Website visitors can really help boost your business since your website, for most people, is usually the first point of contact or the primary source of information about you or your company. While creating a great website is an essential tool for establishing a web presence, a site alone won’t cut and other methods of driving traffic to your website should be considered.
There are various methods that need to be employed in order to ensure that your website is easily accessible, is conveniently advertised, and reaches the widest possible audience. Some of the most common web development techniques include:
- SEO
- PPC
- Site Optimization
SEO speaks to search engines and ensures your site’s relevancy while paid ads can boost traffic and optimizations for other devices ensure an even wider reach.
Metadata and Relevancy
The results displayed following a search on a platform such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo! are dictated mostly by a website’s, post’s or page’s SEO rating, or Search Engine Optimization. This refers to the use of metadata and on-page details that a search engine reads and makes an assessment on where to place your page based on the relevancy of the content in relation to a search.
Placement is known as SERP or Search Engine Results Page which is the list of results that you see following a search. SEO can be difficult to learn and even more difficult to master but you can learn. In most cases, however, it might be best to consult a professional web marketing agency that can do the hard work for you.
Ranking high in SERPs is important since most people will only click on the first 5 results when performing a search. The further down you are, the less likely it is that your page will be accessed.
Laser-Focused Ads
The bulk of web advertising comes from PPC or Pay Per Click campaigns. PPC allows you to set a maximum limit of money to be spent on an advertising campaign which is charged for every time a user clicks on your ad.
PPC ads are the sponsored posts you see in SERPs, are shown on social media or displayed on websites, and are a very common form of advertising on the web. Unlike SEO results which can take some time to show results, PPC campaigns are almost instant and can begin to bring in results very quickly.
This is mostly because PPC advertising campaigns are tailored to a specific audience that can be targeted on individual platforms. Yourself will have been targeted with PPC campaigns on Facebook based on your interactions on the platform.
Web Management
There are many more factors beyond SEO that Google takes into consideration when deciding where to rank your site and your site’s performance is one of these. All sites need to be proactively managed and optimized. Such optimizations include developing a mobile-friendly version of your site, page speed optimizations, and security.
Your site’s theme can and plugins can play a big part in this since outdated components can slow down your site, cause compatibility issues or even security vulnerabilities. Keeping everything to the latest version is very important but can take time.
If you use a website theme, for example, you might have to replace any code that has been added over time so be careful to make backups, and using child themes can help with this. Compressed media will also go a long way in ensuring a speedy website.