9 Effective SEO Tips to Grow Your Website Traffic
Hi, I’m Francie.
If you’re hanging here on the Founding Females blog, you’re aiming to start and build a strong business. That means, you’re my kind of people. Welcome! I hope you learn something here that will make you wildly successful.
9 Effective SEO Tips to Grow Your Website Traffic
You’ve heard of search engine optimization (SEO), but you may still feel confused about what it is or how to use it to get results.
Keywords.
Organic Traffic.
Optimized Content.
What does it all mean and how does search engine optimization impact your business?
SEO has become a buzzword in marketing and entrepreneurship. Most business owners have heard the term. Very few know how to apply SEO best practices to grow website traffic.
The good news is learning how to use SEO can give you an advantage over competitors and help you connect with future customers online.
These 9 Effective Tips to Grow Your Website Traffic, plus the On-Page SEO Guide I included at the end of the post, will help drive ideal customers to your online presence.
What is SEO?
SEO, as jargon-y as it sounds, is just the process of increasing the amount of unpaid traffic to your site through search engines.
Google says that SEO is “the process of making your site better for search engines.” It’s that simple.
Google is the search engine with the most market share, so it’s important to understand what “making your site better” means to Google.
In short, here are some examples of what “making your site better” for search engines mean:
writing high quality content that satisfies a searchers intent
placing optimized keywords in designated spaces (I’ll show you where to put keywords in this article with easy to understand pictures)
Writing very detailed descriptions of product or service offering pages knowing visitors won’t likely reach out if they have a question
creating an engaging experience for your website visitors, including using video, clear call to action buttons, visuals where necessary, and a clear site structure so content isn’t buried
leading visitors on an intentional path through your website with call to action buttons and hyperlinked text
giving context to Google about what your pages are about with internal links
providing important information like policy and terms so customers understand what it means to interact with your site.
Tools for SEO
There are over 200 components of the Google algorithm. Google never releases all of them, but they do give hints about what makes a really great experience for searchers. Google also provides free tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Page Speed Insights, and Google Business Profile.
These free tools equip website owners with lots of data to understand visitor behavior for their online presence. Google knows that website owners can use insights to enhance the experience for searchers online.
How to create a great browsing experience for searchers
Most clients I work with choose to DIY their website. That’s what I did too when I started my business. As entrepreneurs, we’re figure-outer’s. It’s actually one of my favorite things about entrepreneurship: business owners are empowered to take action.
The downside of DIY is business owners tend to build websites without much strategy or forethought. SEO strategy isn’t always intuitive, so I help clients create a marketing plan for an excellent search experience for both searchers and search engines.
If you consider yourself a small business owner, an aspiring blogger, or an influencer, SEO can empower you to connect with an ideal audience already looking for your offering. You just need to know how to structure your website and content in a way that creates a great user experience.
Good SEO Means Intentional Content Creation
Can't you just design an amazing website and call it a day? Unfortunately, no!
Many business owners assume, "If I build the website, the traffic will automatically come." That’s not true. The search engine space is incredibly competitive. The good news is, it doesn’t take becoming an SEO expert to start to rank well. Adopting a few SEO best practices will put you far ahead of most of your competition.
Let’s talk about how to craft your content so searchers understand the value of your offering and search engines understand what type of searcher is a good fit to send to your site.
Well-written, descriptive content on your website is the driving force of organic traffic and a rich source of new leads for you as an entrepreneur.
How to Connect With Your Ideal Client Online
Statistics show that there are over 1 BILLION searches performed daily across all search engines. Receiving the traffic from even a small fraction of searches related to your offering could make a big difference for your business’s profitability. How do you make sure these searches are leading to your website? How do you ensure your target audience doesn't all go to your competitors? The solution is SEO.
SEO is Free
SEO = unpaid traffic. Sure, you can use SEO tactics for paid ads, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about completely free traffic driven to your website by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
A search engine is any tool people use to enter a search term and receive results. Google has the large majority of search market share over with over 80%, much more than Bing and Yahoo. The algorithm Google uses to understand search intent is super effective.
How can you leverage SEO strategies for your website? Let's break it down
SEO Tips For Marketing Your Business for Beginners
Let’s talk about 9 best SEO practices for creating a website Google and people love.
1. Your Site Must Be Mobile-Responsive.
Want a cringe-worthy experience? Try pinching and pulling a non-responsive website. “Responsive” means that the site automatically fits to the device the searcher is using, whether it’s a desktop computer, smartphone, or iPad.
Every once in a while, I stumble upon a non-responsive site and the experience feels outdated. Here's the thing: more than half of the traffic on the Internet today is by smartphone and tablets.
This is even more true for ecommerce sites when searchers have the intent to buy. If your site is not mobile-responsive, it will lead to a very bad user experience. That’s why Google won’t likely even show your website to searchers in the search results. Non-responsive sites are where businesses go to croak.
Keep Tap Targets in Mind
There are a few more important points to discuss related to responsiveness. Tap targets are important too. Tap targets are buttons and hyperlinked text. They should be easy for visitors to use as they navigate through your site. As you’ll see, you want visitors to click through your site with an intentional path to conversion. Tap targets keep visitors flowing form page to page becoming more familiar with your business. The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more likely he/she is to buy from you.
Google penalizes websites that are not mobile friendly. Here’s why: Google is in business to deliver the BEST possible search result in the least amount of time. Knowing what creates an excellent experience for searchers is the entire point of the Google algorithm. A non-responsive site feels frustrating and archaic for searchers.
If you're looking to rank high in search results, having a mobile-responsive website is an absolute must.
2. Understanding the Data is Your Answer to Getting Results
How do you know which SEO tactics are actually bringing in traffic, and which ones need more improvement? Start tracking your data through tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Moz, social media insights, and your website platform’s analytics.
Keyword Example
Becoming familiar with website traffic data can help you understand what’s working and what isn’t. I recently saw that my site was ranking really well for keywords like “female business mastermind” and “entrepreneur mastermind,” so I used that data inside the pages on my site that referred to what I previously called our “online community.” Since I made this switch, my site is ranking in the top results for mastermind and driving more qualified traffic from women looking to join a mastermind.
Use Data Tools to Understand Your Visitor Behavior
The data is available for you to understand things like:
what pages visitors find most interesting,
what pages they’re most likely to exit from,
why they abandon their carts, or
what buttons they’re most likely to click.
Understanding this data will help you make continual tweaks to your website, creating a better and better search and browsing experience. The best SEO happens over time with gradual growth.
For example, let’s say you notice a page on your site has a particularly high drop off rate. You'll be able tweak the page to create more engaging content to keep visitors from exiting. You may do this by adding more photos, a video, better-placed call to action button, or a form for visitors to submit questions.
Guide Visitors Through Your Site to a Sale
We know that if you don't tell users where to go with calls to action, they're more likely to click away or leave your site altogether.
But remember, not everyone is ready to buy. It’s unrealistic to assume every visitor should make a purchase. Most visitors are trying to gather information to make a decision. In fact, statistics show that over 90% of website visitors are not yet ready to buy.
How The Buying Cycle Relates to Conversion
Customers first get to know a business. Then they consider whether the offering is a good fit for their needs. Next, they compare options and gather information in preparation to make a purchase. Finally, they choose whether or not to repurchase from that business. This process is called “the buying cycle.” Read more about the buying cycle inside How to Start a Business: Step-by-Step Guide for Female Entrepreneurs.
What does the buying cycle tell us about increasing conversion? You can structure your website pages to deliver the right message at the right time. Consider that different pages on your site deliver information for visitors who are in varying phases of the buying cycle.
Traffic tends to enter through the home page. From there, someone considers buying from you by learning more on your About or FAQs page. Next, they’re ready to shop their options on your Services or Product pages. Your pages can intentionally match up with the appropriate phase of the buying cycle.
Using analytics tools to understand visitor behavior will help you make decisions about where you should invest your resources and where you need to switch up your SEO efforts. It may look confusing at first. Start by choosing a few metrics and track them as you make changes to your website.
Good metrics to start with are
How many people visit your site
How long they stay on your site
Which pages visitors seem to visit most often
Over time, you’ll begin to understand the insight the data provides and make better decisions as a business owner.
Note: If this is something you want to outsource in your business, I empower small business owners with their data by completing SEO audit reports. Inside the resorts, I share detailed information about how to improve organic traffic and conversion with simple tweaks. Click to inquire about creating an SEO strategy for your small business.
3. Write Long-Form Content
Google wants to know that searchers can find a complete answer to their search term. Websites that offer complete and helpful information are more likely to rank well. This means writing in complete detail and not assuming the customer knows anything about your offering, business, or topic.
Longer content is more likely to rank well because it can incorporate more keywords. More thorough information for readers means your content is more likely to answer the searcher's search query.
How Long Should Long-Form Content Be?
Most SEO experts say that long-form content should ideally be longer than 2,000 words in the case of a blog post. It should also consist of fresh, informative, high-quality content. High quality content means you’re helping thoroughly answer the searcher’s query with simple, detailed explanations, engaging resources, and graphics that help make your point easily understood.
What about other pages on your website like your About or Services pages? Aim for 500 words minimally, which is easy to do if you set out to write in complete detail without assuming the reader has an in-depth understanding of the topic. Think about how you can write thoroughly about a topic by answering, Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.
The quality of your content is most important because users look for unique and interesting content. The more they read and engage, the more Google understands that your site is beneficial and valuable to users.
Business Tip
Repurpose long-form content across multiple channels. Once you put the time in to research and write great content, turn that content into a other useful marketing content, such as a three-part email series, for example. Other examples include using parts of your long-form content as social media captions tweaked according to the platform, YouTube video scripts, an FAQs page on your website, and email templates to answer client questions.
Don’t Forget! The On-Page SEO Guide included at the end of the post will help you take your SEO game even further.
4. Introduce Fresh Content Often
As well as posting long-form content, it's also important to make sure to add fresh and updated content to your website. This goes for blog posts and updating website pages from time to time. Google loves fresh content because searchers love new, fresh, and up-to-date content. Not only is fresh content more relevant for your readers, it also lets Google know that your website is active. There’s nothing worse than a company who “posts and ghosts.”
It's not always easy to constantly generate new topics and content. In fact, many clients I work with share with me that it's one of the hardest parts about marketing a business. But this is what sets you apart in the realm of SEO.
In addition to brand new content, also consider making use of your existing content. One simple tip is to update your most popular posts and pages every quarter. Review the existing content to see how you can enhance what’s already there. Add relevant, current, and updated information about that topic and re-publish the post.
5. Leverage Optimized Keywords
As a business owner or aspiring business owner, you've heard the terms "keyword" and "keyword phrases" over and over.
That's because keywords and keyword phrases act as a bridge between what your audience is searching for and your website content. The keywords you use must be relevant to your content’s topic so Google can understand the context when it indexes your website pages.
Business Tip
Internet users tend to be turned off by fancy language. Many times, business owners want to sound like the expert, so they use industry-related jargon. Don’t do this.
Aim for an eighth grade reading level. Keep sentences short. Drop to the next line every few sentences. Use optimized keywords in designated H2, H3, and H4 headers. This creates a great experience for site visitors because they can skim the page, which is how Internet browsers usually consume content.
The Best Keyword Research Tools
There are a wide range of quality keyword tools online that can help you determine what your users are searching for.
Here are six of my favorite SEO tools for finding relevant keywords:
Moz
Google Search Console
Google My Business (especially helpful if you’re targeting a local audience)
Keywords Everywhere
Keysearch
It’s important that your website uses the same words searchers are searching for in the search engines. You don’t have to guess what your ideal client is searching for online. Use these tools to learn more about how your customers phrase exactly what you have to offer.
6. Optimize URLs
Let's consider two URLs for the same (fake) website:
www.yoursite.com/keyword-phrase
www.yoursite.com/382233/9e38202hqqa#loaddelay
The first example is far easier to make sense of and it tells what the content on the page is about.
It's important to keep your URLs as simple and clean as possible. Google itself wants you to have readable, simple URLs to provide a logical URL structure.
This means that you should primarily use simple descriptive text in your URLs. This is simple to understand.
How to Avoid Broken Links
The hard part comes in remembering to create your URL structure before publishing a new page. Once a page is created, try really hard not to change the URL for a page after it’s published. When you do, it creates what’s called a “404 error” or a “broken link.”
One or two broken links for a site isn’t hurtful, but Google will flag your site for too many broken links. Want to know if you have too many broken links on your site? Find that information in Google Search Console.
In short, the URL should clearly describe what the content is about while being as short as possible.
You can also use the URL as a placeholder for your main keywords separating each word by a hyphen.
7. Add Keywords to Your Website
Once you figure out which keywords searchers are using to look for your offering, now it’s time to strategically place your keywords throughout your site. Remember, your language must sound natural and never stuff keywords into a page where they don’t naturally fit.
Where to Put Keywords on a Website
Page titles (screenshot)
Page titles are one of the main places Google looks to understand what a page is about. Your strategy will depend on the nature of your business and whether or not you’re aiming for a local audience.
For example, if you are a brand design company, your services page might look like “Brand Design Services | Portland, Oregon.”
When you designate a page title, it will show up in the wording on the tab for that page like what the arrow is pointing to in the image below.
URL
We already talked about the importance of a simple URL structure and designating the URL before you publish the page. How you do this will depend on your website platform. In Squarespace, for example, change the URL by going go Website > Specific page > Click the gear icon > General > URL slug.
Body Copy
It may sound obvious, but many business owners know their craft so well that they forget to explain concepts related to their business. If you want prospective customers and search engines to understand your site, you much expand the written copy in detail throughout your website.
The keywords related to the main themes of your business should not only appear on your website once or twice, but many times as you answer Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How at every opportunity,
Headers
Most of the words on your website will be designated as '“paragraph copy.” For example, the line you’re reading is paragraph copy. Headers, on the other hand are the bolder themes that describe copy, such as “Headers” above this copy. Use these headers strategically. The H1 header designates the most important theme for a page. H2 headers and H3 headers break copy up with main topics and subtopics throughout a page. To change the designation, highlight the words and use the drop down to make your selection.
Alt Text
The purpose of alt text is to help visually impaired website visitors or visitors using a screen reader. It’s so important to make your website accessible to people of all abilities. This is the most important use of alt text. Another way alt text is used is by search engines to understand what’s in a photo so the photo can be recommended to those using screen readers in searches. When you add a photo to your site, not only should it be sized appropriately, but it should include an accurate description of what’s in the photo via the alt text.
How you add alt text will depend on your platform. In Squarespace, double click the photo and scroll down to alt text.
Site Title
Remember to place your top most important keyword or keyword phrase in the title of your site, which is usually linked to your home page. This is similar to page titles, only way more important. Where page titles typically describe what each page is about, your site title uses succinct keywords to describe what your business or website is about.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the grey text you read in search engine results under the page that describes what the page is about. While keywords here are said not to have an actual spot in the Google algorithm, well crafted meta descriptions do encourage click throughs. And click throughs, meaning website visits, absolutely do impact the Google algorithm.
Don’t Forget! The On-Page SEO Guide included at the end of the post will help you take your SEO game even further.
8. Strive for Backlinks
A backlink is simply when one website mentions another website by linking to it. Backlinks are important because they suggest credibility. If another site is willing to send its precious traffic away and endorse your site, it “lends credibility” to your site in Google’s eyes.
The hard part is that you have little control over who links to your site. The best thing you can do is create incredible content that others want to recommend to their visitors. Some SEO strategists develop backlink strategies by reaching out to sites that make sense to link to their content. Another strategy SEO experts use is finding broken links on related sites, reaching out to the site owner, and suggesting an alternative link to use in place of the broken link.
As you consider how to earn backlinks for your content, remember that backlinks come from high quality websites that relate to your niche. It's always preferred to link websites that have established themselves as reliable sources. The higher the domain ranking of the website you link, the more power its backlink holds.
Ideas for How to Earn Backlinks
Ideas for places you can easily earn backlinks are below
Chamber of Commerce membership – your membership should come with a listing on the chamber’s website.
Industry memberships – if you’re a member of an industry-related group, see how you can get your business listed and linked.
News stories – in my Press Release 101 Mini Course, I teach you how to easily get interviewed and featured in local press. When the stories are published, make sure they link to your site because credible news stations tend to have high domain authority sites.
Guest posting – reach out to industry-related blog sites to see if you can guest post. When you include your bio in the post, be sure to link back to your site using your top optimized keywords in the hyperlink.
In reality, most entrepreneurs won’t have a robust backlink strategy, and that’s okay. The point here is to make sure you’re intentionally creating backlink opportunities where they already exist in your business. Even a handful of credible backlinks can help set you apart from the competition.
9. Write for People, Not Search Engines
Google has amassed search market share because they understand what makes a great user experience. Conversational, easy-to-understand language is a must. Even if your brand tends to be more serious, your content should be written in a way that easily makes sense to readers. Even a financial planner can create engaging copy written to delight humans in a meaningful way.
Knowing exactly who you’re writing for by creating your ideal client avatars will help you write copy that resonates with the person best fit to buy from you. Find out how to create your ideal client avatars in How to Start a Business: Step-by-Step Guide for Female Entrepreneurs.
When you write content with the purpose of fulfilling your customers' needs and answering their questions completely, your site is more likely to be recommended to an audience searching for answers you provide.
If you're just getting started learning about SEO, keep up the great work. SEO is quickly becoming imperative for small businesses interested in driving qualified organic search traffic.
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Best On-Page SEO Tips for Generating Content
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Female business resources
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business (with free access to the resource suite)
Hi, I’m Francie!
Nice to meet you. I’m the founder of Founding Females®. Some call me a business sage because I love to empower female entrepreneurs to breathe life into the business dreams God called them to.
After feeling like a misfit in the corporate world, I discovered a life I loved waking up to through business ownership.
I’m the author of Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, a guided journal helping hundreds of women start and grow their businesses.
I’m also a passionate entrepreneurship hype girl, female leader, public speaker, and community enthusiast.
My MBA and 10 years in a corporate career and in business ownership positioned me as an entrepreneurship educator with forward-thinking strategies for starting and growing successful businesses.
As a community leader, I realized other women could thrive with the right guidance and support. I created the Founding Females® Mastermind Community that provides a safe space for women to build better businesses.
I believe that anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship. Looking to grow your own business? Click for info about how to work with me.
About Founding Females®
The mission of Founding Females® is to help build a better future for female entrepreneurs through education, encouragement, and shared wisdom. We create safe spaces for women to share business challenges and receive peer support.
In addition, Founding Females® offers an online female business mastermind, a how-to guidebook for female entrepreneurs called Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, and in-person events, like an annual women’s business conference and local Founding Females Meet Ups.
Seasoned entrepreneurs know that growing a business is less about having all the right answers and more about having relationships where you can find the right answers. Click to meet women from our women’s business mastermind….