This is a guest contribution by Alice Jackson from DesignHill.
Creating a WordPress website for your business can be fun but it can turn frustrating if you find that there is no traffic to your website. As ultimately, this would imply that there are not many takers of your writing or services. It is a situation similar to writing books that keep lying on the shelves with no one even looking at them.
But where did you go wrong?
I mean, I am sure you must have thought a hundred times before finalising your WordPress theme, the name of your site, business logos etc and worked hard in shaping your dream of having a website into a reality. But there must be something missing that your site did not generate traffic.
If you’re wondering how to get traffic to your site but don’t know where to start from, then today is your lucky day!
This post is going to be your best resource as we will discuss six tips to drive more traffic to your WordPress site. With each tip, we will also tell you what inbuilt features WordPress offers to boost your traffic.
Traffic Plan#1: Pay Attention to SEO – SEO (Search engine optimization) is nothing but the art of enticing search engines so that they find your content and rank it higher. In other words, it is all about optimizing your site so that it is easily visible to the readers on search engines such as Google. The first and foremost thing to earn good traffic is to include the right keywords in the content on your site. There are certain words that people enter in search engines for specific issues. According to Shoutmeloud.com, use the proper keyword and you will get more search engine traffic.
But how do you know which keywords to use? The answer is Google AdWords Keyword Planner. You can use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to determine the search volume of a particular keyword and generate more keyword ideas.
What WordPress offers: WordPress websites have inbuilt capabilities specially designed to suit search engine optimization. For instance, you can address permalinks in just a few simple clicks to make your web page more SEO-friendly. In addition, you can install plugins that hold you accountable to your content on each page. Yoast is one such plugin that helps immensely in your SEO efforts. If the plugin shows green lights on your pages and posts, you can expect very high ranking on Google. Such features enable your website to gain more traffic from targeted customers and other people.
Traffic Plan#2: Use Social Media – With millions and millions of people being active users on social media sites these days, having a presence on social sites has become essential. According to Search Engine Journal, the top eight social media networks are responsible for driving 31.24% of all traffic to websites.
Make sure you have personal as well as your company accounts on a maximum number of social media sites as Google too takes into account sharing of links by the people as a parameter to rank the sites higher. These days, you can also schedule regular housekeeping checks of your social media accounts to check your presence, so that all your company’s information, logo design and images are up to date. If your content is authentic and of quality, there is no chance that it does not go viral.
What WordPress offers: Another advantage for your WordPress website comes from its social media features. With the Jetpack plugin, you can share your posts with your readers on social media with the publicize module in it.Also, WordPress comes has its own social sharing buttons known as Jetpack sharing. You can check some of them at 20+ Best Social Media Plugins For WordPress. You can easily have more links to your website. The site also allows you to offer your tips on a topic of your interest and then create links to your website for others. Also, you can run a contest, ask questions and then paste your website’s link so that viewers can click on it to reach to your products or services or business information.
Traffic Plan#3: Post Great Content Regularly – To drive more traffic to your WordPress site, make sure the content you create is authentic and free of errors (grammatical or spelling). Having blogs or articles with mistakes will only send the readers away. For instance, if you have a home remedy shop, you can post blogs on how to get rid of whiteheads or how to manage treatment etc.
A website that publishes updated and fresh content regularly attracts the search engine crawlers easily, thus, increasing your chances to rank higher. Moreover, posting your content regularly builds trust amongst your readers of your website being an active one. An article published in Zerys.com says that consistently publishing content online shows commitment to your readers.
Therefore, make a schedule (or an editorial calendar) and stick to it for publishing your content and don’t forget to do a spell check before you publish your posts.
What WordPress offers: WordPress website has resources for your customers that help in keeping your content updated regarding your products or services. These resources help in giving your customers valuable insights that prompt them to share your website links with others. The more such backlinks you have the higher are your chances of getting more traffic and a better ranking on Google. Crowdsourcing design platforms such as Designhill are a good help for business owners to compare several impressive WordPress themes that support getting more backlinks. You should consider advertising your website for traffic purpose only when the website has great content and gives the audience what they want.
Traffic Plan#4: Leverage Email Marketing – Email is one of the best ways to tell your stories to your audience. You can easily drive subscribers to your WordPress site by sending awesome emails with the link to your site to your email list. Send posts or newsletters with interesting titles and a prominent call to action buttons is one way by which you can get huge traffic to your site. According to Convinceandconvert.com, people who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that don’t receive email offers.
Therefore, make an email list right now if you haven’t and keep informing your readers about your latest blogs by sending them teasers so that they return to your site.
What WordPress offers: WordPress offers you the right tools with regard to email marketing. You can power your email marketing efforts with the help of plugins available on WordPress such as the MailPoet plugin or the premium MyMail plugin. There are also third party email services such as Weber and MailChimp that combine with WordPress to let you create great content. There are also WordPress feed plugins so that you can increase your subscriptions through feeds and emails, without any stress.
Traffic Plan#5: The Speed Of Your Site Matters! – All your efforts of drawing traffic to your site can go in vain if the visitors do not stay on your site for long. And the loading time of your website pages such as your landing page or website link page plays crucial role in a user’s experience on the site. People never like to go back to sites or abandon them (even if they visit the site) that takes hours to load. According to Kissmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Also, at peak traffic times, over 75% of online customers opted for a competitor’s site instead of suffering inordinate delays, reveals an article published on LinkedIn.com. This means that you will have to make your site quite responsive and improve its loading time in order to retain visitors and not lose your traffic. Improving your webiste loading time will also increase your search engine rankings as Google too suggests the same thing.
What WordPress offers: If you want to know how your WordPress website is performing with regard to it’s speed, you can do that easily by using tools such as GTMetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights and others. These tools will give you your site’s speed score and also suggest ways to improve if it’s too low. You can also go through this article on How to Decrease WordPress Page Load Time if your sites takes longer time to load.
Traffic Plan#6: Monitor Your Site Traffic – The phrase if you have “built it, people will come” holds true to some extent. If you have a WordPress website with a decent number of blogs, people will visit your site. Though the number of visitors can be low, your website will pull some traffic. By tracking your website traffic, you get to learn more about your customers. Monitoring your website traffic i.e. knowing the age group, region, (from where the majority of visitors are from) etc. will help you in concentrating on those areas and improving your website further.
Also, tracking will help you know the most popular pages or blogs that visitors look at for a longer duration. The point is that you will KNOW where you need to increase your marketing efforts and do more guest blogging and where to pull back in order to increase your site traffic. Do make necessary changes.
What WordPress offers: Your WordPress stats screen enables you to know your website visits, most viewed pages, and search terms people used to find your site at a glance. You can get information about your top posts and pages, subscriptions, clicks and also views by different countries so that you know which is the country that views your posts the most! Isn’t this interesting? You can also use tools such as Google Analytics.
Over To You
So, these were 6 tips from our side to help you drive more traffic to your WordPress site. Keep in touch with your readers and keep commenting on your blog posts for better interaction with them. Don’t worry if it takes time as building traffic is a slow process. Be diligent, patient and determined for the better!
Alice Jackson is a business consultant, blogger, social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer and an avid author at Designhill. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, graphic design, startup strategies and e-commerce. When she’s not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels. Connect with her on Twitter: @jackson_alice1
Leave a Reply