10 Ways To Generate 20% More Website Traffic Today

Warren Knight — November 29, 2016 Follow @warrenknight

Are you one of the 46% of small businesses that don’t have a website?

Generating continuous website traffic is one of the most difficult parts of running a small business. As great as it is to generate traffic to your website through Social Media, do you analyse your organic click-through rate on Google?

Google is the largest search engine in the world and generating organic traffic will not only lead to more business, but keep you ahead of your competitors based on your keywords.

I have understood the importance of organic website traffic for both my Warren Knight website, as well as my newly launched Think Digital First and have generated 20% more website traffic through various different ways, which I am going to share with you today. This piece of content has been inspired by an infographic created by Medium.

1. What IS NOT Working For You?

The first place to start when looking at generating more website traffic is to actually look at what is not working for you. Use Google Search Console to look at the clicks, impressions and click through rates to see what is least effective.

Look at your organic search click through rate against your organic search traffic to give you an average. Anything below the 25% mark, is considered under-performing content which when improved, can increase a click through rate by up to 6x.

2. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Whilst every SEO expert will tell you that keywords are crucial, which I agree with; using too many, which is called keyword stuffing will not achieve your desired results. Choose a theme, stick with it and always measure the success of that keyword.

3. Tell A Story

To dramatically increase your click through rate; get personal. People are driven by their emotions whether it be anger, joy, interest or admiration. For every blog you write, tap into an emotion and tell a story which connects with your target audience.

4. Be Relatable

There are certain personas that you can adopt, if you aren’t comfortable writing from your own point of view. Find out what your target audience wants to see from you, and relate to this. Do they want to read something funny, informative, personal, fear-driven etc.

5. Numbers

I wrote an article earlier this year on analysing your audience, and giving them exactly what they like and Google is no different. The bottom line is if your audience love something you do, they will continue to read your content which in turn, gives you a big THUMBS UP from Google. I know from my research that using numbers in the title of my blogs; specifically the numbers 5, 7 or 10 drive a good amount of organic website traffic. Number have also been found to boost click through rate by 36%.

6. Test, and Prove Your Headlines

Everything you do online is trial and error, so it is no surprise that you will need to test your headlines, and prove that they are working for you. The content inside an article is secondary because you need to make the headline enticing enough to generate a click.

The best advice I can give you is to follow the below plan;

• Chose a format: lists, facts, strategies etc
  
• Use an emotional hook: Words like powerful, generate, amazing, inspiring etc.
  
• Focus content: Anything like images, quotes, facts and strategies would work
  
• Pick a subject: For me, this could be email marketing, social media, digital marketing, SEO, website marketing or PPC.

7. Power Words

As I briefly mentioned above, choosing words that are considered an emotional hook or powerful will drive more website traffic for example, using words like secret, proven or powerful will get the reader interested in what you have to say.

8. Descriptive URL’s

Microsoft found that using a unique, descriptive URL for a pages content generated more than 25% more click throughs than website that use the generic number id format.

9. Site Speed

Whilst traffic may not be dependant on site speed, the length of time someone spends on your website does, which can be a key factor for your ranking if your visitors are continuously “bouncing”. If your website takes too long to load, people will leave your site immediately and you could miss out on potential sales.

10. Use Google Adwords and Social Media To Test

I wanted to end this article by sharing with you my favourite tool to use, that will help you analyse the types of content and keywords you should be using. Google Adwords has a PPC tool that allows you to create a “mock” view of how it would look in a search engine.

Don’t forget about testing your headlines on Social Media, to see how your audience reacts inside of a social network. Their emotional reaction will be exactly the same, so if a piece of content is generating traffic inside of Social Media, it will do the same through Google organic traffic.

I hope my 10 ways to generate 20% more website traffic will help you do exactly that. I would love to know your most effective organic traffic generating tip!

You can see the full infographic here.

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