Generating Traffic to a WordPress Site

Generating Traffic to a WordPress Site is not so difficult to do these days. WordPress is a fantastic CMS to generate SEO with. You have access to many SEO plugins, our favourite pick is Yoast. But there are many other things you can do to your WordPress site to help generate SEO.

Here are some tips to help you generate traffic to a WordPress site.

1. Focus your content on your audience who are likely to share it

“Content is king“. The quality of the content you write can take you to the top in Google; and poorly written content can make you lose your audience. The key point here is to write unique and informative content. There must be no grammatical errors, and copying is a strict no-no.

For example what do they want to read from you? Audiences are of different types, there regular visitors, some active users, and less active users. Some people love to share what they ‘like’. Those people are highly active on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Your aim should be to identify those users who will share your content. What makes a person share certain posts? Use capturing images, infographics and videos in your blogs. Stats show that people feel more connected with visuals, and such posts are more likely to get shared. The more your blogs get shared, the higher the chances of getting more traffic on your site.

2. Make your content SEO friendly

SEO, done right, will gain you traffic. Search engines such as Google are a great source of traffic and WordPress is a very SEO friendly platform. You just need to change its settings to make you website search engine friendly.

During developing your site, you need to check the privacy settings. Uncheck the box that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.

There is a Permalink setting where you need to configure the URL that is search engine friendly. Never leave your blog uncategorized; always choose a suitable category for it. Similarly there are many small changes that can help you make your blogs SEO friendly which help you gain better traffic. The old age saying that “20% efforts done in right direction can bring 80% of desired results” is so true.

3. Make good use of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool that every one must install to check the sources of their traffic. It gives all the information such as what are the sites which are sending maximum traffic, average time spent by the visitors, total visits, percentage of new visits, bounce rate and much more. And the best thing is it’s FREE!

All this data is very important in working out the marketing strategy for your site. You can find out the sources of high traffic as well as sources of high quality traffic. High quality traffic means visitors spending more time on your site which is exactly what you want. This can then help you create a strategy and concentrate on sites giving you high quality traffic.

4. Use Social Media as much as possible

Social media is becoming an extremely powerful means of gaining traffic. LinkedIn and Google+ have more than 300 million users. Facebook alone has more than 1 billion users and this count is increasing every day. People who are active on social media can be referred to as “content distributors” or influencers. 

Here are some useful tips:

• Create a business page for your site in all social media sites such as Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ etc.
• Make sure the profiles and the pages that you create for your business are 100% correctly completed. Fill in as much information as possible. Profiles that are complete are more likely to gain more trust and credibility from your audience.
• Share all your posts on all these social media sites. Make them appealing so that more people want to share your posts.
• Connect directly with the audience at your page.
• Attaining success at social media sites requires patience and persistence. Make sure you follow all the above mentioned tips carefully.

 5. Use effective images, graphics and illustrations

It is always smart to use relatable images, graphics and illustration in your site. A image speaks more than content. You can either create your own images, or you can purchase them from sites such as Shutterstock or free from Pexels. These images are a great source of traffic through the means of image searching.

One tip is, always allow other people to share your images but on condition that they link that back to your site. That way you are making great use of your images. If anyone shares your images without giving you a back link, then find this out using the Image Search function. You then contact those owners and ask to give you back links and chances are they will.

6. Keyword research

The choice of right keywords can play a major role in the success of your website. There are many tools out there that can help in this regard such as Keywordtool.io, Adwords Keyword Planner. You can use these tools to find out the phrases that are commonly searched by people related to your business. These keywords should be used to make titles for your posts. Optimising blogs with target keywords can help you get better traffic. The target keyword should be used creatively in title and the content should be focused on the subject.

7. Guest bloggers

Guest blogging is also a great way of gaining traffic. For new blogs, it is difficult to get consent of established blog owners to post on their blog. It is recommended to use any personal connections in these instances. Contact people who already have an established audience. Guest blogging is an excellent way of building a brand and contacting new people.

8. Optimised site design

A well optimised website design is a ‘no-brainer’ for the success of any site, and a good template is the backbone. A professional design can help gain confidence. The usability also plays a major part. Make sure your site is easy to navigate. They should be able to easily find and do what they want to do. The design should be responsive on all platforms such as smart phones and tablets.

9. Interact with your visitors

When visitors read your blogs and if they like it or not, they are likely to hopefully leave comments. Reply to all the comments. If there is a doubt, delete it right away. If it is an appreciation, then thank the visitor. Feel free to remove negative comments and make sure you don’t allow blog spamming. Visitors like when they find that the blogger is giving them attention and their chances of them revisiting your blog increases.

The success of a website depends upon on traffic, so follow these tips for success!

DesignLab can also help you with SEO optimisation for your WordPress site. Call Spiros on 0431 926 575.