run either an organic search (SEO) campaign or a paid advertising campaign. Well, don’t give up on digital marketing altogether because there is plenty you can do yourself to help build a good online presence for your small business or blog.
So, before doing anything else have an SEO Audit or SEO Health Check done (many companies will offer a basic version for free) just to make sure there are no serious issues with your site. Once you are confident that the site will provide a good solid foundation for future digital marketing efforts then you are ready to embark on the following changes that will boost your web traffic.
Add Fresh, Unique Content
Quality content will engage visitors and impress the search engines so it is simply essential to get you noticed amongst the masses online. If you don’t feel confident writing your own articles or blog posts there are plenty of people who will do that for you.
The most important thing is to publish unique content on your blog or website on a regular basis (monthly is OK, weekly is good and more frequently is even better). Don’t worry at this early stage too much about keywords or optimising the content or finding great images to go with the text – all that can be tweaked later if necessary. And a pro tip from the guys at 9BlogTips.com is to use FreeRangeStock.com for free, attribution-free images (thanks for the tip guys).
No more excuses – just get started…
A Bit of Metadata
Don’t get too worried about the term metadata – it really is no big deal – it’s just a type of webpage tag that can help search engines know a bit more about each page/post/article and also encourage people to click through from the search listings to your content. If you use WordPress then the great plugin Yoast will help you set this up.
There are just 2 parts to set up:
Page Title metadata
This is what will appear in the search listings as the headline for each of the results – the clickable bit (usually blue). IT influences the search engines when they are deciding which sites to display and in which order so make sure it is descriptive and enticing so people will click on it.
Page Description metadata
The page description usually appears under the Page Title in the search listings (but not always) so is your chance to tell searchers a bit more about your page to encourage them even further rto click through to it. It doesn’t influence search engines but it can increase your click-through rate (CTR) and more visitors equals more sales so it’s worth getting it right.
If you have a low CTR (check that in your Google Analytics) then try adjusting your meta description.
Beg, Steal or Borrow Backlinks
Well, you know what I mean, perhaps forget the “steal” but otherwise just look for any opportunity to get a link back to your website from other reputable sites. For instance:
- if you are a small business owner do you attend networking events? If so, suggest to the organisers that you could contribute an article for their website about a topic in which you are an expert.
- Or volunteer for speaking engagements – and ask the organisers to add a link in the online promotional materials they use to market their events.
- Offer your opinions for interviews by companies within your network of contacts. Other businesses will be just as keen to get content for their website as your are so providing them a ready source of expert quotes is a win-win situation.
- Write high quality guest blogs and contact companies that might be interested in publishing them. Just make sure there is a link in your content.
- Contact local and national press with a great business story that they might be interested in publishing on their online news portal.
So there are 3 things you could get started on right now that will help your online presence, drive more visitors to your site and boost sales or leads.
