SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving a website’s visibility and relevance for search engines and users. SEO can help websites rank higher on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing for relevant keywords, drive more organic traffic, and increase conversions and revenue.
SEO can increase web traffic by making sure your website is optimized for relevant searches. SEO can ensure your website ranks for target keywords, provides quality content, loads fast, earns backlinks, has a good site structure, is mobile-friendly, voice-friendly, featured snippet-friendly, engaging, and measurable. By following these top ways to increase web traffic with SEO, you can boost your web traffic and grow your online presence.
You can build backlinks by:
- Creating original research, case studies, surveys, infographics, etc., that showcase your expertise and provide useful insights.
- Writing guest posts on reputable websites in your niche that offer a link back to your website.
- Participating in online forums, communities, social media platforms, etc., where you can share your content and link back to your website.
- Asking for testimonials or reviews from your customers or partners that include a link back to your website.
- Finding broken links on other websites and offering them a replacement link from your website.
We have a complete guide on How to Do Keyword Research with the best practices for SEO if you want to dive deeper into this topic. However, the basic process is to use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to conduct keyword research and find relevant, high-volume, and low-competition keywords for your website. You can also use tools like Google Trends or AnswerThePublic to find trending topics and questions related to your niche.
2. Optimize Your Website Content
You can use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or Semrush’s Backlink Analytics to monitor and analyze your backlink profile and find new link opportunities.
5. Optimize Your Site Structure
You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to measure and improve your website speed and Core Web Vitals.
4. Build Backlinks
You can use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or Semrush’s Position Tracking to find featured snippet opportunities and optimize your content accordingly.
9. Create Engaging Content
You can use tools like Screaming Frog or Jetoctopus to audit and improve your site structure.
6. Optimize for Mobile Devices
You can use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or Mobile Usability report to check and improve your mobile-friendliness.
7. Optimize for Voice Search
Creating engaging content can help you:
- Attract and retain your target audience.
- Increase your social media shares and backlinks.
- Enhance your reputation and credibility.
- Generate more leads and sales.
- Foster loyalty and advocacy.
(See this related guide with the top On-Page SEO Factors for a complete list of areas to optimize.)
3. Improve Your Website Speed
Delivering the Best SEO Tips…
Optimizing for mobile devices can help you:
- Improve user satisfaction and loyalty.
- Increase conversions and revenue.
- Enhance SEO performance and ranking.
- Comply with Google’s mobile-first indexing.
Your site structure is the way you organize and link your web pages. Your site structure is important for web traffic because it affects how users and search engines navigate and understand your website.
Creating engaging content is crucial for web traffic because it affects how users perceive and interact with your website.
SEO can increase web traffic by optimizing your website for relevant keywords, content, speed, backlinks, site structure, mobile devices, voice search, and featured snippets. SEO can help your website rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more organic visitors and conversions.
Ways to Use SEO to Increase Web Traffic
1. Perform Keyword Research
You can use tools like AnswerThePublic or Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find voice search keywords and optimize your content accordingly.
8. Optimize for Featured Snippets
A mobile-friendly website should:
- Be responsive, meaning it adapts to different screen sizes and orientations.
- Be fast, meaning it loads quickly and smoothly on mobile devices.
- Be usable, meaning it has easy-to-read text, clear buttons, and intuitive gestures.
- Be accessible, meaning it follows the web accessibility guidelines and standards.
Analyzing and measuring your results can help you:
- Identify your strengths and weaknesses.
- Discover new opportunities and threats.
- Test and optimize your SEO tactics.
- Prove your ROI and value.
- Adjust and refine your SEO strategy.
Summary for How SEO Can Increase Web Traffic
You can use tools like BuzzSumo or Google Analytics to research and analyze your content performance and find new ideas.
10. Analyze and Measure Your Results
Optimizing for voice search can help you:
- Reach new audiences and markets.
- Increase brand awareness and trust.
- Enhance user engagement and retention.
- Gain a competitive edge in the future of search.
As explained in our other guide about Can SEO Be Affected By Website Speed, the answer is yes, speed does impact both user experience and SEO performance.
Voice search is the act of using voice commands to search for information on the internet. Voice search is becoming more popular and prevalent, especially among younger generations, due to the convenience, speed, and accuracy of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.
Optimizing your site structure can help you:
- Improve user experience and retention.
- Increase crawlability and indexability.
- Enhance relevance and authority.
- Boost internal linking and topical clusters.
- Reduce duplicate content and cannibalization.
Search engines also prefer websites that load fast and provide a good user experience. Google has announced that page speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches. Google also uses Core Web Vitals as a set of metrics to measure the loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability of web pages.
Keywords are the words and phrases that users type into search engines to find what they are looking for. Keywords are also the words and phrases that you want your website to rank for in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
A featured snippet-friendly website should:
- Use clear and concise language that answers the users’ questions.
- Use headings, subheadings, lists, tables, etc., to structure your content.
- Use schema markup and structured data to provide additional information.
- Use relevant images, videos, charts, etc., to enhance your content.
- Monitor your competitors’ featured snippets and try to outrank them.
You can analyze and measure your results by:
- Setting up goals and KPIs that align with your business objectives.
- Using tools like Google Analytics or Semrush to track and report your web traffic metrics, such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, search visibility, traffic value, organic traffic conversions, etc.
- Using tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to monitor and troubleshoot your technical SEO issues, such as indexed pages, index coverage errors, core web vitals, website health, etc.
- Using tools like Google Data Studio or DashThis to create and visualize your SEO dashboard and reports.
- Using tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to understand and optimize your user behavior and feedback.
Building backlinks is one of the most challenging but rewarding aspects of SEO. Building backlinks requires creating valuable content that other websites want to link to, as well as reaching out to relevant websites and influencers in your niche.
You can improve your website speed by:
- Using a reliable web hosting service that offers fast servers and bandwidth.
- Compressing and resizing your images and videos to reduce their file size.
- Minifying and combining your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce the number of requests.
- Enabling caching to store frequently used files on the browser.
- Using a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute your content across multiple servers around the world.
Engaging content should:
- Be original, unique, and valuable.
- Be relevant, timely, and updated.
- Be informative, entertaining, or educational.
- Be consistent with your brand voice and tone.
- Be optimized for SEO and user experience.
The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.
