The Secret Link to Web Traffic
SEO (Search engine optimization) uses links to push organic search engine rankings up. But are you aware that links can also be used to drive more traffic to your website?
Driving up ranking will make your website more visible to web users. As your ranking goes up, your website will feature higher in Google’s search meaning more people are likely to find your business.
Driving traffic, on the other hand, is about creating meaningful connections with customers. These are important for brand building and customer loyalty programs. Web traffic data also provides powerful analytics that can deliver insights into customer trends and behavior.
How can you use links to drive traffic to your Website?
Following are some ways to drive traffic to your Website:
1- Identify the Right Links
First thing is to find the right links for your business. There are three sources to find these links your competition, website rankings, and key influencers.
a)- Competition
There are tools like SimilarWeb you can use to identify all the organizations that are linking their business back to your game. Once you've done that you will need to sift through the data to determine the organizations that are genuine and discard the ones that are content scraper sites or bots.
b)- Google Rankings
Google rankings can help identify useful links for your business to hook up. Review Google’s top listed companies using terms you have identified as specific to your business/industry then shortlist the ones you want to link with.
c)- Key Influencers
Your business needs to be on the ball when it comes to key influencers. These are the organizations and individuals that have a broad readership and followers. Their endorsements are very important in driving traffic to your website.
2- Reach Out
The next thing you have to do is to reach out to the organizations or individuals you have identified.
a)- Sponsored Listing
Some industries have vertical directories and sponsored listing that you can buy. That way your business will be featured prominently in their website to their readers. A good example is if you were selling insurance and you buy a listing in the major newspaper site, you will get your business out there to all their online readers.
b)- Guest posting
If you are confident, you can create quality content that is interesting to read you can try guest posting in other larger sites. Make sure to find the ones that are relevant to your industry. For example, if you are a tech company, you will want to guest post in an online techie magazine, not an online motorbike magazine. Byline links (or author's page) are useful for driving traffic back to your own business.
c)- Industry-Specific Community
Subreddits are great to get involved in if you want to in the space where people with similar interests roam. But as with any community, it is important to remember that you must have something valuable to offer and that you are not just spamming them with marketing.
d)- Key Influencers
As explained above, key influencers have a lot of clout in the digital universe. Key influencers can be a popular blogger, a media organization or an expert. Each will have millions of fans and followers who hang on to every word or image they post.
To get to a key influencer, you will first need to be part of their community so join their SM. Make an impression by getting involved in their post. Write a comment. Share. The more times you keep at it, the better your chances are of getting noticed.
Once a relationship is established, you can consider expanding it by proposing co-promotion activities, sending them product samples, inviting them to launches and so forth. If they take up your offer, blog or write about your product and share a link, then you've hit the jackpot.
3- Know your Link Signals
Links are useful for both search engine rankings and traffic, but it is difficult to comprehend the complicated algorithms that evaluate and rank links. Here are some common link signals that you may be interested in:
a)- Global Links
Global sites are generally considered more popular. An excellent example of a global site is Wikipedia. If Wikipedia links to your website, then you have a good chance of the algorithm picking up the right signals.
b)- Local Links
Ranking in your own industry/community is equally important. Google can pick up illegal black hat SEO tactics that create fake links.
c)- Trust Links
Authorities for example educational institutions, government, research centers, medical authorities all add value to your ranking and web traffic.
d)- Freshness Links
The web content you create must be original and must have value-add to your readers.
e)- Sharing Links
If your web content is good, it follows that your readers will want to share it with their community. The more times they share a web page or blog, the better your ranking will be.
f)- Spam
If you exist in a spam neighborhood you are likely to be spam so choose wisely what organization you link with.
g)- Anchor Text
Clickable text in a hyperlink. It is often blue in browsers. The right number of anchor text and keywords are important to scoring higher on organic search engine rankings.
Building the right links can help your business rank higher in organic search engines. Links are also an effective way to drive more web traffic to your website.
If you are interested to know how can you build the right links for your business, contact the experts at GoForPost today.