Spin the Traffic Generating Wheel
Have you ever heard about the traffic generating wheel?
It’s a wheel you will have to start spinning and you can use it for a new website or for a website that is already up and running.
To get a traffic coming to your website you need to work with all these elements – a combination of the elements.
So are you ready to take a spin with me?
Most of the website I have seen doesn’t really have a visible goal. If you ask the webmaster he or she will say well I want the customer to call our sales people – that is our goal.
Goals
Do you have a goal for your website? Is it sale? Or a download? Or a sign up for a newsletter? Or something else?
But then I just asked why I can only find the phone number in a contact us page and not on all the product pages.
I will say to find your goals are the most important step of the wheel. And I would write it down on a piece of paper and tape it to the computer.
Never forget what your goals are for your website.
Analytic
Now you have your goal ready – it’s time to set up your analytic.
You need this analytic on your website. You need to know – Which pages are your visitors reading? Where do they come from? How long time do they spend on your site.
And you need to set up your goal in the analytic too. If your goal is to have a sign up for a newsletter – you will need to have this goal implemented on your goals set up.
With this goal you will learn where the people who sign up for the newsletter are coming from. Are they all coming from mentioning on Twitter and
Facebook but not from Google+. Or are they all from Google+ and never from Facebook?
Maybe you have no signups from social networks but from your ad on Google Adwords?
You will also need to find your keywords. First of all which keywords will be relevant to your site? Write them down. Then go and check out the competition for these keywords – is it very difficult to get on top of the ranking for these keywords?
Maybe you should use a combination – so instead of “cars” you could rank high for the word phrase “blue cars” or “used cars” or even “used blue cars”.
Now you will have to check out the searches for these keywords – how many people are searching for “used blue cars” or “blue cars”. No reason to rank high if there is no traffic right?
Well you get my point – never work on a website that has no analytic.
Content
Content is king – so I have been told. This is why you want the customer to come to your site right?
Write great content. Something useful for your readers. People should think you give credible information.
You are a specialist in your field. So tell your audience what they need to know about your product.
Your viewers will return if you are providing great information. This will not bring you a lot of traffic next week or next month – but with great content you audience will grow and grow over time.
When you write your content remember that each page has a main keyword. So before writing your content check out the keyword you want to be found for.
Another use of your content is article marketing. Use your articles to get backlinks to your website.
Yes content is king (and Elvis Presley of course).
Design
So you will ask me – Henrik how can design bring me traffic?
It can help you in many ways. Let me just mention a few of them here.
Navigation – most of your viewers will only spend around 10 seconds on your website (check it out in your analytic – it’s true) so your navigation has to be very clear and clean. If people can’t find the information he or she is looking for – they are gone before you know it.
Bounce rate – Google uses the bounce rate in its search algorithm. So if you can lower your sites bounce rate you will get higher in Google searches. (By the way when I write Google I should write search engines right?). If people look at more than one page on your website it will lower your bounce rate. If they only look at one page it will raise your bounce rate. With your design you can make it easier to lower your bounce rate – a simple element as a search bar will lower your bounce rate.
Here you can read about some tips about how to lower your bounce rate.
Comments – we are now in the time of web 2.0 – so let your viewer write a comment on your web pages. This will raise the engagement of your potential customers.
Other great elements could be something interactive on your pages. If you are selling products for saving energy – let people write their energy consumption – before using your product – and let them see how much they will save.
This will also bring some valuable information to your viewers and some of them will link to your page. And backlinks are great for your traffic (but more about this later).
Social
Wow – just a few years ago – this element wasn’t in the traffic generating wheel. But the last couple of years the social element’s importance has just grown and grown.
Most of the social media are not helping you to do-follow backlinks to your website. But in the end backlinks are not the goal for our site right?
More and more people are using the social networks. The last number I have seen about the Facebook accounts was that 12 percent of all people in the world (!!!) have a Facebook account. And then we have Twitter, Google+ and a lot of other social networks.
If you are serious about your website you will need to engage people on the social networks. You will have to join the conversation. It doesn’t matter if you are in the B2B or B2C business.
Take a look at this Infographic about traffic and social media.
Link
Backlinks, backlinks, and backlinks – all SEO people are dreaming about backlinks every night. So if you wake up an SEO guy in the middle of the night he or she will not tell you that the dream was about a wonderful trip to a sunny place – no the dream is about backlinks.
In the old days (read about 2 years back) the do-follow backlinks counted for around 50 percent of a ranking. But Google is constantly changing its algorithm, so it might not be 50 percent anymore – because the social media have a growing importance too. But even if backlinks importance are 40 percent or 30 percent or 25 percent – its still an important factor.
So make a plan about how to get yours backlinks. Get some tips and tricks about getting backlinks here. I have many articles here on Seocustomer.com to give you inspiration about getting backlinks – it’s not always an easy job I know.
It’s also important that you have both do-follow and no-follow links – Google wants your link structure to look natural or else they will punish you.
When we are talking links – we also talk external links and internal links on your website. They are all part of the SEO work.
Conclusion
The wheel has a never stopping process.
You constantly need to review your goals – is a sign up for your newsletter still your goal? Or maybe you have started to sell on your website? Is it still the same keywords or do you need new ones?
Get back to your analytic – what is working for you? Should you stop your PPC or maybe increase your PPC? Your content needs to be kept fresh all the time. Could you help your viewers with more valuable information?
Is your design out of date? The world of the internet is changing so fast – so even if your design is only 2 years old it might look old and out of date all ready. It’s time to use the social networks now – it’s a growing factor in all marketing these days. Backlinks are also a never ending process – use at least one hour every week to get backlinks your site.
Yes guys – let’s get the traffic generator wheel spinning.
Have a great day out there
Henrik
