Ideally, an expertly rebuilt, Google-optimised website should get a 300-400% traffic increase within 3 months of going live.
The above results come from a project done by an expert colleague in the US. But sadly, this seldom happens, as the goals for most website rebuilds is around ‘the look’. It’s somehow assumed that more traffic will magically follow! Yeah, right
Most people, especially company owners, still see the company website as a brochure, not a dynamic marketing tool needing constant care and investment – This old brochure mindset means there’s no strategy or funds made available for website SEO, promotion or marketing of the website – Which means only a modest, if any traffic improvement… Business owners are puzzled why the $5,000 or more they invested in the site update gives them no more website traffic or sales leads…
So, how do you get these 300% traffic improvements from a re-build? Firstly, recognise that the site look or visual design has nothing to do with getting more traffic. It may help get conversions once people arrive as a professional looking site provides some peace of mind and confidence. But the look contributes little to gaining new traffic via any search (since 50-70% of traffic to the site will be via a Google search). It’s far more important the site structure, content and coding be clean, able to be easily indexed by Google. (read more)
Assuming we’ve a good back-end structure, here’s my ‘to do’ list for new website owners.
- Monitor Bounce Rates – After 30-60 days of website activity, check out your site’s bounce rate using Google analytics. Bounce rate tells us the number of people that leave your site immediately after arriving. Generally, the goal is to keep this below 30% for each page on the site. An examination of keywords and content provides the clues to what’s going wrong.
- Monitor & Adjust Keywords – Both Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools provides loads of data to tell us what’s happening. Webmaster Tools indicates what searches you show up on and Analytics will show you want happens when someone clicks through to your website from those keywords. Set a priority of action items based on your most important keywords. We also have our own expert SEO tools that monitor where you sit for Google page one ranking and keywords, against your competitors.
- Post Regular Articles – Search engines and visitors want to see fresh content. It gives both a reason to return to your website. Fresh content means adding or updating articles. Try to add new blog posts on a weekly basis. WordPress sites make this easy – And Google rewards you with traffic.
- Have a Link Building Strategy – Search engines look at who is linking to you and their importance. Quality prevails over quantity. You will need inbound links to many of your pages as possible to be able to up your ranking on competitive keywords.
- Use Pay per click – This is a great way to get traffic in a hurry. Googles amazing AdWords remains one of the best ways to quickly generate traffic and sales within days, not months. The trick is not just the words chosen, but to personalise the Ads, linked through to special offer landing pages on your website.
It’s a reminder that most of the real work to gaining website traffic comes AFTER the site is built. As we’ve said many times before, at least the same amount of time and money needs to be allocated to website marketing and traffic generation, as is set aside for the original design and building. Unfortunately this seldom occurs.
Ref: 12 Reasons Google Hates You
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