Getting visitors to your site takes constant work. If you are struggling to do this, you need to ask yourself: What exactly am I doing to drive the right people to my website?

Are you doing all it takes to drive traffic to your website? I’d encourage you to actually write down your answers. Often times, we overestimate the execution of our ideas. Are you really taking the steps necessary to drive organic traffic from the search engines?

How To Push Your Way to the Top of the Search Results

You may think that having a beautifully crafted website will attract people. Or that your products and services will speak for themselves.

Build and it and they will come is not a business strategy, marketing strategy, or any other kind of strategy.

You need to understand that building an attractive website and waiting for traffic to flow is not how this works. In the ultra-competitive world of online marketing, unless you are pushing your site the right way, you will not be doing your amazing products and services the justice they deserve.

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‘I Found It On The Second Page Of Google’

Who says this? There are billions of websites out there, and the number is constantly growing. Every day, more and more sites join the mix. That means more competition when it comes to search results. Next time you visit Google and perform a search, have a look at the number of results it returns for you. You will rarely ever get through all of those results. For a lot of searches, the numbers will be in the millions.

If you want your site to be noticed when people are searching for the key areas that relate to your business, then you need to be on the top page of those results. Ideally, you want to be at the very top, or at least in the first handful. Most people will rarely bother going past these because Google’s search algorithms are so accurate, it can find you the most relevant results and place them where you need them. Google is in the business of finding the right information for internet users and putting it where you need it.

Pushing Your Way To The Top Of The Pile

There are several ways that you can get your site up the search rankings.

Website Design

First, have a great website design. It needs to load instantly on all devices, and it needs to be easily read by humans and Google’s search bots alike.

Do People Want Your Content?

Second, your website needs to have interesting, relevant content that people want to read. You need to make valid points or have something of value to your visitors. Google looks for uniqueness, and having original content is essential. You will need to update your content regularly so that your site does not look dormant.

Internal Links Matter

Third, you will want to include internal hyperlinks to other parts of your site across all of your pages. Doing so will make your site a sticky site, and encourage visitors to hang around your site longer. This helps demonstrate the value of your content to the search engines, and typically leads to higher conversion rates.

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How About Those Keywords?

Fourth, your keyword strategy matters. Use long tail keywords to get more targeted traffic to your site, which in turn will help with the stickiness of your site. If you are attracting the right people, people who are interested in your content, products and services, and you give them a reason to stay on your site longer, they will!

Related Article: The Difference Between Long Tail Keywords and Short Tail Keywords

Looking like an authority matters to the SERPs

Fifth, you need to position yourself as an authority in your niche. You already want to do this, no doubt. But today there are many ways you can become an expert. One such way is to get published as a guest blogger on high ranking sites, with a backlink to your website. From publishing a Kindle book, to creating a course on a websites like Udemy or Teachable, your content and the sites you use for publishing will lend to your credibility. You can post your presentations for free viewing on YouTube.

In other words, the more places you publish your content in a professional way, the more you’ll be viewed as an expert. This in turn brings more traffic to your website.

Yet another way to achieve authority status is by other websites recommending you by linking to you, aka backlinks. The number and quality of your backlinks sends a signal to the search engines that your website is popular. If your site is referenced by sites that are also an authority in their area, then you will get kudos in Google’s eyes by association.

[Tweet “#SEOTips The number and quality of your backlinks sends a signal to the search engines that your website is popular.”]

Social Media

Finally, it’s almost impossible to get away without having a social media presence in business now. I would be remiss if I didn’t include social media in this post. Even though it’s not typically though of as a tool to increase your visibility on Google, regular posting and engagement helps you to boost brand awareness, promote your content, and rise above the crowd.

Related Article: How to Use Social Media to Boost SEO

Groups and forums fall under this category as well. This is where social media can play a factor in your backlink strategy. Join group and forums, and more important, get involved. Your intelligent comments on groups, forums (and even blog post discussions) will get you more traffic.

Don’t just say “good post” or something like that; say something that is relevant to what the discussion was about. Put your expert hat on and truly participate in groups and forums to the best of your ability. Your comments are like little breadcrumbs sprinkled all across the web. These breadcrumbs can serve as backlinks to your site when your gravatar is connected to your website.

Food For Thought

Taking a proactive approach to get to the top of the search results is worth the effort. After all, how many time have you clicked through to page 10 on Google to get the answers you need?

Ciao,
Miss Kemya