Step-by-Step Guide to Improve Traffic to Your Website

Let’s begin by busting the most common myth about SEO: it’s hard. That’s what most people will tell you.

SEO is not hard. It’s just incredibly time consuming – and the decisions you make on day 1 will come back to haunt (or reward) you on Day 180. On average, it takes about 180 days before you see results on your relatively new website, provided you’ve been keeping at it non-stop. This is where most businesses fall behind. They just don’t have the time, resources, or manpower to handle every single facet of SEO. That’s why as a business owner,  you have to consider looking for a top rated digital marketing agency like Black Storm Roofer Marketing that specializes on Higher Rankings for Roofers to really give you the outcome you are expecting for your business.

What is the Goal of a Search Engine?

The basic premises behind search engines haven’t changed much from two decades ago: it’s all about providing value to users.

To this end, Google (and Bing) have been pushing towards ‘natural’ language and are getting increasingly good at detecting the dynamics of written (and spoken) language.

As a result, search engine algorithms are always updating and changing, often without giving you any heads up. It’s often left up to the ‘internet gurus’ to figure out the Krabby-Patty secret formula (except there isn’t one). It’s always been about the user experience.

If your website can provide value to prospects (with good user experience and quality content), you’ve won 90% of the battle right there. The other 10% relates to basic optimization – stuff that free plugins automate for you without requiring any coding knowledge.

So what are the best SEO techniques you can use to generate quality traffic that actually converts? Here is our step by step guide to get you started.

Step 1: Identify Your Audience

Before you can start your website creation and useful content, you have to know who you’re writing for. Who is your audience? This is an important step that is often overlooked by businesses. As a rule, don’t waste time writing for an audience that doesn’t care about your content.

Here’s an example.

“I sell mechanical keyboards and my audience likes to read about all things related to different types of switches, keyboard designs, maintenance, and new tech. Therefore, the content I should write must address these audiences. If I write content related to video games, for instance, that will not be relevant to my audience and they won’t pay attention to me.”

In this brief self-reflection, you’ve identified 3 things:

1. You sell a particular product
2. You identified what your audience wants from the product

• You have identified content that you should avoid

Knowing your target audience will dramatically change what you write about and how you go about writing it. This is the best way to boost traffic from your target audiences.

Ask yourself the following 3 questions to know more about your audience:

i) Who are my customers?

This may be easier to answer if you’ve already been in the industry for a while. Either way, you should know what industry work in, their job title, their typical age group, their interests, and what they like to do in real life.

By answering these questions, you can create a more authentic profile of your ideal customer and create content that addresses their needs.

ii) What Pain Point Does My Product Solve?

Your product and service should address their pain points. What is the number one major concern for your audiences in your niche? What are your solutions? The content you create should address these pain points and solutions.

iii) What makes me different than my competition?

This is an important question because it lets you define your distinct selling points. In a competitive niche, it is very important to set your self apart from the crowd and use your differences to your advantage.

Once you have answered these questions, you should have a reasonable idea about who you’re writing for.

Step 2: Address Each Stage in the Customer Lifecycle

With the knowledge of your target audience, it is now time to construct the lifestyle stage for your product. A lifestyle stage lets you know ‘where’ your customer is in the buying cycle:

Here is a simplified version of a generic buying lifecycle:

Awareness stage – Most people begin their journey here. They get to know your product or your company for the first time and become aware of your solutions.

Content solution – Let your audience know who you are with a blog post found in a search, social media interaction, or even word of mouth advertisement.

Consideration stage – This is the stage at which they are doing their research and are possibly considering your competitors as well. They know of your existence and their pain points but are not ready to convert just yet. At this stage, if you can create content that addresses all their concerns, you’ll help them decide in your favor.

Content solution – Create evidence that you are both knowledgeable and trusted in your niche. This is done through blogs, e-books, case studies, and YouTube videos.

Purchase stage – This is the stage at which they are narrowing down their options and actively planning a purchase.

Content solution – Discuss with your target audience the value of your product and that it is worth their investment and time. This is usually done through free trials, detailed product/service benefits, and testimonials.

Retention stage: The final stage at which they have converted to paying customers. Now the challenge is to have them coming back for more.

Content solution – Convince audiences that you can offer more in terms of valuable products. This is done through email marketing, social media marketing, Facebook groups, and YouTube videos. Try to get them to subscribe to your email newsletter for the best results.

As mentioned above, each stage needs a content strategy of its own. The goal is to create highly informative and engaging that targets the buying lifecycle of the customer.

Step 3: Targeting the Right Keywords

In order to verify that your target content is relevant t your audience, it’s time to do some keyword research. This should be easy with free and paid tools. You can either SEMrush to find relevant keywords related to your niche or check out what established competitors are doing.

Our favorite free SEO tool is Google’s Keyword Planner.

Simply insert your keyword and it will show you how many searches that keyword has. You can put in “Sustainable energy practices’ and see how many times that phrase is being searched for. If it doesn’t have a high enough search volume, we would recommend searching elsewhere.

Beyond Google’s Keyword Planner, there are several online tools (free and licensed) that let you perform keyword research. Top tools include Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. The price for a license to use these tools can be pretty steep, but the end result is worth it. However, if you’re on a budget and need a more temporary solution, there are free alternatives available.

Some good tools to start with include:

• WordTracker.com
• KeywordTool.io
• UberSuggest.com

Pro tip: Use long tail keywords to focus on a more niche audience.

Step 4: Learn How to Make Powerful Titles

Now that you know who your customers are and their buying lifecycle, it is time to start writing content. Start by brainstorming ideas for powerful titles. A good headline will ensure your marketing strategy succeeds. By contrast, a bad headline could completely derail your content marketing strategy.

The headline should be simple yet engaging. Its purpose is to get people to read through the first sentence of the blog right until the very end. The headline should grab the readers’ attention so they can focus on your content. It is important that the headline directly correlates with the content of your post.

Here are a few simple rules for headlines:

• Make it unique
• To the point
• Create a sense of urgency
• Make it useful

Pro Tip: Optimize Title Tags

The title tag is the part of the blog that Google uses to learn what your page is about. Try to use your target keyword in your title tag. Make sure to keep it short though because Google only shows around 50 to 60 characters on the search engine results page. Make sure your keyword fits as naturally as possible. Don’t know what to do about keyword research? You may want to hire SEO services that specialize in keyword-optimized content strategies for you.

Step 5: Improve Your Website Experience

Website design directly ties into user experience and can play a pivotal role in SEO and conversion efforts. The website should make it easy for visitors to find the information they need so they can move on to the next step in their buyer’s journey. If your website experience isn’t up to par, no one will read your content.

Here are a few tips for website design:

• Use a simple menu with clearly listed categories to make site navigation easier.
• test website on different browsers
• Use a color scheme that influences buyer behavior. Don’t know the first thing about color psychology? Simply check-in with your competitors and see what design and color they’re using. Use that as a base point (but don’t copy and paste it!). If it’s working for them, there’s no reason it won’t work for you.
• When writing content, use headings to help users navigate through the content they’re looking for. Use H1, H2, and H3 headers to make reading easier. No one likes going through an endless wall of text.
• Improve the website speed by minimizing the size of your pages, buying a faster server, using cookies, and optimizing website code.

Website experience brings us to our next step: making it mobile-friendly.

Step 6: Ensure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

It’s official. Over 57% of web traffic worldwide came from mobile users. This means that businesses can’t afford to alienate these users.

Google now prioritizes mobile responsive sites in its search results.  Many website developers and builders offer mobile-friendly options. It’s completely free in most cases. A responsive site adapts based on the user’s device and screen size without throwing the website design out of whack!

You can test if your website is mobile-friendly by vising Google’s official links here.

Most users prefer to browse on their mobiles from the comfort of their beds – switching to a desktop is too much work. With the average online user having an attention span of less than 8 seconds, you’re asking too much.

Step 7: Leveraging Social Media Presence

Google officially stated that they don’t consider your social media presence to rank your website. This doesn’t mean they won’t rank your actual social media profiles. It’s an SEO trick that has baffled many webmasters for years – to focus on social media or not to focus?

Search engines take your presence on social media very seriously. If you have Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages, you’ll notice it won’t take long for them to get indexed right alongside your website. This kind of branding matters and is invaluable.

Bonus points if you get listed on places like TrustPilot, SiteJabber, Clutch, and Crunchbase. Every single one of these pages contributes (indirectly) to your SEO and helps build up trust among consumers.

Remember, most of your social media pages demand constant attention from you. This means generating the content, responding to users, replying to negative reviews – and managing brand reputation in general.

Wrapping Up

To conclude, here’s what a decent content strategy should look like:

• Identify your target audience
• Create a customer lifecycle relevant to your audience
• Identify target keywords related to your niche (use long tail keywords)
• Optimize your website for your target audience (including mobile)
• Write at least 1500 words of high-quality, original, fresh content
• Spread it on social media to soak up as much attention as possible
• Profit!

It may be worth your while to set up a free consultation with professional content writing services for a thorough audit of your website.