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How to use SEO to boost your small business website traffic and sales

Bigger companies often get customers coming to them on their own. Small businesses, on the other hand, don’t enjoy that luxury. They need to take the hard road towards the ultimate goal — bringing in more customers.

One of the first points of contact with your brand is your website. However, this won’t matter much if your website doesn’t even appear in searches. Good optimization is a must if you want to avoid this scenario. 

So how do you do it? In this article, you’ll read about 8 tips that can help you boost your website traffic and increase your sales!

#1 Work on On-Page SEO

By improving your technical SEO, you allow Google crawlers to scan your website, determining if everything is optimized, working properly, your pages have fast load time, all images are loading, etc.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be a master at SEO to increase your traffic to a certain degree. There are a few things easy to learn and do:

  • Create great quality content — Blogs consisting of relevant keywords are one of the best ways to organically attract more visitors. Plus, if they are a good read, your content might get shared on social networks, resulting in even more traffic.
  • Optimize URL structure — Google values if your URL can communicate what the page is about. If your page has a lot of unrelated numbers and letters, you’ll get negative points from Google!
  • Use relevant title tags and meta descriptions — These are short pieces of HTML code found on every page that help search engines understand what content a page has. This helps both Google and your users because it’s the first impression many people have on your website. 
  • Optimize images — Add alt text to your images. Alt text (alternative) is text that you add behind your images. When your image doesn’t load, users can read and understand what the image is about. On a more important note, Google can understand what your image is about, so use descriptive words that are relevant to your business. This will help you climb up the ranks on the SERP.
  • Bonus Tip: Use Unbounce to create a dynamic landing page.  (Here is an Unbounce coupon code from ShipTheDeal.com for some great savings!)”

#2 Link internally

It’s not that you should do this only because Google values it. It’s because you might attract visitors to stay on your website longer, increasing traffic and improving the position on the SERP.

How do you do that? By composing blogs in a way that allows you to link to your other pages. 

If a reader is interested in one of your articles, chances are they might be interested in other articles on similar topics. This way, one user can get through many pages on your website, increasing the overall traffic. Google will notice this and rank your pages better.

But, be sure to anchor the right words. If you hyperlink just one word, the reader might miss the opportunity to find out more. We suggest you use descriptive anchor text that consists of enough words to give readers a hint of what they can expect if they decide to click on it.

Just be careful to not overdo it, because it can come up as messy and difficult to read.

#3 Use long-tail keywords

Taking care of your most important keywords first is something that any SEO expert will tell you to do. But, most of the users don’t type short keywords when searching for something. More often, they use long-tail keywords. For example, if a roofing contractor is looking to find an SEO agency to take care of their website, they would search for “digital marketing services for roofing companies

This is a great way to boost your website traffic because it’s likely that these long-tail keywords have less competition. Try to think of the problems your potential clients have and how they would phrase their search input. When learning how to make a website, you also should consider proper keyword research as an essential for your site SEO.

You won’t believe the amount of valuable information you can get from the SERP. You can study the searching habits of users, to help you understand how to structure your long-tail keywords. And considering tools like a backlinks API can scrape a lot of data in no time.

Besides the textual content, you should also use long-tail keywords in your:

  • Post titles
  • Meta titles
  • Subheadings
  • Video files names
  • Image files names
  • Meta descriptions

Remember to avoid overextending and always aim for the natural feel for the reader.

Long-tail keywords are a large part of the total queries, so if you’re not using them — you’re missing out big time!

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#4 Start guest blogging

Getting more traffic the organic way means improving your position on the SERP. To achieve that you should always follow what search engines suggest. One of the things that they value is the Domain Authority (DA) score of a website. Put simply, DA is the relevance of your website for a certain topic.

This means that, if other websites link to your content as a reference, the search engine algorithm could recognize your site as a legitimate source of information. Referrals will improve your DA score, which is great for boosting your website towards the top positions on the SERP. The more links lead to your web pages, the better.

If you’re able to get a guest post on a well-known site, you will likely attract a lot of traffic, besides getting more points for your DA score!

#5 Update old blogs

You could drive more traffic to your website just by updating your old blog posts. Look for old posts with topics that are still somewhat relevant, but have a perspective or a method that’s outdated.

Edit the post with new tips and practices that are applicable. Don’t forget to update them using new SEO tricks and strategies. Remember, it’s important to use keywords that are trending now, but still, have a connection to your article.

Search engines love fresh content and they value websites that are up-to-date. They’ll improve your rankings score if they notice that you’re updating your content regularly.

#6 Use website data analytics

Tools such as Google analytics are an essential part of a successful website. They are an invaluable source of data that can help you in so many ways. With these tools, you can:

  • Examine events and actions on your website in real-time
  • View your audience’s demographics and interests
  • Learn about your visitors’ behavior
  • Check how visitors interact with certain features
  • Understand which pages have a high bounce rate
  • Check out the site loading speed
  • Set goals and track conversions
  • Recognize where your visitors are coming from (Social Media, Organic, Paid ads, Referral, etc.)

Google Analytics is great for understanding what’s working and what’s not. By removing obstacles for your users, you’re likely to reduce the bounce rate, which can boost your traffic on all web pages.

Google Analytics is even more powerful for increasing conversions. The reason is that it can help you provide a straightforward sales funnel, growing your sales numbers!

#7 Make sure your website is responsive

In the last couple of years, mobile devices have become an equal generator of website traffic worldwide. In fact, as of this year, they account for 54.8% of global website traffic.

This should be enough evidence, so make sure your website is accessible and easily viewable for the majority of devices. Visitors that need to zoom out and scroll left and right a lot, will likely bounce off your website.

How users feel while interacting with your website is important because it can improve the overall user experience, boosting your website traffic and increasing your sales.

#8 Create a lot of videos

Search engines value quality content like videos. Adding videos on your web pages helps you get traffic from video-specific searches. It also increases your relevancy for certain queries, improving your rankings and visibility within the overall search, too.

Search engines’ main goals revolve around their user’s satisfaction. So if a user searches using certain keywords, and you can offer them valuable information in your article, your SERP rankings will improve and you’ll drive more traffic to your website.

But, if your competition offers similar textual information in their article, but includes images and videos — that’s quite richer content, isn’t it? Google will favor your competition because they produce the most valuable possible information.

Plus, Google owns Youtube.com, so having your own Youtube channel with quality videos that are shared on your website definitely can’t hurt! Plus, YouTubers can make a lot of money if this is done right, so it could be another revenue stream for your business. 

Bonus hack: Paid advertising

The truth is that search engines like Google are money-making machines, and they’ll always provide the finest results to those who are willing to pay. Increasing your website traffic the organic way is the best solution in the long run. But, Google ads can provide instant results.

There are a couple of ways you can boost website traffic through paid advertising:

  • Google display network
  • Google responsive display ads
  • Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is used to help you end up at the top of the results (of SERP) for the designated keywords. You bid against your competition for the first 2 or 3 positions. But, paying more doesn’t promise you the #1 rank. You still need to work on the optimization and the quality of your website.

Google responsive display ads consist of a limited number of words, your logo and the images you want to use in your ads. The algorithm will try out multiple combinations of sentences and images until it learns which ones will give the best results. Google will then proceed using the best ads.

Unlike the previous example, the Google display network requires you to design Google banners by yourself. You’ll need to make these banners in 10-12 different (recommended) sizes.

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Wrapping up

With more and more users becoming accustomed to shopping online, you want them to come to your website.

It might seem difficult, considering how competitive the current landscape is, but don’t give up! Using these 8 hacks you’ll be ready to boost your website traffic and increase sales. Just remember that you need to listen to what Google wants you to do and you’re already in good shape.

About the author

Nick Chernets is the Founder and CEO of DataForSEO, the leading provider of marketing data. Just as much as he is passionate about data analysis and SEO — Nick also enjoys sharing his experience from the business side of the industry.