How to Increase Web Traffic through Search Engines!

Wouldn’t it be pointless to open a pizza shop which nobody knows about? You know your pizzas are good, the ambiance is great, and people will love it when they visit your place; but informing people of its existence is a must. In today’s cut throat competition, advertising is the key to success for any business. Now think about your online business/website; if your site doesn’t get any traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN there is very little chance that people would come to know of its existence.

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques come in. They will help you to get more people to your website through search engine hits. The best thing about SEO is that you don’t need to be a professional to do it. What you do need is hard work, patience and the willingness to learn. Let me begin by telling you why you should bother about putting in your time to learn SEO.

You may be interested in the following related articles as well.

Feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts that our readers may find helpful.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates.

ADVANTAGES OF SEO

  • Its FREE unlike traditional advertising media like TV, newspaper etc
  • It helps you drive more traffic to your website
  • Unlike paid media, organic traffic (traffic through search engines) consists of targeted customers, which are more likely to buy your product or revisit your website
  • It helps you to advertise your website globally
  • SEO is still in its early days so many people don’t use these techniques. So, if you do apply them it will be a significant boost

I think you would agree that the above advantages are substantial, more so, because you can do them all by yourself with the help of some free tools plus technical knowhow. I will come to those later in my post, but let me cover some basics about SEO first.

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

WHAT DOES SEO MEAN?

Search engines help people to navigate the internet. Google ranks pages based primarily on the following criteria:

  • Density of the keyword (search by the user) on the webpage
  • Quality and quantity of backlinks to that webpage from other websites. Quality of backlinks is the more important point

SEO is a set of techniques which help you to optimize your website for the search engines. Optimizing your website means that for certain keywords (which you choose), the website will rank high, and will possibly turn up on the first page of Google (I will use this as the base search engine).

FREE SEO TOOLS!

There are plenty of tools out there which are very useful for SEO. Here is a breif roundup of the top tools:

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

Objective 1: To choose the appropriate keywords to target for SEO

When you are trying to optimize your website for search engines, it is critical that you know which keywords you are going to target. This tool allows you to find the number of Google searches for the keywords. You should remember a couple of things:

  • A keyword which has millions of strikes per day/month will probably have the big guns trying to fight for the first spot. So you should try and stay away from such words.
  • A keyword which has a few hundred hits per month is of no use. The traffic is always shared by sites which turn up on the first page of Google, so even if you turn up on first page for this, it wont help you.
  • It is always better to choose 20 keywords with 500 hits each instead of 1 keyword with 10000 hits. But it is not wise to choose so many keywords, that you wont be able to incorporate them into your website. You need to optimize the number of keywords you want to target.
  • So in a nutshell, after you find a suitable keyword, go and do a Google search for the word and see what kind of sites are targeting that keyword. Find your niche keywords, and smaller competitors to begin with.

Methodology:

As all Google applications generally are, the interface is very intuitive and simple to use. So let me quickly show you how to use it. All the steps and details are shown in the thumbnail below to give you a complete picture.

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

The tool has got many more embedded uses like exact/broad search, sort by and other uses, but I cannot go into those details here. You can find an exhaustive tutorial on Google adwords learning centre

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

Objective 2: To compare search volumes based on keywords, locations and time

Google Insights is a relatively advanced tool which can help you analyze the search trends to the fullest. It basically helps you to do a competitive intelligence test and identify how keywords/businesses are doing compared to each other.

Methodology:

Lets take an example of Yahoo vs Microsoft Vs Google, and learn how to use the tool along with the example. Again, I will be able to explain it to you much faster through pictures, and it will be a lot more intersting for you.

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

The numbers in the graphs are nothing but scaled and normalized numbers. Suppose, in Jan 2008 ‘Google’ was searched the most ever in its lifecycle, then it is asigned 100. Then, the number 79 for Jan 2009 means that ‘Google’ (keyword) is searched only 79% of the times as it was searched at its peak (Jan 2008).

As it is easily seen from the high level search I did above, that this is an awesome SEO tool. You can use it to compare keywords you want to use, see how you are performing against competition, and much much more. Play around with this tool and analyze and plan your business growth.

There are so many tools that it would be impossible to even start mentioning them, but the above should be enough to get you started. Here, you can find a checklist of Some good SEO tools.

TRICKS TO GET MORE SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC

Now we have gathered all the tools and keyword knowledge required to start optimizing your website. Search Engine Optimization in itself is a huge subject, but it can be basically divided into two broad categories: On Page Optimization & Off Site Optimization. Lets First talk about On Page Optimization.

On Page Optimization

This section is aimed at your website pages which includes the content, tags etc. Basically, optimizing your site for search engines by making changes on the website as a whole.

 

Trick 1: Top to Bottom, Left to Right

The crawlers read a webpage from top to bottom and left to right, so you should tailor your website according to this rule. A few things to keep in mind:

  • Put the title and header text on top left and include the targeted keywords
  • Crawlers love content so after the header and the title you should have the content part in line with that rule
  • Put the site navigation on the right hand side instead of the top or the left
  • View the source of the page and that’s the order that the crawlers generally tend to follow, so you will get an idea if it is able to see the desired keywords and content before anything else

 

Trick 2: Put your keywords in your domain name

This is how your site is recognized on the internet, and is given the most weightage by crawlers on the search engines. So you should put the best keywords you want to target in your site name itself. Also, it is advisable to choose a popular hosting service for your website, which might help in getting more hits.

 

Trick 3: Decide the priority of pages on your website and optimize them accordingly

There is a priority level attached with the different locations in your website. For example, here is a hierarchy order for one website: Home Page > Page Title tags> Image Tags > First 200 words on each page/post> Rest of the post. So if a keyword appears on a higher priority page it has more chance of being recommended by Google. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize the low priority pages, but optimize the pages in that priority order. You should try to improve the density of chosen keywords on your pages, but be careful to use them in context and not try to cheat the search engines.

 

Trick 4: Know and analyze your competition

Who better to learn from, but the big guys in your niche and see what they are doing. Analyze there traffic, keywords, hits by keywords using Google Insights described earlier. Look at there website, and see if they are doing something which can be integrated into your website. Check google to see which sites are linking to your competitors – Use ‘link:sitename’ on Google.

 

Trick 5: Use keywords in your HTML tags and also with images

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

There are different types of HTML tags assosciated with your website like metatags, title tag, content tag etc. You need to insert all the relevant keywords into these tags because this is what Google will show to the user if your page turns up. Here is a nice guide to use HTML tags for SEO. Another thing to keep in mind is that the search engine spiders/crawlers can’t read the graphic content on your website, so you should attach tags and write the description of these images, again including the keywords.

 

Trick 6: Link your home page to every other page in your website

Well this is not a SEO tip as such, but will help you to get people to revisit your site. When the users come to your website through Google, they will not always lend on the home page, so you need to guide them to the home page. Also, try to add a clear description on each page of your website, so that the visitors don’t feel lost.

 

Trick 7: Create a sitemap

To explain how Google decides the page ranks of a website is out of the scope of this post. But think about it like this, that a Google crawler is just like a visitor to your website, and the easier it is to navigate, the better chances of the page being indexed for a search term. It will help to distribute the popularity of the top pages on your websites to all other pages. Just do a quick google search and you will get many websites where you can create a sitemap for free.

 

Trick 8: Include a robot.txt file

This is a text file which will guide any search engine spider which comes to your page. It is to be uploaded in your root folder wherever your website is hosted. Here is how a sample file should look like:

How to Increase Web Traffic through SEO

The first line tells the crawler that it is allowed to access any of the content in that folder. If you think that some of the folders or content is useless for search engines then you should exlude them using the Disallow command.

 

Trick 9: Try and keep only the relevant content on your website

It’s the keyword density that the crawlers are looking for, and any posts which are not related to the keywords you have chosen to target will only decrease your chances to come on the first page of Google. So its very important that you choose the keywords at the very start and try to streamline your website on those keywords as much as possible. Also, the crawlers like original and fresh content and text, so as your website gets more content with time, it is more likely to be chosen by Google.

These are the essential on page techniques you should apply to get your website optimized for the search engines. I will cover the off site optimization techniques in the next post. The second category revolves around getting links from relevant websites Also, there is a rising interest in the SEO services and consultants, to get your website optimized. So, I will also compare the doing-it-yourself approach vis-à-vis hiring-a-SEO-service approach.

This is the first post I have written on instantShift. So, I would really appreciate it if you could leave your comments or suggestions.

Like the article? Share it.

LinkedIn Pinterest

101 Comments

  1. Very Refined Article MsaNkadI…. I like the “On Page Optimization tricks” coz it covers most of the criteria of SEO which needs to be taken cared.

    Also i like your writing style. Thank you for tips.

    Kimberly

  2. Nice resource. SEO is very important now a days. Blogs are SEO oriented but still you need to organize data in a form within crawler’s reach. Thanks for the brilliant tips. Onpage optimization section is really helpful.

  3. I really enjoyed your post. It’s true that article marketing can really drive traffic to your website if you know how to. It is one of the most profitable form of advertising and what’s more it’s FREE!

    Jennifer Eden Cruz

  4. Nice post man, I did the same with my page and got benefited as well.

  5. good one….
    Soon i going to read and research! :)

  6. when i enter commands, it will goto the comments list!
    But some of my parts of picture is disappear!
    i think the arrows do some wrong works!
    so place the arrows correctly!
    the arrows are in jpg so better try PNG or else dimension the arrows correctly!
    thanks:)

  7. Thanks a lot for your feedback guys. I am so glad that you like my post. Looking forward to more interaction with you all.

    MnVn

  8. Thanks for some Nice tips Guys…… Now it’s time to apply.

  9. For those who want to be a step ahead of the competition, an understanding of SEO and the keywords used by the competitors is important.

  10. A really detailed explanation…Thanks…Looking forward for more quality posts…

  11. Thanks for share. I like this post, it’s very useful for me !
    Good luck !

  12. Good.Also thank you for sharing such a great useful information for us.

  13. great work!!
    learnt a lot about SEO and your blog wud surely help me.
    i liked the brevity of blog and ur style of writing.

  14. Very useful list of tricks.
    Thank you!

  15. Nice post. This covers the basic information that people are looking for in SEO.

  16. of the 7 blogs i read today yours is 100% the best and most relevant. i can tell you have put a significant amount of time into your training and overall deliver of the top and most important messages. your nine tips and site navigation is right on. If users can now just understand what top content is and the ability to convert once prospects come to their page we will all be better off and more successful

  17. MsaNkadI, this is a great article and well put together. I really appreciate your efforts and the great graphics. SEO is an area everyone needs to invest time in studying. The techniques you present are significant, and I hope more people find your information applicable.

    In today’s world, search engine optimization (SEO) is absolutely vital to the success of any web site. With a high search engine ranking, your web site will experience increased targeted traffic, a significantly higher level of brand awareness, and increased profits.

  18. Glad I stumbled into this article! I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.

  19. Instant-Smart…

    Thanks for putting SEO in such a clear, intelligent post.

    This really helps!

    Shawn

  20. Great article man. Very helpful!! Stumbled!

  21. Again, thanks very much for this nicely put together list. Keep up the great job!

  22. Great overview. I’d add that it helps to use valid HTML and properly formatted semantic mark-up. For example Use h1, h2, h3, h4, etc. for headers of descending importance, such as the site name in an h1, section in h2, page name in h3. Google knows that headers are more important and describe the content that follows so it is helpful to have keywords in these as opposed to only in paragraphs. I wrote about page structure and SEO in An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those who wish to learn more. Cheers!

  23. Excellent handy list of tips.

  24. Your observation is correct. When I had to quit the job, I thought I had to monetize my blog. No idea how to start. Just posted my own little experiments on web designs with real world examples. They did work well. Traffics flood. Always on the first page from googles all over the world in my niche.

    When I checked, I knew my contents are freshly written. Never learned SEO before, lots of leaks in term of SEO. But fresh contents did help. It’s still too early to monetize but I am learning :)

  25. Great post . Thanks for sharing !

  26. Hi,

    I understand about the “trick 2”, but I must say that when I started my website ( I still haven’t read anything about SEO), I wanted to go for a brand and make it recognizable.
    Google is a brand as it seems to me that when you’ve chosen the name of your website you didn’t worry that much about the domain name keywords :-)
    I’m sure that very few people look for “instant shift”. And yet as your website gets known, you’ll be unique.
    That’s what I want to achieve with the name of my website : a name that is unique and recognizable.

    Best regards,

    José

  27. excellent share guyzzz

  28. Useful , thanks for sharing

  29. very rich article

  30. Awesome article.. This article explains in detail about SEO so if anyone who wants to know about SEO i think this is the best article to read.

    Thanks for the valuable information.

  31. This site is really nice.

    fancy dress

  32. Very nice tips but not all can be applied for a newbie. Anyway, I think following what Google advises is always the best strategy.

  33. Great article.. thank you for sharing such a wonderful article with us.

    Regards
    QuickLinkNow.com

  34. thanks you…

  35. Affiliate Marketing is a performance based sales technique used by companies to expand their reach into the internet at low costs. This commission based program allows affiliate marketers to place ads on their websites or other advertising efforts such as email distribution in exchange for payment of a small commission when a sale results.

    onlineuniversalwork

  36. Some methods work better than others. You should analyze your niche to determine the most cost-effective way to promote your site.

  37. Nice Post, would love to subscribe to this blog !

  38. Good post, Bookmarekd!!

  39. nice post,
    thank you for sharing

  40. SEO is the thing no web developer should ignore

  41. use the keywords wisely, do not discount articles,
    very powerful, social media as well, use blogs,
    and also free ads such as Craigslist and Backpage to name a couple. Research the Google listings for your chosen keywords,
    et them show you the path to take to dominate the first page.http://www.articlesbig.com

  42. Really very good idear which provide new look to Website.

  43. Thank you for the useful article. I have started following the tips. Lets see!

    Thanx again!

  44. This article is too good man

  45. Nice post

  46. very useful one .. wow like it

  47. Very good information Thank’s for your information, i try to implement it to my sites

  48. Did you know you can list your blog(s) for free with bloggvertise.com. You can get free Do-Follow links and make money blogging! Check it out! It’s completely FREE!

  49. Superb article very useful..thank man

  50. Awesome beyond awesome post. Keep it up !

  51. This is a useful article and I love it.

  52. Great points, and this is a very well laid out site by the way. I put on a post on the same topic at free-online-traffic.com, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.

  53. There are some interesting points made in this post but I don’t know if I see all of them heart to eye . There is some validity but I will take hold judgement until I look into it further. Good clause, thanks and we want more! Added to FeedBurner besides.

  54. I found your website perfect for my needs. It contains wonderful and helpful posts. I have read most of them and learned a lot from them. You are doing some great work. Thank you for making such a nice website.

  55. Wow, great article – seriously, thank for making this, must’ve took some time.
    now following you on twitter and stumbled – thanks!!

  56. thanks great post really help me to get traffic

  57. Hi.. this will surely help me to get good traffic…

  58. Wow.. that is what we need to optimize a website. And they are the basix things to do. Thanks for sharing, Nicholas Hughes

  59. i am trying to increase my website traffic but getting some huddles. Now i will try this process.

  60. thanks for the share, great article, always good to read some new info or to recall if you forgotten something

  61. Great advice! I will definitely be following these tips and putting them into practice I will keep you posted on how/if it changes my site search traffic!

  62. Thanks for the tips, will help as we continue to set up the site.

  63. I have used these techniques for my website to improve the traffic but not yet increased. Please anyone guide me to increase my site traffic.

  64. There are many SEO strategies for getting much traffic for a website, you have shared an informative article for getting traffic through search engines. It’s really helpful for me. Many thanks for sharing this great post..

  65. Traffic always increases when targeted customers visits your site. So it is very important to attract target customers. One effective way to attract them is by creating online banners which can help in making people aware of your site.

  66. nice post,Thank you for sharing

  67. Thanks a lot for this kind of information keep it up in future

  68. Great article

  69. Great article

  70. hii i m big fan of yours and this is a very nice content

Leave a Comment Yourself

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *