A London SEO Agency’s Strategies to Boost Your Online Traffic
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be a powerful marketing tool but it also has its challenges.
If you are responsible for your business’s SEO, there are a few key issues you’ll need to address.
At the most basic level, you’ll need to understand what SEO actually is (and isn’t). You’ll also need an awareness of the various ways you can increase your position in the SERPs – Search Engine Results Pages – for the keywords and phrases people use to find or ‘google’ businesses like yours.
Beyond the basics, you’ll need a sense of which of the many SEO strategies available will actually make the difference you want to make for your website and your business.
And finally – you will need patience. Any good SEO consultant or agency will tell you how it can take months to see the most powerful results, especially in a competitive field.
So SEO can be an effective but time-consuming marketing strategy. Many business owners would love to see their websites ranking No1 in the SERPs but are reluctant to spend their time and attention in mastering SEO and keeping up with the never-ending updates and changes. You may feel that your expertise is in running your business and looking after your customers, rather than becoming an SEO expert.
One option is to hire a consultant or agency to manage your SEO goals but there are also a few quick and simple things you can begin to implement yourself. Grapefruit Digital’s London SEO Agency shared some strategies for optimising your website that can lead to relatively fast results. He says, “to increase organic traffic from potential customers in the short term, it’s important to understand which DIY strategies will be the most effective.”
So if you’re looking to boost the organic traffic to your business this month, Matt suggests the following SEO strategies.
Aim To Improve Your Click Through Rate (CTR)
Your CTR is one of the most important SEO metrics to focus on. It shows how often your website link is clicked as a percentage of how often it appears in the search results. For example, if your website is shown 50 times and is clicked 10 times, the CTR is 20%. This would be a great click-through rate and would mean a good portion of that search traffic will head to your website. So it makes sense to boost your CTR whenever possible and there are some steps you can take to help.
Even if you didn’t improve your position in the SERPs, you could still benefit from more traffic by making your existing listing more appealing to your potential customers. Pay some attention to the meta-description, ie the longer description included in your search result. Ensure it is optimised (includes your search term) but also that it will appeal to your target audience and invite them to click through.
You could also use Schema code to highlight any positive reviews in your listing with additional gold stars. These are not only eye-catching, they are also powerful social proof that can increase the odds of users clicking on your website link instead of your competitors.
Customised Meta Titles
The meta title (usually the main heading of your listing) can affect both your ranking and your click-through rate. So it’s important to be careful about making any changes, especially if it has already been optimised or is ranking well.
But if you are just beginning to optimise a page or website, crafting customised meta titles, ie optimised for your chosen search term, can be a simple yet effective SEO strategy. The trick is to ensure it includes your keyword but also reads well and appeals to the search engine users.
For guidance as to what meta titles work best, look at the sites that are currently appearing in the SERPs for your keyword. These may give you some clues as to what format or structure to use and how to include your search terms. You could also look for ways to make additional improvements for an even better CTR.
Optimised Page Content
Search engines ‘crawl’ the content on your website pages to discover what your site is about. They use this information to determine which keywords and phrases would be a suitable match and how relevant your site is, ie how well it should rank for those search terms. Writing for humans is different from writing for search engines, which requires the inclusion of relevant keywords.
To optimise your page content for search engines (a practice called on-page optimisation), you need to ensure you include your chosen keywords but not to overdo it. The old practice of ‘keyword stuffing’, ie repeating the keyword too often in an attempt to game the search engines, can actually harm your rankings. Remember that your pages will still be read by humans, so make sure your content is appealing and relevant to them. Matching your content to your target audience will also signal to search engines what terms you should rank for.
You can also focus your optimisation on different parts of the page because some are more effective than others. Headings are the most effective, especially the main page heading which is usually an H1 tag. Subsequence titles and headings that use the H2 – H6 tags are also given special attention from the search engines, so they’re a great place to optimise with your chosen keywords and phrases.
Interlinked Pages
Optimising your titles and pages is a good basic SEO strategy but it’s only one aspect that affects your rankings. Search engines also assess how relevant your website is by the number and quality of other websites that link to it. These are known as backlinks and they can be a powerful factor in your SEO success.
It’s possible to acquire these links by submitting your site to relevant directories or asking certain websites to link back to you, but these processes can often take hours of effort and weeks to take effect.
An alternative and much easier strategy is to interlink relevant pages from your own website. Your website is likely to have pages that could sensibly link to each other and these internal links can positively impact your search engine rankings. These internal links might not be as powerful as backlinks from a top website in your industry but they are still beneficial and you also have total control over setting them up.
To find out which of your pages Google sees as related to your keyword, type in site:yourdomain.com “your keyword” in the Google search bar. (Use your website details and your chosen keyword or phrase.) The results that follow are the pages on your website that Google has determined as the most relevant for that keyword.
Usually, your website’s home and the page you’re trying to optimise will be the top two results, but interlinking from some of the other pages on the list can provide an extra SEO boost. Thee internal links will also help search engines to crawl your website, as well as how to rank and index all the pages individually and as a whole. When creating the links, use terms that are similar to your search term but not the same to avoid over-optimising.
Use Free Data for Quick Wins
Google Search Console (GSC) is an essential reference tool for any business owner looking to reach more customers online. It’s a free service available for all websites and provides useful and insightful data about your online presence and traffic. Here you’ll discover how well your site is performing, as well as opportunities for even better results.
For example, GSC will show you the exact terms that are driving organic traffic to your website and which pages it’s going to. This data may be different from what you thought your customers were searching for. This gives you an opportunity to optimise the relevant pages based on this information, resulting in more success from search terms you hadn’t previously been targeting.
Or you may discover that some pages get plenty of impressions but few clicks. This insight, combined with your strategies for increasing CTR, can help you see more users visiting your website even without improving your rankings in the SERPs.
Similarly, if some of your pages are getting lots of impressions but are only ranking at the bottom of Page 1 or on Page 2 because they’ve never been optimised, this is an opportunity to give them some attention using the strategies above and increase your rankings and traffic.
When you know how to implement these quick wins to increase search traffic, Google Search Console can help you identify the best places to spend your time and resources for the fastest results.
These are just a few of the basic SEO strategies you can quickly and easily do yourself to improve your rankings and increase traffic to your website. Some of these will have a cumulative effect, so implementing as many as possible will give you the best chances of success.
However, SEO is a complex and ever-changing practice – Google alone has immense resources for constantly updating its service and algorithms. So if online traffic is important to your business, investing in expert advice and a more comprehensive strategy is the most reliable way to ensure the strongest online presence and results.
