How to increase Web Traffic from Search Engines
In my previous article I listed the different ways to increase the traffic to your website or blog for free and Search Engine marketing is my first one in the list as it is most powerful and cost effective method to boost traffic to your website or blog. In this article let’s see how you can boost your traffic from Search engines.
Search Engines rule the web world. This is true in every sense and every website owner and blogger knows it. This is because the more the traffic, the more money you will make out of your website or blog. The simple rule for driving the traffic to your website or blog from search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL is to provide good content related to your website topic. Even though this looks simple but there is lot more to it. Due to search engines are evolving continuously they are becoming smarter everyday and looking out for new ways to list the search results for every keyword you use.
To help the website owners to position themselves better in this area, many companies have sprung up providing the services and products in the name of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Before spending any money on these services, webmasters need to do thorough research about the gains of using it, company capabilities and future roadmap to make most of it.
To drive more traffic to your website or blog from Search engines, you need to understand how the search engines work. The most popular search engine on the web is Google(G). Approximately 60% of web searches are made using Google. Google lists the web pages based on complex algorithms but for our understanding, in simple terms, it gives a page rank to each web page based on many factors but few major are Keywords, Inbound Links, and Outbound Links. Let’s see each one below.
1. Content and Keywords: These are the single words or bunch of words (long-tail keywords) used by the web users to find the information they want using the Search engines. If you provide the content with these keywords, the search engines will list your website top in the search results for those keywords. Even though including the keywords in your website or blog content is good to be in top slots in the search results, it is nevertheless not guaranteed as this depends upon other factors also. In early days of Search engines, webmasters used to apply this rule and stuff their websites with the keywords, but this does not work any more. G looks for other factors besides the keywords.
The best way to rank high in the Google or for that matter in any search engine results is to provide great content to users. Over the time, if you follow this, more and more visitors will come to your website again and again making your website popular. Also if you provide good content, useful to others, like this blog, other websites will link to you, providing you valuable inbound links. This makes the Google spiders to rank your website high.
2. Inbound Links: These are also called as Backlinks. These are links pointing to your website or blog from other sites, inwards to your site, therefore the name Inbound links. In order to rank high in the search engine results, you need to have more quality inbound links. Here Quality I mean, the links you get from other websites or blogs should be from authority sites. For example, if your website or blog is about plants, then it is logical to have inbound links from other related websites which deal with herbs, shrubs, spices, medicinal plants or plant medicines, etc. But if you get inbound links from the sites related to technology or pets, these are nowhere related to your topic, then in that case, you site will be penalised thinking that it is a spam.
Also make sure who are linking to your website or blog periodically as you will be the only one who is responsible for it. Also the anchor text (text used to provide as a link) the other sites are using to link to your site must be relevant to your topic.
3. Outbound links: The Outbound links are the links which you provide in your website or blog pointing to others websites or blogs. Be extremely careful whom you are pointing to as this can make or break your ranking in the search results. Do not link to a site dealing with off-topic, adultery, hatred or crime related topics. Also avoid linking to and linking from Link Farms, which are purely used for link generating purpose. Doing these will penalize your website or blog by Google and will result you dearly in terms of traffic.
Also continually evaluate your website or blog for your rankings using Alexa. Alexa is Internet Company, an Amazon.com company, which ranks the websites and provides valuable information like traffic statistics, Inbound and Outbound links, site owner, past history of the traffic, etc.
Following these simple yet effective tips while building your website or blog will help you to increase the traffic over time and makes you an authority in your chosen topic and in the process make more money. Also keep in mind that these factors are not only for Google search engine but all others like Alexa, Yahoo, etc. Build your online success on solid foundation by following these tips and for the long term.
Although there may be many other factors which can be used to improve the traffic to your website, the above listed are important which everybody agrees. I recommend checking out other resources listed in the Resources page of this blog for more information.
