Tips to Increase Your Web Traffic in 2020
Everyone at Roundpeg has a key metric, and mine in 2019 was to increase our web traffic. Because I came from the design side of the web, I didn’t know much about best practices, so I had to learn along the way. I tested lots of different strategies to find the ones which generated the best results. It didn’t take long to realize our blogs were a great place to focus our efforts.
In 2020, I have decided to take on this challenge again because there is so much more we can do. Here are a few things that have worked and several new ones that we may try this year.
Start a Blog and Use Catchy Headlines
Blogging gives you a way to keep your website fresh for visitors and search engines. The additional content helps increase your visibility on Google. One of the ways to increase website traffic is to write catchy headlines. They can be funny, serious, or simply explain to readers the benefit they will get from clicking on a particular post.
Note: To further help your SEO, add links to other relevant information and include keywords specific to your industry in all of your content.
What’s Old is New Again
The Roundpeg blog contains more than 4,000 blog posts most of which we’ve forgotten about. In 2019 we started resharing old blog posts which are still relevant, updating information to make sure they are still accurate, and including new links, podcasts, and images.
We Live In a Visual World
Every blog post dating back to early 2011 included some type of featured image. We tested several different style featured images in the last year, and paid careful attention to the colors, styles, and amount of text which works best. We even shared the same blog post with different covers and found several had significantly better audience engagement.
Building a Great Social Media Community
Social media is one of the most popular free marketing tools around and plays a role in driving traffic to your website. Use Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to promote blog posts and other useful pages on your website. You know your brand, product, and service best so be sure to have a team that portrays your company well. Knowing how to post on social media is vital.
Note: Be sure to keep a consistent posting schedule and share content from other pages as well as your own.
Using SEO Strategies to Increase Website Traffic
Drive organic search traffic by including page metadata such as titles, descriptions, and keywords. Providing ALT text for images, SEO-friendly URLs, using target keywords throughout the post and in the headlines, and more. SEO plays a HUGE role throughout the life of your website and isn’t as scary as it sounds. You can use internal links, high-quality backlinks (to authority sites in your industry) and optimize for voice search. By 2020, half of all searches will be done by voice. Optimize your texts so they get selected for Google’s voice search snippets.
Note: 4 of 5 people rely on local search for local business information. To increase web traffic in 2020, make sure you know all about local search optimization.
Boost Traffic by Sharing Content on Other Platforms
Regularly engage in communication on forums, groups, and other communities in your niche. This reinforces the sense of community and offers a way to add links to your website where it looks relevant. Communities can be found on various platforms including social networks. A few ideas on how to do so:
- Arrange contests and giveaways
- Use paid ads
- Post videos on YouTube
- Answer users’ questions on Quora
- Share useful tips on Reddit
Final Thoughts
There are endless ways to increase web traffic. A great thing about trying a new strategy is that if it doesn’t work and you aren’t seeing the results you want, then its back to the drawing board. What are some creative ideas that you have used to increase web traffic on your site? Share with us below.
Interested in more web design tips? Listen to Peter Wolfgram and Lorraine Ball as they share some thoughts about what makes a website stay relevant, and how to do it on a budget.