Do you believe that Marketing is by far one of the most crucial success factors for new online businesses?
If your focus is merely on tradition traffic generation strategies such as; link building, then you are missing out on many potential customers.
Read more to find out if Marketing should be a primary focus early on or not.
Below are some strategies that can help you increase the incoming traffic to your website without having to do any marketing:
1) Add Long-Tail Variations to Your Pages
It is simple to focus on short, high-volume terms because they are easier to research and identify. Most people do not realize that in reality, 80% to 90% of the traffic you are likely to receive will be from “long-tail” queries with three, four, five or more words.
Long-tail keywords are much easier to rank for and typically convert at a much higher rate than shorter, more generic search terms.
Identify Long-Tail Modifiers
Let’s pretend we sell the Logitech C310 webcam and wanted to optimize our page to rank for as many searches as possible. We would visit the Google Keyword Tool and make note of all the long-tail variations. We would also look at the bottom of the search results where Google lists related searches.
Work these Modifiers into your page copy
In hopes that the Logitech C310 page is some what optimized for the term “Logitech C310,” we don’t need to insert each long-tail search phase word-for-word into the page. Alternatively, we want to work the unique variations at the end of “Logitech C310” into our copy to allow for greater ranking possibilities.
Not all of the modifiers uncovered will be applicable. Branded keywords such as; Best Buy will not be useful, and we would likely have a number of modifiers already incorporated. However, more often than not, we will uncover a handful of long-tail gems to help increase potential ranking opportunities and mainly to boost visiting traffic.
2) Stand Out with Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets: search listings that include information regarding a product’s price, availability, and review count. They are very useful for learning more about the particular product or site at a quick glance from the search results page without having to actually visit it.
Rich snippets are extremely powerful because they can increase the number of people that click on your page by up to 30%! This is a huge boost for something that can usually be implemented relatively quickly and simply.
The process for setting up or enabling rich snippets will vary based on your platform, so it is recommended that you do your research in order to have this implemented. When you have decided everything is setup properly, you can use Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool to avoid any display problems.
NOTE: Rich snippets can take some time to appear in the search listings, so don’t panic if you don’t see them right away.
Authorship and Video Thumbnails
Rich snippets that are product based will likely be the most applicable for many merchants, but there are also two other types of enhanced listings to know about:
Google Authorship
With authorship you can tell Google which content you have written and your picture will appear beside the listing for that piece. Google authorship markup could be a great choice for enhancing a store’s blog posts in the search results.
Video thumbnails
These are thumbnails of a page’s embedded video that appears alongside a page listing. Similar to product-based rich snippets, both of these have proven to dramatically increase the click through rate of pages associated.
Video thumbnails could potentially help video-rich, educational pages stand out. To ensure that video thumbnails appear, you will need to create a video sitemap for Google. You can do this manually through your Webmaster Tools account, and some video hosting like Wistia will do it automatically for you.
3) Write Titles and Descriptions People Can’t Resist
The Meta title and Meta description are attributes that determine how your page appears in the search results- they’re immensely important!
If you create eye-catching titles and interesting descriptions you will stand out in searches with your competitors. Alternatively, if your copy is less-informative or does not give people the reason to read more then, you will get much less traffic.
When writing meta titles and descriptions, you need to approach it as if you are writing an advertisement- because you are!
TIP: Highlight your expertise, unique selling proposition, and how the customer benefits from shopping with you.
TIP: Keep SEO and keyword optimization in mind, but do not go overboard. Include primary keywords at least one time in the title and description, ensuring that they flow with your copy. Remember to prioritize Readability over SEO.
NOTE: Changing underwhelming titles and descriptions with compelling copy can have a massive overnight impact on the traffic you receive.
4) Leverage Your Internal Links
Using links from other sites is obviously a popular, and important technique. Few people understand how much influence your own site’s structure and internal links have over your rankings.
Need a ranking boot for a particular page?
Linking to it from existing high authority pages on your domain can pass authority and help the target page become more consistent, and causes it to rank higher.
Here are some things you can do
- Make a list of high-value target pages you want to rank better.
- Identify the pages on your site that currently have the most “SEO juice” or authority.
- Add a link from your authority page(s) to your target page(s).
- Incorporate the link naturally on the authority page using anchor text related to the keyword you’d like the target page to rank for.
Typically, the home page will hold the most authority on a domain, so it’s an obvious choice for an authority page to link from. To find other internal authority pages, use Open Site Explorer to search for internal links, then sort in descending order by Page Authority so the most authoritative internal pages rise to the top.
5) The Power Of Optimization
Realistically, it could take years to double your traffic if you rely solely on increasing the number of backlinks your site has. Using the techniques and tips above, it is possible to increase your traffic drastically. By consistently making smart adjustments to your existing site you will be happy with the outcome in just a short period of time.