How to generate more website traffic
An interesting question, one I am sure everyone is dying to know the answer to right? Of course, there are many things you can do to your website so you can see more traffic land on your pages.
It can be as simple as referring to it on your social media, sending it to people who you think might be interested and by making those changes to your site that will help with your overall SEO and useability.
On my latest podcast, I had Natalie from Natalie Faith Web Designs come on to talk about all things websites AND she gave out some great tips on how we can improve our website to generate more leads to our pages.
During this blog, I will also share some of the insights into my website journey and what I do to generate more traffic!
But first…..
Listen below!
Why have a website?
Some may think, why is this even a question, BUT there are a lot of us who don’t feel the need for a website. Those who sell directly on social media pages or have just leadpages they use to sell probably think they don’t need a website.
Well, you should reconsider! Firstly, if you rely on social media, you need to remember that you don’t own all the content posted on the platform.
But of course, your website is the resource hub for all of your content! It is where we go to see everything you have on offer!! This is very important in business. It makes it easy to find everything and shows off your brand!
Never underestimate the power of a website. Plus with host sites pretty cheap to set up, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting your website set up. In fact, when I started on Wix, all up in cost me like $300 with a domain and G Suite.
If you want more reasons on why you need a website (I’m assuming most of you do) you can read more in an article written by Blazit Marketing!
Update your website
Seems like a simple solution to up your website traffic, but be honest, how often do you actually update it??
According to Natalie, she recommends doing this every six months to ensure the content is fresh!!
You should be looking for keywords that need to be added to your pages to align with your audience (sometimes this changes). Other things you should consider is your stats, what pages aren’t performing?
Once you know, you can look at why and make some changes! Maybe your bounce rates are high on a page. This could mean you need to change the copy or make it look a little nicer on the eyes. Do some trial and error in these cases!
Plus you, of course, want to look at the content that isn’t relevant anymore and look at where you can change it up! Google LOVE it when you update your content, it helps you rank better.
Simple is good, right?
Statistics and Data
Now you want to make Google Analytics your friend. In my case, it isn’t, but we are warming up to each other!
Have a look at things like:
Bounce rates
Time spent on a page
Where your audience is coming from
Low ranking pages
These are some of the top ones you will want to look at. You might also want to look at your sales pages and see the traffic is coming from and how often they are staying on the page.
Is your conversion rate low? Maybe you need to make some little edits. Really it is all about the saying “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks”. It is true! Test and trial and see what is working out for you! Google Analytics will help you analyse all the data.
When it comes to looking at Google Analytics, make sure you are checking more than once a week! It will give you a lot of information about your target audience you wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Website and SEO
We know these go hand in hand, but when it comes to SEO for your website, what should you be looking at?
You definitely want to be thinking about:
Your keywords: do they suit your current niche? Do you need to change or alter them to suit?
Images optimised: Have you got your description or alt text changed to suit? As Natalie informed us, you should name your image to suit your brand keywords and the keywords in the description of your image should reflect what is on the page
Links in your content: do you have links on your site linking to other resources? Do you also have links to resources within your own website (input and output links)
Page speed: have you tested this? There is a good site for this! If it is slow, you might need to look at your image size! You can also convert them to a smaller size for loading
Mobile friendly: You also want to test if your site is mobile-friendly, Google loves this!
You want to test and trial your SEO and see what works. Niel Patel’s Ubersuggest is a great platform to help you evaluate your SEO efforts and to suggest edits!
Website content
Surely we all knew this was going to be in here??
Content is my thang, so I need to address it! When it comes to adding content to your website, never underestimate the power of it! Do you want to be a resource hub? Then you need to have your website to host content!
Examples:
Got a podcast? Add the plug in to your site and direct people to it!! You can use RSS feeds to do that, find out more here
Got a YouTube channel? ALSO, PLUG!
Thinking of a blog? If you have a podcast or a youtube channel, use the content from these to create a blog! It is called repurposing (I wrote about it here) BUT it will help collate all your content on your page
Think about this for a second. If you have all of your content ton your site and you link people to it, you have direct people to the place they can buy from you! Did you just have an ah ha moment? Or a duhhh moment?
Either way, content on your website is important! So is reviewing the content on your site!!
Website audit
As Natalie said in the podcast, look to audit your website every six months to make sure it is updated and current.
When you do a website audit, you want to look at:
Homepage (is this a mini sales page? Does this give everyone the information they need in bite-size?)
Your content (written and non-written): is it updated?
Your call to action buttons (do they need to be moved to be clicked on? Are there enough
Images & video: do you need to update these, have you got the description right?
Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel - have you got these installed? Read more about them both
Does your website speak to your brand voice and style?
Is there enough “white” or empty space (we don’t always have to fill our pages with content)
Is it easy to book or buy from you?
These are just the surface of what you can dive into with your website audit! Plus you need to make sure are measuring as said above!
BUT you are in luck! If you aren’t sure where to start, I have a template for you! It includes auditing for websites, social media AND measurement for both! It is a great little bundle to have and it helps me SO much!
Goals
Now, of course, we need to have goals around our website!! We need to keep ourselves measurable and accountable.
Natalie expressed how important goals are and how you should try to have monthly and quarterly goals that aligned with your overall business and marketing goals!
You could look at visits to pages, conversions from certain sales pages and all that jazz. You want to use your goals to track your website and page views and look at what people are engaging with. From there, you create goals, make tweaks and improve from the month previous!
You can use the SMART method to create your goals OR go off your month previous numbers and build on it from there.
How do you achieve your website goals? Make sure you have KPIs and processes to spell out the goal so you know the steps you need to take. ALSO, you want to always be directing people to your website, promote it in any way you can!! That is why having your content on your website helps!
My website journey
Alright, where did my website journey start?? It started on Wix, where I bought the email, domain and plan to use the website platform.
I built it myself and at the time I was pretty happy with it! I had my beautiful designer friend who added my logo and fonts to the site and I tried to keep it as simple as possible.
The only problem was, I HATED website design. It was WAY too fiddly for me and I just didn’t have that eye for creating design work. I knew what I loved, I just wasn’t amazing at creating it!
So anyway, I was embarrassed to direct people to my site, so of course, my website views were down and not amazing. I had no empty space and if I did it was filled with the background of New York City, which is beautiful but too busy for my website content!
I hired the beautiful Eleanor Stones to build my new website on Squarespace and well, you know the end result! It is beautiful! I love it so much, it is what we like to call earthy tones with a hint of Mariah!
Moral of the story, if you hate doing something, spend the money to get someone else to help you! You can learn things, but often it can take too long!
Now, I LOVE my website, I show it off as much as I can and of course, my views have benefited from this!
Final thoughts
Okay, what a lot of information that can help with website development!! I loved chatting with Natalie and came away with a lot of things I have started implementing into my website!
Guess what? I am looking at my analytics like daily! AND it doesn’t seem as daunting, how good is that!
I also did this mini-course that helped me too!
So add these to your to-do list to build more traffic:
Audit the website
Do all the SEO things
Plugin your core platforms to your website (and supporting)
Look at the numbers and see what needs editing (like Anna said in the email marketing pod, same applies. If the click-through rate isn’t high, look that the CTA buttons or the headlines)
Look at your design - is it easy to navigate? Does it look fresh and nice on the eye?
Does it scream your brand?
Don’t be daunted, take action!!
Speaking of taking action, I have a new little offer to see out April (at this special price). It is called the Content Hour of Power!
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