You have built you website, well done! Now what?
You go about maximising the value of your website through increased traffic, higher conversion rates, improved brand profile and saving money by improving customer/business processes.
Simple right? Not really, so here is a guide to increasing website traffic.
Ways to Increase Traffic
Too many websites get built without an ongoing plan for attracting traffic. Having a wonderful new website without traffic is the same as opening a swanky new shop in a small remote hamlet.
Here are the main activities of driving up traffic:
– SEO: Planning keyword analysis and strategy against commercial goals
– SEO: Website hygiene
– Pay per click advertising (including automation and social media)
– Email marketing
– Traditional marketing communications
1. Keyword strategy
The art of appearing on search engines for keyword searches relevant to your business proposition – and cost effectively.
Crush Design recommend you carry out a full keyword analysis and develop a strategy to maximise the growth in organic search traffic for your budget.
– Research in to the terms and subject areas that can best return on relevant traffic.
– Carry out a full competitor analysis
– Develop a page-by-page plan for website optimisation against chosen keywords.
– Develop a strategy for the development and placement of new content.
– Ongoing review of keyword performance
2. Website Hygiene
As sites become more and more competitive in the race to be highly ranked on search engines the need to have the website in perfect health in SEO terms becomes a priority.
Using the latest SEO software we find that the range of ratings for website range significantly from 40/100 up to 70/100 for SEO health.
These lower ranking sites are either old or poorly built and trying to promote these websites will be an uphill struggle. The first job is to work through every part of your website to make sure it adheres to best practice (or build a new one if needs be).
Areas to work on include;
– Thorough completion of all on page meta data details and alt-tag details in line with the keyword strategy
– Cross platform check for touch and mobile screens
— Ongoing anaylsis of SEO tools for site hygiene
— Google Webmaster Tools
— SEM Rush
— Google Anayltics
— Bing SEO Analyser
– Review and improve all internal and external links to the site
– Proof reading all the content (Google does check for spelling!)
– Developing micro-formats for the sites
– Monthly review of page indexing and site-maps
– Website speed optimisation
– Review of Google and Bing updates
– Correct use of robot.txt files
3. Pay Per Click
The art of buying traffic for your website – getting as many relevant clicks per every pound spent.
Effort includes:
– Keyword Analysis
– Platform selection (Google Adwords, Facebook, banner advertising, etc)
– Budget analysis
– Landing page optimisation
– Automated advertising
4. Email Marketing
Emails sent to an audiences will always result in an initial spike in traffic and usually result in an ongoing increase in traffic.
Effort includes:
– Creating an email broadcasting account (we like Dotmailer and Mail Chimp)
– Collating email contact details into one database
– Purchasing external databases
– Digital data cleansing
– Telemarketing data cleansing
– Email design and build
– Email broadcasting
– Analytics
5. Traditional Marketing
All and any marketing activity is likely to drive traffic to a website. The range of options are vast, and will be budgeted separately from the digital effort but it does need to be considered as part of the website popularity drive.
If you need any help on increasing website traffic, give us a call.
Increasing Conversion Rate
Getting people to the website is the first part of the service.
The next article will be on developing the customer experience to maximise the conversion rate from the traffic a website gets.