12 Guaranteed Ways To Attract Better Web Site Traffic

Photo is “1932 Pierce-Arrow”, by Robert Couse-Baker (Flickr, Creative Commons).

People ask me all the time: “How can I drive traffic to my site?” Well, there are many, many ways. Here are a dozen, off the top of my head — just the basics, really, as well as a few bonus items at the end. Enjoy the list… :-)

1. Do something at least mildly interesting. SEO is tough enough for already-interesting sites, let lone optimizing for something with no sizzle. If you’re in a field like insurance or something, then you’ll have to make things sizzle or no one will show up (or they’ll show up but then leave quickly, and they certainly won’t share your site on social media). At a minimum, at least have a site that’s good looking — nice design, good pics, mobile-friendly (important!), etc. — but some edginess and/or innovation goes a long way to generate interest.
2. Have the correct infrastructure on your site for SEO. URLs should be keyword-loaded, short, and easy to read. Stay away from URLs that rely on parameters like “&articleID=23445” to generate main content. Read up on ALL of the important on-site SEO infrastructure aspects. (domain name considerations, meta tags, schema.org / rich text, *full* social media integration, fast pageload speeds, etc.). Invest in this infrastructure a good bit via a very SEO-aware web development company. (Note: This is a nuanced point, though… While it can be argued that SEO-type URLs are better, Google maintains that they do not penalize sites for not having them. So, for some pages on your site, if passing a parameter like the above example is easiest, then don’t kill yourself to try to get rid of it in favor of a static-looking URL.)
3. Setup (and use) off-site accounts such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Use the same types of best practices in terms of infrastructure here — e.g., getting keyword-loaded account names if possible, linking out to your site from those accounts, etc.
4. Generate new content *all the freaking time* (e.g., one new article per day, if possible, if it’s just you writing them; more if it’s a team). These do not need to be giant articles. Do research as to the best article length for SEO purposes. (And check multiple sources, not just one agency’s or developer’s opinion.) This is one step that most people can’t sustain. If you cannot generate decent, consistent content, then think…