How exactly do you increase your website traffic? It's a more complex question than it might seem on the surface. With the advancement of AI in search results, shifting social media algorithms, and other factors that impact websites, attracting visitors is challenging.
Fortunately, it's not impossible. Whether you have a brand-new site or one that's been around for years, driving more visitors to your website often comes down to doing basic things consistently.
In this post, we'll show you steps you can take to maximize potential traffic. We even have a handy checklist that you can download so that you can cross off each item after you complete it.
15 SEO strategies that'll make search engines love you
There are a lot of great reasons to focus on getting organic (non-paid) traffic from search engines. Focusing on this organic traffic is commonly known as search engine optimization, or SEO.
1. Determine your website's target audience
The first tip we're going to share has nothing to do with SEO. It also has everything to do with SEO. How can that be possible, and why am I trying to twist your brain into a pretzel?
Before you can start driving traffic to your site, it's helpful to know who you are trying to attract. Depending on the type of site you're building, this might be obvious. For example, if you sell running shoes, you're probably trying to attract runners and fitness enthusiasts.
But this might get more complicated. Do you serve professional marathon runners or hobbyist joggers? Are you offering specialized types of shoes for specific types of running or a broad selection for all types of runners?
Getting to know who your audience or customers are takes time though. If you have a new website, don't stress if you don't know in detail who exactly you're trying to bring to your site. It's sufficient to have a general idea of who is interested in your content and products.
2. Create a list of relevant keywords to target on your website
Which terms do people search for when they're looking for the type of information or products that your website offers? That's what we'll find out by doing some simple keyword research using two free tools:
- Google Keyword Planner: This tool shows estimates for how often keywords are searched on Google.
- Answer the Public: Enter one keyword, and it'll generate tons of related keywords based on autocomplete suggestions from several search engines.
How should you use these tools? Start by using Keyword Planner to build a list of relevant search terms. Create an account and then select Discover New Keywords:
Next, enter a handful of terms that are relevant to your site (or alternately, enter your website's address to generate keywords that way):
You'll now be able to see how often your initial keywords were searched. Plus, it'll give you a massive list of related keywords. You can export all of this data to a .csv or directly to Google Sheets:
Next, use Answer The Public to find more specific questions that people ask which are relevant to your site. Start with the same basic keywords you used to generate ideas from Keyword Planner:
Even with a free account, you can export all of these keywords to a .csv. Do this and add these keywords to the same spreadsheet you created to store your keywords from Keyword Planner.
You now have a massive list of keywords that you can use to optimize your pages and determine what content you should create. Best of all, it cost nothing and only took minutes!
3. Add an SEO plugin to your website
If your WordPress.com website is on a plugin-enabled plan, then one of the first types of plugins you should consider is an SEO plugin. Here are four options we recommend:
- Yoast
- All in One SEO
- RankMath
- Jetpack (which comes pre-installed on WordPress.com plans)
These plugins will help you manage important meta data and ensure you're optimizing your pages to appear in search engines.
4. Optimize title tags on all pages
Title tags are one of the most important SEO elements that you should pay attention to on any web page. They're essentially labels that tell search engines and users what the page is about. You know the blue links that appear in search results? Those are title tags.
Here are some simple tips for optimizing title tags:
- Keep them under 60 characters. This will prevent them from getting truncated in search results.
- Include the primary keyword, or the main topic of the piece of content, that the page is targeting.
- Ensure they read well to an actual person (rather than just stuffing keywords into them).
If your site is built with WordPress.com, you have a couple different options for editing your title tags:
- Use your site's built-in SEO features that are powered by Jetpack.
- Use your SEO plugin of choice.
5. Optimize meta descriptions on every page, too
Meta descriptions are short summaries of what a web page is about. In search engine results, they often appear below the title tag. While meta descriptions do not affect search engine rankings, they do encourage users to click, so it's important to write them well.
- Make sure they're relevant to the page. If they're not descriptive enough, search engines are likely to overwrite your specified meta description and borrow text from the page itself instead.
- Think about what would entice a user to click. What value will they gain from visiting your page?
- Keep them under 320 characters. Guidance on maximum length for meta descriptions varies, but as a general rule, this is a good upper limit to avoid truncation.
Like title tags, you can set page or post meta descriptions either with the Jetpack-powered SEO features that come with your WordPress.com site, or with a plugin. Google offers more detailed guidance on writing meta descriptions here.
6. Optimize the heading structure of your pages
It's important to structure on-page content in a way that's easy to read and easy for search engines to understand. Fortunately, getting this right doesn't need to be complicated.
Your headings should be nested, and here are some basic best practices you can follow when using headings throughout your content:
- Use just one H1 header per page or post. This should be the title/headline.
- Use H2 headers to subpoints on pages and in blog posts.
- Use H3 headers to indicate more detailed subsections under H2s.
- Use H4 headers sparingly and only to break down more complex ideas.
If you're curious what these headers look like in actual usage, this very blog post you're reading uses headings this way. For further guidance, check out our guide on how to add headings on WordPress.com sites. If you have technical knowledge, you can also change the appearance of your headers by editing their CSS.
7. Optimize your site's structure and ensure you have a sitemap
Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and seeing the desserts listed on the menu first. Then you see appetizers, drinks, and main meals.
That structure would make the menu pretty difficult to navigate.
Your site is no different; it should be structured in a way that makes it easy for users to navigate and find information that helps, educates, or entertains them. Search engines also like a well-structured website, as it improves crawlability, helps you build topical authority, and ensures that link authority is spread effectively across the entirety of your site.
Everything from breadcrumbs to URL structure to categories to pages impacts your site's structure, and for a deep dive into the ins and outs of website architecture superiority, check out our tips here.
You'll also want to make sure you have an accurate, well-structured sitemap. Luckily, if you host your website on WordPress.com, your sitemap is automatically generated for you.
Your site's menu navigation impacts your site structure too, and it's important to spend a bit more time on making sure you get it right.
When you have too many menu links, or links that are organized in an unnatural way, users won't know where you want them to click next.
Your menu should be viewed as a highlight of your best, most relevant pages for your audience; it should serve as an easy way for any visitor, whether they're brand-new or they visit every day, to navigate your site.
If your website is in a left-to-right language (like English or Spanish), try organizing your menu items from the most important item on the left to the least important item on the right to reflect the natural reading style. Typically, websites have a home or logo button on the left that can bring visitors back to the homepage, and other menu items for things like your About page, your Contact page, and a search button across the top from left to right.
Your menu should be standardized across your site too; it would be confusing to see different menu options on different pages across your site.
You can learn all about how to add menus to your WordPress.com site with our detailed guide.
9. Optimize your site's homepage and landing page copy
Your site homepage is like the welcome mat of your website home. It should be the best representation of who you are, what you do, how you help your readers, and why your site exists.
Your homepage should include information about:
- Your site's core products, services, or topical focus area.
- Navigational elements to core sections of your site.
- Social proof (like quotes, testimonials from customers, or logos from clients).
- Your most recent articles (if your site is a blog or a magazine-style site).
Other landing pages should be optimized too, and in general, here are some best practices to follow when writing copy for those pages:
- Include the primary keyword somewhere in the H1 (and URL if it's a landing page).
- Nest any additional headings..
- Include other relevant keywords in subheadings in a natural way.
- Include internal links to other relevant pages on your site.
- Include external links to help build your arguments and give context.
- Include images that add to the context of the page––meaningful infographics, personal photographs, or relevant logos are often more impactful than generic stock images.
- Include relevant calls to action (CTAs) using buttons and links.
10. Add internal links between landing pages
Search engines use links to understand how different pages are related to each other. They also use them to understand which pages are most important on a site.
Adding links between relevant landing pages on your site helps both users and search engines find what they're looking for.
Say for example you have a landing page for a guitar you're selling. You'll probably want to add links to related cases, straps, and amps on that guitar landing page in the hopes that site visitors will purchase more than one product.
These internal links help search engines build a "map" of your content, and they help users find related, helpful content more quickly and easily.
11. Acquire backlinks from other relevant websites
When other websites link to your site, it signals that your website is valuable and worthy of attention to search engines. As such, acquiring relevant backlinks from trusted websites naturally (i.e. earning them and not paying for them) is important for SEO.
Here are some ideas for ways to naturally build backlinks back to your site:
- Create content that other sites are likely to link to in their own content. This could include infographics, original research, statistics, and other assets that help other sites add value to their own content.
- Reach out to groups, organizations, influencers, or other blogs that create content that's relevant to what your site is about.
- Write guest blog posts for other websites that allow for tastefully-applied links back to your site.
- Search for sites with local business listing pages that might want to include your site. Local news sites, tourism boards, Chambers of Commerce, and other organizations often have resource pages that link to local business websites.
12. Fix broken links
Broken links negatively affect SEO because they create a poor experience for users and make it difficult for search engines to crawl through your site. Fortunately, it's easy to find and fix them with a free broken link checking tool.
Ahrefs' Broken Link Checker is one simple-to-use option. Visit the page and enter your site URL:
If you have broken links, it'll show you where to find them. Otherwise, it'll give your site a clean bill of health:
Ah...well, that's a relief!
13. Optimize your URLs and slugs
When we say "slugs," we don't mean slimy things that slide around on the ground. We're talking about your URLs, and specifically, the part indicates which page you're on.
If you're viewing a WordPress post or page, you can see where to edit the slug here:
Here are a few simple tips for optimizing slugs:
- Keep them short. Three to five words is a good range.
- Remove stop words like "the" or "is." They aren't necessary and this helps keep your word count down and URLs more memorable
- Include a relevant keyword. This will help search engines understand what your page or post is about.
For WordPress.com customers on a Business plan or higher, consider changing your permalink structure as well, so it only includes categories and slugs. This will simplify your URLs in a way that's SEO friendly, and you can learn how to get this done here.
14. Remove or consolidate duplicate content
If there are two or more pages on your site that contain similar or identical content, search engines aren't going to know which to rank. That's why we recommend identifying duplicate content early so that you can fix it. There are a few free tools you can use to find duplicate pages:
Need to have two copies of a page, or another copy of your page on another website? Use canonical links. They tell search engines which version is the original page. The Yoast, All-in-One SEO, and Rank Math plugins all have settings to set up canonical URLs, or you can set them up manually.
15. Optimize your site for speed
When you go to a website, and it doesn't load as quickly as you would have hoped, it's a pretty disappointing experience, right?
Not only is a slow website a disappointment for users, it's a ranking factor for Google.
If you want your site to rank well, you'll want to make sure that your site loads quickly. We have a free tool that's available for all WordPress users that can help you identify and track your website speed. If you're a WordPress.com customer, optimized and scalable servers, built-in caching, fast themes, and a content delivery network are included with every plan.
Four blogging tactics to bring in more visitors
Blogs aren't dead, and we'll fight anyone who says they are (and by fight, we mean debate in a calm and rational manner, possibly over coffee or another fine beverage).
We recently published a whole article about blogging tactics to increase website traffic, so we recommend checking that out for more robust advice. That said, here are some important highlights if blogging is a part of your website growth strategy:
1. Create a schedule to regularly publish blog posts
Blogging is all about consistency. While there's no magic number for how many posts you should publish per month, it's important to publish regularly. Setting a routine schedule can help make it easier to write and publish consistently, so you always have clear deadlines to meet, without having to think about them.
If you need some help getting started with establishing and maintaining a regular publishing schedule, our article on creating an editorial calendar is a great place to start.
2. Optimize your blog posts for search engines
Just like general website SEO, blog SEO is all about consistency.
Here are a few ways you can ensure every post you publish is optimized to rank:
- Include the primary keyword in the headline and title tag.
- Shorten title tag to between 55 and 65 characters.
- Include the primary keyword in the header image file name.
- Include the primary keyword in the article introduction in a natural way.
- Include secondary keywords throughout content and subheads in a natural way.
- Ensure header image is correct size (not larger than maximum size necessary to ensure crisp photos and a smaller file size).
- Include relevant keywords in all image file names and alt text.
- Optimize the URL slug with your primary keyword (i.e. /very-cool-keyword).
- Include internal links to relevant articles and pages.
- Include external links to help build your arguments and give context.
3. Follow Google E-E-A-T guidelines
Anyone can write a blog post with AI in minutes. Not everyone can write something people want to read and share with others.
What are the quality standards that you hold your content and yourself to?
Google has a helpful concept that helps them determine what high quality content looks like. It comes in the form of an acronym, E-E-A-T:
- Experience: What experiences do you have that contribute to your unique ability to talk about the subject matter?
- Expertise: Back up your content with reputable studies, credentials, or qualifications.
- Authoritativeness: Build authority by establishing your voice as a credible source of information regarding your site's focus area.
- Trustworthiness: Be an ethical, transparent voice in your industry by disclosing affiliations and being upfront with your readers.
If you use categories and tags on your blog, make sure you don't have a category and a tag with the same name. This can be viewed as duplicate content. Here's an explanation of how and why and what to do instead.
Two email tactics that'll get subscribers onto your site
We love a good email list because it's a great way to have direct contact with the folks who are most interested in your content.
We also love it because your email list isn't at the mercy of ever-changing social and search algorithms; it's a list that you own, and it should be treated as such.
If you're interested in incorporating some email strategies into your website growth plans, here are a few tips you can implement today:
1. Add a newsletter or email subscription option to your site
Give people a way to subscribe to your latest updates via email. Depending on the type of website you're running, this might mean signing up to hear about deals or new products, or it could mean getting your latest news and blog posts.
If you're a blogger or newsletter publisher, then WordPress.com's Newsletter feature is perfect for delivering your latest content to readers. For brands and small businesses selling products or services, you might consider an email marketing plugin like MailPoet.
2. Create a plan to get mentioned in third-party email newsletters
Are there other websites with newsletters that are relevant to your niche? Do they offer space for third-party placements to other sites? If so, reach out to them and see if you can be included!
There's no trick here. Subscribe to newsletters and emails from sites and brands that are relevant to what you do, and keep an eye out for opportunities. You might even proactively reach out to those site owners and see if they'd be interested in starting a new partnership. Shoot your shot.
Driving traffic from social media is harder than it used to be. Many platforms prefer to keep you on their own sites and apps, tuning their algorithms to limit referral traffic to other sites. That doesn't mean all hope for website traffic from social media is lost though. Here are some tactics you can try to turn social media followers into website visitors:
1. Auto-share all new blog posts on social media
If you host your website on WordPress.com, posting your new content on social media is as easy as connecting your social media accounts to your website under Tools > Marketing > Connections.
This feature allows Jetpack, which is a pre-installed plugin on WordPress.com sites, to automatically post to your connected social accounts as soon as you publish new content. Simply make sure that the Share when publishing setting is toggled before you go live.
2. Create a link in bio page with links to your website
A link-in-bio page is a fancy way of saying "these are all of the relevant links that the people who follow me on social media should be able to easily access."
You're probably familiar with the format of a link-in-bio page from interacting with other creators on social media; it's essentially a highlight of sales landing pages, new content, and signup pages for your social audience.
WordPress.com has a helpful tool called w.link that is endlessly customizable and can be fully integrated into your social strategy.
Along those same lines, actively review the links in your link-in-bio page and add or change them as you post new content or release new products.
Making sure this page is accurate helps ensure that your social media followers are always able to find the content that's most important for you to promote.
4. Add links to your site from your YouTube channel
Don't forget about YouTube! If video is a part of your content strategy, you'll want to ensure that your website, aka the place you're trying to increase traffic to, is well-represented.
Including relevant website links in video descriptions, your channel description, and profile links gives your YouTube audience obvious next steps after watching your videos.
You can even create resources that directly relate to your videos that you host on your website and put them behind a newsletter signup to build your email list.
Once you post on social media, you can boost the post by putting some ad money behind it in the hopes that it gets in front of even more people.
All social media platforms have their own way of enabling creators to boost their posts, so here are some guidelines straight from the sources:
Three other tactics (that didn't quite fit anywhere else)
Finally, we have a handful of tips to share that didn't quite fit elsewhere in this post. We didn't want to end this article without sharing them though, so we'll give 'em a home below:
1. Use SMS marketing
If you're running a business website, then SMS marketing might be something to consider. It's a great way to let customers know about sales, new products, and other announcements you have to share.
It'll cost some money to market this way, but here are some platforms you can check out that are specifically geared toward small businesses:
2. Use Google PPC advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising works well for selling products and services. There's a lot to learn about the ins and outs of PPC advertising, but getting started is easy. Check out these guides:
If you're not familiar with Discord or Slack, they're group chat services that let you create space for groups or communities to engage with one another. They can be a good way to build a community around your brand, which might indirectly help send traffic to your site too.
Here are a couple guides to help you get started:
Tracking traffic on your site
How will you know your traffic-building efforts are paying off? By using some simple tools to track traffic on your site. Here are two options we recommend:
- Jetpack Stats: This plugin comes with all WordPress.com sites and gives you tons of insight into how much traffic your site is getting, which pages visitors are landing on, and where visitors are coming from.
- Google Analytics: This tool is free but much more complex than Jetpack Stats. If you're serious about diving deep into understanding what people are doing on your site, then Google Analytics is the way to go.
Solve your traffic woes once and for all
You made it all the way to the end? Congratulations! Whether you use a few of these tips or all of them (which…wow, that's impressive), we hope this list will help you be more successful with your website.
As a reward for making it all the way through, here's that downloadable checklist again that recaps all of the strategies we covered in this article. Use it to ensure that your website landing pages, blog posts, and promotional avenues are optimized and ready for traffic.
Once your traffic starts to grow, you may notice that your hosting costs go up, as many hosts meter their plans based on monthly visits. That's not the case with WordPress.com. You get unlimited traffic and visitors on each of our plans so you're never penalized for your success. Check out our hosting plans here.
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