How to get more website traffic for free
Think about how often you Google something. Searches like ‘How to make pasta’ or ‘Cheap LED TVs’ or ‘Plumbers in Richmond’. When you hit enter, a list of websites appear and you click on one that looks good. Easy, right? Well, that’s how easily a customer could find you.
But, how does Google choose which websites to show you?
The first page of Google receives 95% of traffic, so if you aren’t in the top 10 results for particular search term, you’re missing out on customers.
There are two ways to get your website listed on page one – Paid Advertising or Organic Listing.
Google’s results page generally follows a specific structure, with 1 - 4 Google Ads at the top, followed by 10 organic search results. An organic result is a free listing that appears because Google thinks the information on the website is relevant to their search.
If you can get in the top 10 organic listings you’ll get more website traffic for free. You can do this through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
How can SEO help your website?
SEO helps Google identify what information you have on your website.
Imagine the internet is a library and each website is a book. Now imagine that instead of being stored neatly on shelves, most of the books have faded or missing covers and are in a big pile on the floor.
Google is essentially a librarian. As more books are dropped on the pile each day, Google looks through them to locate books that are easily identifiable and shelves them in their respective categories. The books that aren’t clearly labelled, however, are left in the pile.
So when a visitor asks for information, Google simply points to the nicely ordered shelves and says “start here but if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you’re welcome to rummage through the pile”.
3 steps to do SEO yourself
The process of undertaking SEO can be quite daunting, but it can be broken down into 3 main steps.
1. On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO (aka On-Site SEO) involves optimising the parts of your website that are visible to your customers. This can be split into three sections:
Keyword Research: The first step is to work out what search terms are best suited to your business. We’ve dedicate an entire blog on how to do keyword research.
Keyword Targeting: How and where to incorporate the target keywords on your website
Information Architecture: Optimising the layout and structure of your website to ensure easy navigation and exploration
To learn more, dive deeper with our blog on what is on-page SEO.
2. Off-Page SEO
As amazing as your website might look, Google likes to know your website is recommended by others. The more credible and relevant the websites that have links back to your website are, the more Google will recognise and reward your website as being of value.
Find out a few popular off-page SEO tactics on our blog 8 ways to get people talking about your website.
3. Technical SEO
Though the name may sound daunting, there are a number of free Google tools available to website owners that are looking to get their website technically up to scratch.
Discover three free technical SEO tools that can help.
Better late than never, invest in your website’s SEO strategy
Hopefully, you’ll see that doing SEO yourself is possible and get yourself on page one of Google soon!
While we’ve given you an introduction to the basics on DIY SEO, it is important to remember that Google is constantly reviewing and changing its algorithm to ensure the best experience for its users. Two quick notes:
SEO isn’t instant; it takes a few days for Google to reindex your website. The On-Page keyword targeting results should be visible within a week or two but other activities can take up to three months.
There are other search engines, of course; Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, however, Google has around 92% of the market totalling a mind-blowing 70,000 searches every second. So, for ease, we just referred to them.
Check out the rest of our ‘How to do SEO’ series:
Need help?
Don’t feel like winging it? Speak to the friendly team at Spotted Web Marketing about how we can get your business more website traffic with good SEO today. Contact us.