12 Tips and New Standards for Optimizing Your Website

12 Tips and New Standards for Optimizing Your Website

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The latest web development standards, SEO ranking factors and social integrations can be a bit much to keep up with. In 2011, innovative applications for website optimization, user interaction and social media are springing up left and right.

I’ve kept watch and tried out many new web development techniques. I’ve also held an active interest in engaging with readers directly on site and through social networks as much as possible.

In this article, I share the optimization techniques and resources that have been most beneficial to me as a web developer and blogger.

Site Header Tips

1. Optimize your title. By default, WordPress and other CMS’s append your website name to the end of title tags on posts and pages. Using your choice of SEO optimization plugin, such as All In One SEO or WordPress SEO, you can configure post titles to contain just the title of your post.

This technique has proven to be beneficial for ranking well for key terms within post titles. It works because you will eventually receive backlinks with better anchor text and more relevancy on social network shares.

2. Set a default image URL for Facebook & LinkedIn sharing. In the past, images accompanying my articles when displayed on social sharing services like Digg, Facebook, bitly, and others always seemed to be the wrong one or missing entirely! The problem annoyed me to the point that I had to seek out a solution.

I was ecstatic to finally work out a simple way to define the proper post image every time. Plug this code into your site header to define the image URL.

3. Set an author link attribute. (New) Google, Bing and Yahoo recently announced a joint initiative hosted at Schema.org. This HTML tagging platform will work as a framework for defining the structure of a website and individual bits of data. This initiative to create a more open web filled with rich data is just getting started.

Google is getting started right away with a new way to connect authors with their content across multiple websites. Simply define rel=”author” when linking the author’s name in post display as shown here.

Site Speed Tips

4. Track page speed with updated Google Analytics code. (New) Last month Google introduced a revolutionary new feature as part of the upgraded Google Analytics, tracking website load times.

With a little adjustment to your tracking code you can begin receiving reports on site speed analytics. Get this rolling and watch as the next few tips greatly reduce page load times.

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

5. Minify JavaScript and CSS files. WordPress Minify is a must-have plugin for any site using JavaScript files and detailed CSS.

Automagically have all these files compressed and combined. This will reduce the number of HTTP requests, significantly speeding up page speed performance.

6. Compress images and serve them across multiple sub-domains. Another highly recommend solution for improving website speed is the WP Smush.it plugin which compresses images as you upload them.

I still recommend saving all images for the web using PhotoShop before uploading. Then let Smush.it work a little extra magic to reduce the file size further without noticeably compromising quality.

Additionally, hosting some images on different sub-domains allows them to be loaded simultaneously instead of one at a time.

7. Place non-critical JavaScript calls in the footer. By placing your JavaScript calls just before your closing tag you make sure all critical content and design layout is rendered before JavaScript enhanced elements. This is as important for user experience as page loading time.

Ironically, the new Google +1 button code suggests placing the script tag in your header. Put it in the footer instead!

Increase Conversions

8. Split test your business and lead generation copy. We’re hearing more and more about split-testing or A/B tests in recent years as easier tools are made available. The smallest of changes in copy, color or positioning of call to action elements can sometimes yield big returns.

Here are some economical choices for getting started with split testing your website content.

Google Website Optimizer

A/B Theme Testing Plugin for WordPress

Visual Website Optimizer

9. Reduce bounce rate by engaging readers. There are a lot of great methods for engaging website visitors, encouraging them to stick around longer and click-through to further pages on your site.

I’ve written some common sense suggestions for reducing bounce rate in the past. Simple things like improving your navigation or adding images to content can help.

I have been pleased with increased engagement here at adsense97779 using the following applications.

Wibiya Toolbar (red toolbar at bottom of window) – An incredibly useful toolbar with lots of applications.

Punchtab Rewards (“Rewards” icon at bottom left of window) – Encourage return visits and sharing content with Punchtab’s innovative new social rewards layer.

HelloBar – Run a promotion in the header of your site to get immediate attention. Simple app with lots of thought put into it.

I have 5 beta invites to HelloBar for those interested. Please leave a comment and let me know you’d like one.

Extend Your Reach

10. Go mobile. I use the WPTouch plugin which automatically generates a mobile optimized version of DotSauce Magazine. Have you looked at your Google Analytics browser reports to see if many visitors are using mobile devices? It’s likely more than you think.

Greatly improve their user experience and conserve server resources by implementing a mobile optimized display.

11. Get social. Love them or hate them, social networks are driving traffic and allowing your following to engage and endorse your content. Discover the best widgets and sharing buttons for your website and include them in prime positions such as at the top of your sidebar or directly after post content.

I recommend you highlight the big 4; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email.

Facebook Social Plugins

Twitter Website Resources

LinkedIn Share button

Google +1 Button (New)

Sharedaddy (Part of JetPack for WordPress)

12. Become a curator of the latest news and resources. This suggestion goes hand-in-hand with getting social. The most influential people on social networks are found generously sharing editorials, news and resources. It’s a great way to build a following and get recommended.

Every day I share a selection of domaining, online business and web development resources on Twitter, the DotSauce Facebook page, LinkedIn, social bookmarking and social news websites. I’ve been doing this for years and have found the practice to be very rewarding.

I’m now using Keepstream to publish a monthly roundup of the best links here on DotSauce. You can also find over 90 industry leading publications at the new adsense97779 blog News site.

Next Up: Optimizing Publisher Experience

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips and techniques for optimizing websites for both search engines and readers. I’m considering a related post that will feature methods of optimizing your experience as a publisher on the backend of a website. This year, I’ve discovered some very interesting tools and resources that make professional blogging that much easier. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading my tips. Please leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions about this article, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Facebook is most used social media website on earth and very beneficial for marketing purposes

Facebook is most used social media website on earth and very beneficial for marketing purposes

google adsense,what is google adsense,how to make money with google adsense,learn about google adsense,google adsense banded me,facebook,blog,blogger,net marcket,business,seo,website,make,money,Social Media

Facebook is a casual social media platform. 

If you want to get better output from Facebook you need to do an active social media marketing strategy. 

You have to build a Facebook business fan page in order to make brand awareness. You should have to focus on the layout because it’s one of the most important components of the Facebook experience. 

To get more followers and to become successful on Facebook you need to post industry-related articles, videos, images etc on your business page. Facebook is easy to use and maintain. If you want to get success form it you need to post and stay active on your page to get more and more followers. 

Twitter is a great social media marketing platform. It allows you to tweet your latest updates on the web. You can follow tweeter accounts of your competitors in your industry or related fields. You must try to get some followers in return. 

You can use twitter for your official tweets about different and special promotions or discounts and news updates but you should add some fun and humor into your tweets. Always retweet when your customer comment something nice about you and never forget to answer the people’s questions.

If you want to use twitter for social media marketing purposes keep one thing in mind that you need to be active on it because communication is the best process to get success on twitter.

Creating Your Website for AdSense

Creating Your Website for AdSense

Before you even begin your site, make sure you've come up with a topic that you feel you know plenty about.  That way it will be easiest to write a lot of content. 

The more content you have, the better chance you have getting accepted into the program.  Also, the more content and traffic, the greater the earning potential. 

If you want to make a lot of money, prepare to write a lot of content and learn how to market your site. Don't expect to throw up a 10 page site and make $1,000 per month. That's unrealistic.

Now let's talk about building your website. 

Creating Your Site

Get a domain (yoursite.com) and then sign up for a web host and build your  pages. I highly recommend using WordPress to create your site because you just pick a theme and your site is up and running.

Once you have selected your theme, you can add AdSense ads by either using a free AdSense plugin or you can use the WordPress Text widget to easily add ads to your sidebar.

If you want to learn more about WordPress I have a video

How to increase targeted website traffic

You don’t only want to increase your website’s traffic but in reality what you want is to get more targeted visitors coming to your website. The reasons are a lot and the ways to do it even more and this is what I will explain in this blog post.

What is targeted traffic?

The difference between targeted visitors and normal visitors (non-targeted) is that targeted visitors have a specific goal in mind while normal visitors are browsing the web without having a particular objective.

Targeted visitors are looking for a solution to their problem and they are visiting your website because they believe they can find the answer to their question, the product or service they want. In other words targeted traffic are those people that visit a website with the intention of performing an action.

Let me give you a couple of examples to understand the difference between the two:

People who visit amazon.com searching for “buy filter coffee machine” are more likely to convert (i.e. make a purchase) than people who enter amazon because they want to view the latest offers.

Likewise, from my experience in this website, people searching for “seo packages for small business” are more likely to complete the order form than people who come to the site reading the blog posts.

Why do you need targeted traffic?

Increase conversions: From the examples above it should be obvious that what you need is targeted traffic because that will increase your conversion rates but also it will increase your Adsense earnings (if you are running ads) since targeted visitors are more likely to click an ad for a product they are interested in.

Increase readers and email subscribers: If you can manage to keep targeted visitors happy though your content and website experience then most probably they will visit again and also subscribe to your email list.

Increase social media shares: Targeted visitors will share something on their Facebook or twitter if they like it. I don’t have any statistics to back this assumption but it makes sense to LIKE something if it solves your problem (in case you are looking for answers) or satisfies a need (in case your are looking for products).

How can you increase targeted website traffic

There are many ways to increase your targeted visitors besides the traditional channels i.e. search engines and social media networks but first let’s see how these 2 channels generate targeted visitors for a website.

Search engine Traffic

Search engine traffic, whether it is paid or organic is highly targeted because people use search engines for a purpose. Depending on the keywords they use to search, you can tell if they are targeted or not. As in the examples above, people who search for “weight loss” are more likely into finding general information about losing weight while people searching for “best diet plan to lose weight” want something more specific.

The best way to increase your targeted traffic from search engines is to concentrate on the long tail keywords since people using more than 2-3 words in their search query are looking for something very specific. You can also read my previous article long tail seo benefits for website owners which explains how to find those long tail keywords that convert.

Social Media Networks

Until very recently traffic from social media was considered as non-targeted and while this is not completely wrong, things have changed dramatically the last couple of years. All major social networks (think Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+) are improving their algorithms to make social networking more targeted.

For example Pinterest has recently introduced a feature that shows you pins related to what you have ‘liked’ and ‘pinned’ in the past and this increases the chances of interacting with these pins since they are closer to your likes.

In addition to that when searching for new people on Twitter for example, you can use various tools to refine your search and find those people that meet certain demographic characteristics and other criteria.  In other words there are ways to discover from the huge mass of twitter users those users that are considered targeted for your website or business.

Also when it comes to advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter you can target your ads to a very specific set of people and make your campaigns targeted.

Mobile Traffic

While this is pretty much the same as search engine traffic explained above, it is worth noting that if you are after targeted traffic from mobile visitors you need to have a mobile friendly website otherwise you will not be able to reach users on mobile.

Google is very serious about mobile search and if your website is not optimized for mobile it will not be included in the Google search results or to be more precise it won’t have any chances of achieving high rankings on mobile search.

Even better what you actually need to reach more targeted users on ‘mobile devices’ is a responsive website and many businesses have started to realise that responsive design is important for their marketing efforts.

Mobile Native Apps

For many this may be a surprise but native mobile apps can drive targeted visits to a website and let me explain why.

A native mobile app (either for Android, iPhone or Windows) is uploaded to the mobile markets and in order to download it users have to perform certain actions (search for it on the desktop version of the stores or through their mobile phones).

The fact that users are searching for something specific makes them targeted and if you can manage to satisfy their needs you can win customers (if you are selling something) or new readers (if you are a content publisher).

How can you drive targeted traffic to a website through a mobile native app? In practice this is a bit more complicated than creating an app and uploading the app to the mobile markets. You have to think what type of app to create, how to promote your app so that it is not lost in the millions of apps already available in those markets and most importantly how to make mobile app users visit your website and take an action.

I will try to explain all the above with a real example. CalorieSecrets.net is one of the websites we manage (you can read “How to build a successful blog” and Google SEO best practices for more details about the website, history, etc) and for this website we have also developed a native Android app that is available through the Google Play Store.

The Application is ‘how to lose weight’ (read below why it is not named Calorie Secrets) and has more than 250,000 downloads. The benefits for the website are a lot and in particular:

More targeted readers – people who download the application on their mobile phones or tablets are doing it because they are interested in fitness / weight loss topics.

More social followers – people like to use social media from their mobiles and they are sharing content from the app with their social networks

More advertising revenue – The application is running admob ads and this creates an additional monthly revenue by utilizing the existing website content.

More visits to the mobile and desktop websites – From the website traffic details it is shown that a number of visits come from the android app.

Based on this example read the answers to the above questions that explain why it works.

What type of app to create? The application should offer useful and valuable information to users so that there is an incentive for them to download.  Depending on the type of website the application can either take full advantage of the device capabilities and offer users a different experience or give them an alternative way to access the website content on their mobile devices.

In this case the application resembles the website’s content in a user friendly format that makes it easier for android users (phone and tablet) to read the articles.

How to promote the app?

In Store SEO: Mobile markets have a search function that allows you to search thought their store and find applications to download. One of the ways to increase visibility in their search results is to follow basic SEO guidelines such as providing for titles and descriptions of the app that include keywords used by people when they search for apps.

You may have already noticed that the name of the application is ‘How to lose weight’ and not Calorie Secrets. This was done in purpose and the reason is that nobody will search for ‘Calorie Secrets’ in the play store but there are a number of people who search for ‘how to lose weight’.

So, one way to promote the app is by giving it a meaningful name that includes keywords people are searching.

Another way is to spread the word about your app through your website (by writing a blog post about it) and by adding download buttons in your sidebar, header and footer.

If you keep an email list then you can also create a newsletter and inform your subscribers.

Finally, social media is perhaps the fastest way to let other people know about the existence of your app and a targeted Facebook campaign is among the best solutions.

How to get more visits from the app? 

Whenever a new article is published on the website our android users get notified through the android notification system and a small icon appears on their phones or tablets.

This is very efficient because they cannot missed it (don’t forget that the average person check their phones 110 days per day!) and it is a ‘push’ type notification – meaning that it will find you even if you are not asking for it.

So, we know for sure that someone has the application installed on their phones because they are interested in our content and when someone clicks on the notification to read or interact with an article (i.e share on social media), we know that this user is a targeted visitor because they have performed specific actions that indicate their intentions.

Once they get into the app, you can either give them incentives through a pop up message to visit your mobile friendly website or try to make them convert by subscribing to your newsletter or becoming a fun in social media.

We are convinced about the importance of mobile native apps (especially android) as a good way to increase targeted visits (besides search engine traffic and social networking), that’s why we created a platform for transforming your website into beautiful native apps ready to be published on the market.

You can visit our android application development page for more examples and pricing details.

Why most business native apps fail? From experience people try to make native apps for their businesses and they get very few downloads because:

They don’t use ‘good’ names for their apps  – Don’t expect people to search for your business name in the stores (unless you are a big brand name of course) but try to give your native apps names that people search for.

They don’t promote their apps – Creating an app is one thing, promoting it correctly is a totally different concept. Native apps need a good promotion strategy to produce a return.

Their apps are not designed correctly – Sometimes developers try to create many functions and they make the apps difficult to use, slow and non-functional. The design and functionality of the app should be depends on what you want to achieve from the app.

Content marketing

Last but not least, content marketing is the most effective way to gain targeted visitors. Actually without a proper content marketing strategy you cannot achieve anything with the above techniques.

Content marketing is what will drive search engine traffic from desktop and mobile, create more interaction in social media and convince mobile users to download the native apps on their devices.

You can read content marketing tips for beginners and why every business needs a blog for more information on how to create efficient content marketing campaigns for your business or website.

Conclusion

Targeted visitors are very important for a website or online business as they have more chances of performing an action (becoming customers, subscribing to a newsletter, sharing on social media) than ‘normal’ visitors.

Search engines and social networks (both for desktop and mobile) are among the obvious ways to get targeted visitors but besides those, another great way is through mobile native apps. When a native app is designed and promoted correctly it can become a great source of high targeted visits.

5 reasons you are not getting enough traffic to your website

There are many reasons as to why a website or blog may not be getting enough traffic. Things like the age of the domain, the reputation of the author, number and type of references (incoming links), social media strategy and content freshness play their role but for the average website the problem may lie in other areas.

What you will read below are 5 areas that are often neglected by website owners either because they don’t understand their importance or because they are not sure how to handle them. Along with each area I will also suggest ways to improve the situation. Don’t forget though that when you make a change it may take a couple of months (or more) before you see any positive or negative result so you need to have patience before you decide if something worked or not.

1. Your content is not good enough

Believe it or not search engines and especially Google have become very efficient in recognizing good content. So if the content is not good enough and your website is not of high quality, the chances of ranking high in the SERPs and getting traffic are minimized.

Back in the old days you could ‘easily’ trick search engines by sending a few backlinks to your content and get rankings but this is no longer the case.

Besides search engines let’s not forget about the influence of social media on rankings and traffic. Content that is not of great quality is very unlikely to do well in the various social media channels.

What is good content and more importantly what type of content can get you traffic?

Content that attracts website visitors has the following characteristics:

It satisfies all SEO Copywriting tips that are known to work after Panda and Penguin.

It is published on a website with an existing number of quality (indexed) pages. If your website is new, even if you have the best content it is difficult to rank high especially if there are older and bigger (in terms of indexed pages) websites on the same subject.

It is unbiased and well researched. If you always write in favour of a particular product, method or service or if you just publish re-written text, you are losing your time. Good content is original and describes both sides of the story.

It is fresh. Users want to read fresh up-to date content and so do the search engines and social media.

2. You aim for high competition keywords

This is a very common mistake and one of the most important reasons why a web site is not getting enough traffic (at least from search engines). Consider these 2 factors:

There are only 10 places available in the first page of the SERPs for every keyword. Search engines are trying to display in those places pages from trusted websites that meet their ranking criteria. If you have a new website or even a mature website but it is less trusted than others, then your pages will not be shown in the first pages (if you are both targeting the same keywords).

The competition for all popular keywords is very high so if you are targeting popular keywords only, it will be very difficult to achieve a good ranking.

So, if popular keywords are out of the question, how can you get traffic?

The answer is in the long trail. When you use the Google keyword tool to make your keyword research, you should aim for low competition, long trail keywords. For example:

Let’s assume that you are writing about weight loss. The most popular keyword in this niche is “how to lose weight fast”. If you write a post with title “How to lose weight fast” and publish it on your website then most likely that particular post will never drive organic traffic to your website since there are already thousands of other articles with the same title and from more trusted sites.

If on the other hand you go after low competition, long trail keywords like “How to lose pounds” and you change the title a bit to “How to lose 5 pounds quickly” then your chances of ranking in the first page, provided that you promote your blog post correctly are higher. The traffic gains are less compared to high competition keywords but ranking for several terms (even if they are of low competition) is a great way to increase web site trust.

You can also read how to choose blog post titles for a step-by-step example on how to use the Google keyword tool to find low competition, long trail keywords.

3. Your website is slow

We know for sure that page speed is a ranking factor and various studies have shown that users are more likely to make repeated visits to websites that load fast. The opposite is also true: users are more likely to exit a website if it does not load in 7-8 seconds.

So, your website may be ranking and getting traffic from search engines or referrals from social media but as soon as the users land on a slow loading page, they leave without entering.

What will happen when I make my website to load faster?

From my experience if you improve the loading time of a website that already has some rankings, traffic will increase because rankings will improve. If your website is slow but does not have any first page rankings, by fixing the page speed problem you increase your chances of having a page or pages in the first 10 positions.

4. You were hit by Panda or Penguin

The average webmaster or blogger may not be aware about Panda or Penguin and how these algorithmic changes affect the ranking position and traffic a website may be getting from Google.

In terms of traffic, if you were hit by Panda or Penguin or any other algorithmic changes, then you will see your traffic to drop dramatically from one day to the next. You can open your Google Analytics report and find out the actual date that traffic changed and compared that with this page that shows the dates Google changed their ranking algorithm. If there is a matching date and depending on the changes, you may have to take several actions to recover your traffic.

It was not panda or penguin but I still don’t get enough traffic, why?

If you are in a situation that your website never managed to get a considerable number of visitors then maybe it’s because:

It is still young (less than 6 months old)

You don’t have a lot of content

You don’t use social media to promote your website

You are doing any of these SEO mistakes

You concentrate only in getting traffic from search engines without looking for alternative sources of traffic.

5. You hired the wrong SEO firm

Unfortunately this happens very often as well. The web is full of ‘SEO companies’ promising first page rankings but in reality what happens is that their methods and techniques destroy every opportunity your website has for getting organic traffic.

How to choose a reliable SEO firm?

I have summarized some general guidelines on what to look for when hiring a SEO firm and how to outsource SEO with spending a fortune but as a general rule of thumb don’t believe anything you read on the web before double checking their claims.

Conclusion

The purpose of every website is to get traffic from search engines, social media sites, direct visits etc. When this is not happening you feel that you are losing your time and you lose faith in the Internet as a whole.

There are billions of Internet users around the word and as you read this article, there are thousands of people searching for information or hanging out in social media platforms. The fact that none of them (or only a few) visit your website then this means that you are doing something wrong. In my opinion this could be due to one of the 5 reasons explained above.

Hopefully by reading this post up to this point you have a better idea of what you might be doing wrong and more importantly you have some thoughts on how to reverse the situation. In order to finish this article with a positive message, read one of my published case studies on how to get 100,000 visits from Google per month.

How to grow your website traffic without building links

You can increase your website traffic without doing link building and without violating any Google webmaster guidelines by concentrating on less risky and more efficient ways that will also lay the foundation for long term success.

If you are one of my regular readers you should know by now that I am against building links as a way to promote a blog or website.  Link building used to work in the past but today things have changed and link building of any kind may create the exact opposite results.
Last week I was pleasantly surprised when Google has finally decided to change their ranking article by removing any references to link building and replacing the text with a wording more suitable to what is applicable now especially after the release of Panda and Penguin (You can see the exact changes in more details below). This also gave me the idea to write this article and explain how to grow your website traffic without building links.

One of the biggest flaws in Google’s ranking algorithm was the dependence on links for calculating the ranking position of a website. While Google was making huge efforts to keep spammers out of their index, for years you could trick their algorithm and rank for any keyword by pointing thousands of links (of any kind – I describe

the different kinds in detail in what is off-page SEO) to a web site.

This ‘hide and seek’ game between the Google Quality team and “SEO’s” continued until February 2011 when Google started rolling out the Panda updates and April 2012 with the Penguin roll out. What Google has finally managed to do is separate artificially generated links from natural links while at the same time devalued the importance of the anchor text.
The logic behind using links as a ranking factor is valid and links still play an important role but Google is now more efficient in identifying important links from links used for the sole purpose of manipulating their algorithm.

Other search engines (for example Bing and Yahoo) rely largely on links for rankings and they are behind Google is terms of how sophisticated their ranking algorithms are. This is also the reason why some websites are penalized by Google for link building and are removed from the first pages of their index but at the same time they rank well in Yahoo and Bing.

Google changes ranking advice

As mentioned above Google has updated their ranking article by removing references to links and adding references to high quality websites that users will want to use and share. The change was first spotted by @Baeumlisberger and reported by Barry Schwartz on search engine land.

This change was made on May 27 2013 although they should have made it right after the release of the first Penguin on April 2012. I have already started talking about the growing importance of building high quality websites since April 2013 and I am glad that now this is getting more attention.

Does this means that link building is officially dead? In my opinion yes, link building as we knew it until now is a think of the past and webmasters and SEO’s should concentrate on the other 200+ factors for ranking their websites higher in the SERPS.

Guest posting is link building with another name

Since last year many people have started to promote guest posting as a valid way to get links and increase the PageRank of a website. Many “SEO’s” are also promoting it as a legitimate way to gain rankings and if you have a website I am sure that you have received at least a couple of requests to publish guest posts on your website or blog.

You can read when to accept guest posts on your blog and is guest posting a valid way to get links for a detail analysis about the role and type of guest posts but in a nutshell you should know the following:

Guest posting is still link building (don’t let the name confuse you) and link building is against Google guidelines.

Guest posting is a very good way to make new connections, get new readers and customers and you should guest posts on other high quality related websites only if the above conditions as met.

No need to use keyword anchor text for your incoming links, maybe they won’t count against you but why take the risk.

SEO is not about building links and it never was

This is one of the biggest SEO misconceptions and I am afraid it will take years until SEO is disengaged from link building. To give you a real example, because we have named our SEO services as SEO packages and despite the clear description that we do not engage into any form of link building, we still get a number of emails from prospect clients asking how much we changer per link etc.

If SEO is not about link building then what is SEO?

Search engine optimization is exactly what Google added in the ranking article, it is about building high quality websites that are optimized for both search engines and users. A high quality website is user friendly, fast, shareable and offers a great user experience regardless the platform used by the user.

The importance has moved again to on-page SEO and to ways you can make your website more functional and better than the competition. I have written numerous articles about SEO the last 6 months that basically cover everything you need to know from beginner guides to more advanced techniques.

Besides SEO how can I increase my web traffic?

Digital marketing is the keyword you are looking for. With digital marketing you get to explore all possible digital traffic sources available. Let me give you a couple of examples

Social media marketing – Social media marketing is the way to build links to your website. It is not something new, it has been around for years but it is gaining more importance and attention. It is no coincidence that webpages who are popular in social media started ranking higher in search engines as well. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ are just some of the tools in your arsenal. If you want to learn more, spend 5 more minutes reading:

10 Social Media Marketing tips for beginners

15 Social media mistakes to avoid

Mobile Marketing – This includes both mobile optimized websites and mobile markets (Google Play, Apple Store etc). More than 30% of searches are coming from mobile and Android + iPhone users together are more than 1.5 billion!

Content marketing – Website content is the new marketing. Instead of spending your time in creating low quality content to get a link from a link network, you can now spend your time in creating high quality content for your own website. The more high quality content you get published the more visits you will get (not only organic visits but also direct visits, social media visits, mobile visits etc.).

Do non link building techniques work?

One of the questions I get in the comments is whether a website can climb up the search engine results without building links. People still don’t believe all these things about SEO and digital marketing and they want more prove.

I can truly understand their questions because I have been there myself and I was also sceptical about the effectiveness of this white hat techniques and the best answer I can give you is this: How to get more than 100,000 visits from Google per month (Case Study).

Conclusion

To conclude, if you want to get more web traffic to your website, the way to do it is not by building links (either yourself or hiring an “”SEO”” to do it for you) but by publishing more high quality content on your site. Spend some time on social media and try to make connections with other people in your niche.

When you reach a point that your website is loaded with useful content you can go out and contribute to other websites and share the expertise you have gained as an expert in your niche.