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Hunter Liptrap, Certified Inbound Marketer and Website Designer at Modgility
Here are 9 ingenious ideas to increase traffic to a website for free:
IDEA 1: HACK TITLES IDEAS, AND FIND OUT WHERE TO SHARE
Let's suppose that we are going to write a new article about the Paleo Diet.
Get started by heading over to Buzzsumo and type in "Paleo Diet." Here you will find a list of the most widely shared articles on the topic.
Let's dive in a bit further and analyze the top 3 posts:
The best part is:
BuzzSumo shows you exactly which channels generate the most shares. Based on this information... When it comes to sharing your Paleo diet content, you'll want to take time to build a targeted campaign for Facebook and Pinterest.
You can use this data to generate your own blog titles. Take your time and experiment with 2 to 3 headlines.
For example: Feel Great With These 25 Amazing Paleo Meal Recipes
IDEA 2: MAKE AN EMOTIONAL IMPACT WITH YOUR HEADLINE
The Advanced Marketing Institute has a pretty awesome FREE tool call the "Emotional Marketing Headline Analyzer."
This tool will analyze your headline to determine the "Emotional Marketing Value" (EMV) score. In addition to the EMV score, you will find out which emotion your headline makes the most impact with:
Let's check the EMV score for our Paleo headline example above:
Awesome!
This is a great free tool that you can use to work on your headlines to make sure you're making an impact with the emotional value that you're targeting.
BTW, using this tool is extremely addicting and fun!
IDEA 3: ANALYZE THE COMPETITION - BUILD YOUR SEO GAMEPLAN
So, now that you've got a great headline... it's time to see what it's going to take to rank for your targeted key search term on Google.
I recommend using Google chrome to do this research so you can leverage the Mozbar. If you don't have the Mozbar installed, you'll want to head over to the chrome web store and add it to your browser.
Mozbar will show you the page authority, domain authority and number of links of the competition for your targeted key search terms while doing a Google search.
Here's an example:
To get more information, you can click on "Link Analysis" which will take you to the Open Site Explorer analysis for that page. If you're not using chrome, you can do the same analysis by typing in the page url in open site explore.
The first thing you'll notice in Open Site Explorer is the "Domain" and "Page Authority" as well as the "Page Link Metrics." This is the same information that is provided using the Mozbar.
You'll want to analyze your website's domain authority compared to the the competition to see how likely you are to rank for that targeted key search phrase.
In this example, you'll notice that the domain authority is "69." If your website domain authority is a "70" or better, you stand a chance at out-ranking the competition. We will also most likely need to get our page authority to rank a "50" or better if we want to outrank this page for the top search result.
In addition, Open Site Explorer provides a list of inbound links that are pointing to this page.
You can use this information to find link opportunities for your article. Since they are linking to this page, it's likely that they will also be interested in adding a link to your post if you can provide some additional value.
IDEA 4: RANK BETTER WITH (LSI) KEYWORDS
In the past, SEOs would try to load up their content with their targeted keyword over and over. This tactic is known as "keyword stuffing" and it no longer works. In many cases, it will hurt your search rankings.
Google now looks for "LSI keywords" to determine what your article is really about.
"What are LSI keywords?" you may be asking. LSI stands for "Latent Semantic Indexing." LSI keywords are closely related keywords (synonyms) to the main keywords.
Google uses LSI keywords to determine the meaning of your article.
For example, let's suppose you did a Google search for "Indians."
Google now has to try to figure out exactly what you're searching for:
Google then analyzes the page for related (LSI) keywords like the example below.
Then Google knows that this page is about "Indians the musician."
To add more LSI keywords to your content, follow these simple steps:
First, head over to Google and search for your targeted keyword. For example, search for "Financial Planning."
When you start your search, you'll notice a drop down of related searches.
At the bottom of the search results page, you'll find another list of related keywords.
Now, head over to SEMrush. If you haven't done so already, set up a free account.
Once you have your account set up, type in your keyword "financial planning" in the search box at the top. Next, click on the "related" tab in the left side navigation.
As you scroll down the page, you'll find a list of related keyword that you can use in your article.
Finally, sprinkle some of these related keywords into your content and you're good to go!
IDEA 5: BOOST INTERACTION WITH SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION
One of the simplest ways to get more people to share your content is to make it easier for them to share! Optimizing your blog article's meta data allows you to control what shows up when people share your content.
Here's how to do it:
You can use the the Social Media Optimizer to verify that your blog article's meta data is properly optimized for social sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.
IDEA 6: GET MORE SHARES BY OPTIMIZING FOR MOBILE
It's likely that 30% or more of your website traffic is coming from mobile... If you use Google Analytics, you can check to see exactly how much of your traffic is coming to your site from mobile.
Here's how:
Locate the mobile tab on the left side of the GA navigation and click on overview. From there, you'll be able to see how much traffic is coming from mobile, desktop and tablets.
On April 21, 2015 Google announced a mobile friendly update to their search ranking algorithm. Having a mobile optimized website is now a requirement for mobile SEO .
You can use Google's "Mobile Friendly Usability Testing Tool" to verify that your site pages are mobile friendly. (Note: This tool only tests one page at a time. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you can see a mobile friendly report for all of your site pages.)
But that's not all... If you haven't optimized your social sharing buttons for mobile, it's likely that you're losing out on additional site traffic.
SumoMe "Share App" is a must-have free tool that make is simple to optimize your site's social sharing features for mobile devices.
Here's how it works:
SumoMe Share automatically changes the location of the share buttons to the bottom of the mobile device screen. This makes it much more intuitive for readers to share your articles using a mobile device.
SumoMe suggests that you can get up to 20% more site traffic just by adding "Share" to your website.
IDEA 7: GET EVEN MORE TRAFFIC WITH IMAGE SHARING
While were on the topic of SumoMe Share, there's another really cool feature to point out.
When someone hovers over your images on your blog post, the SumoMe share buttons will pop-up, giving them the ability to share the image on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
Here's an example:
This makes it simple for your site visitors to share your infographics and illustrations.
The best part is... Image sharing is a built-in feature of SumoMe Share. So, once you install the app, all of your article images will be optimized for image sharing.
Idea 8: Drive Traffic Back To Your Site With Email
There are two well-known facts about digital marketing that you cannot ignore:
These two factors alone prove that your email lists are the most profitable leverage point of your digital marketing efforts.
It's essential to be able to convert your site visitors into email subscribers, so you can continue to nurture and encourage them to interact with your website.
If your website is built on WordPress... the best way to grow your mailing list is with Thrive Leads.
The Thrive Leads plugin provides you with a complete set features... that turn your WordPress site into a lead generation machine.
Here's a snapshot of Thrive Leads features:
POP UP LIGHTBOX
STICKY RIBBON
IN-LINE FORMS
2 STEP OPT-IN FORM
SLIDE-IN
OPT-IN WIDGET
As you can see, Thrive Leads has some really cool features that are easy to design and deploy on your site.
Here's the best part:
Thrive Leads makes it easy to quickly set up multi-variant (A/B testing) so you can consistently improve your conversion rate over time. It's so simple that once Thrive Leads has collected enough data, it will automatically choose a test winner for you.
Through its advanced, targeted and actionable insights and reporting... Thrive Leads makes it easy to see exactly how your opt-in forms are performing over time and where your most valuable traffic comes from.
IDEA 9: BOOST TRAFFIC & LINKS USING THE SKYSCRAPER TECHNIQUE
Brian Dean provides some pretty awesome traffic and link building strategies on his BACKLINKO site. He calls one of these strategies the "Skyscraper Technique" and it's genius!
Here's how it works:
1 Find link-worthy content
2 Make something even better
3 Promote to the right people
Step 1: Find Link-Worthy Content
The Skyscraper Technique is built on the foundation of building a "linkable asset" on your site. You need to create content that is so incredibly useful that people are compelled to add a link to your site so they can share!
"How do you know if your linkable asset is going to be a huge success?" you may ask.
The answer: find content that's already generated a ton of links.
Here's how:
BUZZSUMO
Buzzsumo provides a ton of great content ideas (including infographics and articles).
OPEN SITE EXPLORER
Open Site Explorer can give you great content ideas by using the "Top Pages" tab.
Visual.ly provides a directory of high quality infographics that you can sort by views.
You can also use Google News, and first page Google Search Results to find more awesome content ideas to target!
Step 2: Make Something Even Better
In this step, you'll learn how to take the content you found in Step #1 and make it even better. This way, you have the best content on the topic, which makes link building significantly easier.
Here's how:
Step 3: Promote to the right people
Publishing great content doesn't mean that people are actually going to read it. If no one reads it, you're wasting your time.
Here's Brian's secret...email outreach!
Start by analyzing the links pointing to the content you discovered in Step #1 using Open Site Explorer.
Click "Request CSV" and OSE will send it to you via email. Using the CSV file makes it easier to weed out referring pages that don't make sense to contact.
Once you have your list built, you can email them directly. That's it!
To check out this information in a better format go here: Increase Traffic For Free - 9 Amazing Actionable Ideas
