You’ve spent valuable time and money creating a website which reflects your brand, conveys your messages, is built to last and contains all the features you need; but how do you ensure that your intended audience visits it?  With over a billion websites on the internet, competition to get your site to the top of search engines and in front of your target audience is fierce, so here are some tips for driving traffic to your organisation online.

Organically increasing your website’s “visibility” when people search the web:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important tool in ensuring that your website can be easily found when people search for relevant words and phrases in search engines such as, Google.  With good use of SEO, it is possible to move your website up the ranking of the search engine and therefore increase the likelihood of people seeing your listing and visiting your site.

How do Search Engines rank pages?

When an internet search is carried out, the search engine you are using will list the results of the search in order, putting web pages with greatest authority at the top.

To ensure that your page has authority and is therefore ranked as highly as possible there are several factors to consider:

1. Include Keywords and phrases that people will be searching for within the text of your site – Note: These must make sense within your text as the process called “Keyword stuffing” will be picked up and could be penalised when search engines analyse your site
2. Write about things that people will want to share – When other websites, organisations and people make links to a website this indicates to search engines that it’s a trusted site which people interact with, therefore improving the ranking
3. Keep your site up to date and include relevant Keywords – There are free tools available on the internet such as the Google Keyword Planner to assist you in establishing which words and phrases your target audience are likely to be searching for so that you can include these within the text of your website
4. Give your customers opportunities to review your organisation – Online reviews can contribute up to 10% of the influencing factors which search engines use when ranking search results.  Local search engines particularly love online reviews because they know that consumers also love online reviews

Whilst your website ranking by search engines can improve organically through good reviews and the use of relevant copy including Keywords and tags, your listing can be further improved with the use of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns such as Google Adwords.

What is Pay Per Click advertisement?

Pay Per Click is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s essentially a method of buying visitors to your page in addition to earning visitors organically through the layout and copy of the site.

Adwords:

The most popular type of PPC is ‘Search Engine advertising’ (eg. Google Adwords). This system provides advertisers with the option to bid for ad placement on the search results page when specified keywords are searched.

If your adverts contain relevant keywords and your “bid” is high enough, your advert will be displayed at the top of search results when someone searches for that specific keyword(s) or phrase.  You will then have to pay a fee (your bid) to the search engine when your ad is clicked.  Within this system, if your bid is high enough your ad will be one of the first things that the ‘searcher’ will see, therefore increasing the chance of them clicking on your ad and visiting your site.

Social Media Advertising Campaigns:

The main social media platforms also provide the option to pay for your website or organisation to be advertised as a featured post.  In this case an agreed amount is paid to target specific audiences with your ads according to certain criteria such as their location, age, background, behaviours or interests.  This form of advertising can significantly increase the reach of your messages whilst ensuring they are brought before an extremely targeted audience.   However, it is vital that your social media adverts are linked to relevant landing pages on your website and have a clear call to action so that visitors have a good experience and receive the information they’re looking for.

To learn more about how Yeomans can help with making your website work for you, or to find out about pay per click and social media ad campaigns please contact us.

References/acknowledgements:

Redevolution
Wordstream
Shopify
Images courtesy of Istock