Increase your Website Traffic with SEO and SEM

“If you build it, they will come.”

At least that is what many remember from “Field of Dreams.”

Unfortunately, that tale rarely comes true in real life, and websites are no exception.

It isn’t enough to simply build a great website. How will people find it? This question should be discussed during the website quote and design process.

However in some instances, companies hire an outside “web specialist” to build their website without thinking through the marketing aspect of actually getting people to visit their website. And if that “web specialist” is more on the technical side than the marketing side, the Search Engine Optimization may be an afterthought.

There are many ways to increase your business’s website traffic, and usually it is a combination of various methods that make a company’s efforts successful. Read on to learn the different types of web traffic and how to increase that via SEO.

Direct traffic occurs when a user actually types your website url into Google or another search engine. He or she has obviously heard of your brand before typing in the url. This means the user could be a current customer, someone researching your brand after hearing about it from a radio advertisement or word of mouth, seeing your booth at a tradeshow, or many other scenarios.

In order to increase direct traffic, generally you would want to increase your brand marketing initiatives so that more people hear about your company and then come to your website to learn more. This can be done with both “traditional” marketing efforts and digital marketing efforts.

When someone searches for a keyword on Google, and then clicks on one of the results from the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, they come to your website organically. For instance, someone might search for “new iphone” in the Google search bar, and then click on Apple’s website when it comes up as the top listing in the results page.

This is where Search Engine Optimization, or SEO comes in. Your website will only see an increase in organic search traffic if you can rank, or be sure that you are one of the top pages shown in the results pages for keywords both relevant to your site and that have significant search volume.

According to a 2019 survey by Moz, only 7 percent of respondents said they click past the first search engine results page to see more organic results. The majority, 75 percent, click on the first few results, scan the first page of results, or click multiple results from the first page.

Additionally, it does no good to rank highly for a search term that no one is searching for. It is no good to rank for the term “underwater basketweaving” if no one is searching for it. A good SEO agency will help you to determine your target keywords by focusing on terms that are relevant to your site, the search volume for those terms and the difficulty, or competition, of ranking for those keywords. In that way, you can prioritize focusing on keywords that will give you the most bang for your buck.

Finally, realize that even being No. 1 in the organic search rankings does not guarantee that your website will always show up at the absolute top of the page.

One example of a website “outranking” the top ranking web result is with a coveted SERP feature. A SERP Feature could be the “People Also Ask” box on Google or Local Map Pack.

And, of course, don’t rule out advertising for getting your site into that top position.

Search Engine Marketing is the practice of promoting your website in the search results pages via paid advertising, or Pay-Per-Click ads. For example, advertising using Google Ads will promote your advertisement when someone searches for a keyword that you have paid to bid on.

In this way, it doesn’t matter what that keyword’s organic rank is; if you are able to win the advertiser bid auction, you can show up in the top space on the search engine results page.

It’s worth noting that at 305 Spin, we believe both SEO and SEM should work together to get you more traffic and sales leads. SEO usually takes more time and is a long-term, focused strategy; SEM can bring leads in immediately, as well as is more flexible in terms of changing campaigns based on what you want to promote at a particular time.

Referral traffic is another great way to get people to your website. If a complementary website posts a link to your website, it will do two things.

First of course, it allows other people with a similar interest to find your website. For example, an allergist might post a link to a company that offers peanut-free snack items. Patients of that allergist may then see the link and click through to learn about your products.

Second, these links increase your domain authority. Domain authority is also vital in improving your website rankings, which in turn will get more views on your website.

In order to get referrals to your website, you not only need to have a great website, but you need to have great content. And, of course, people need to know that content exists.

One way of letting people know about your content is through social media.

Much like referral traffic, social media is like word of mouth but online. Social media can work both organically and via paid advertisements.

To get great traffic from social media, people need to share your content to their own feeds on sites like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. So, you can see the importance of regular, excellent content.

People typically like to share things that are funny, heart warming, or informative about topics they care about. An article that clearly explains a topic and is both well research and well-written will usually get more shares than something that is just thrown together.

Infographics and images also entice users to share and then click, so consider this when creating content for your website.

As we have mentioned, there are various ways to get traffic to your website, and the companies with the most successful websites as a lead generation tool usually use a combination of those ways to get traffic.

If you are interested in increasing the number of visitors to your website, please reach out to us. We would love to discuss your company and objectives.