Supplements For Your SEO
I think it would be fair to say that Google’s recent algorithm changes upset a few people. Call me sensitive, but reading around various SEO and webmaster blogs and forums, I just picked up on a subtle sense that not everyone was happy with the new changes. Something about ‘businesses being destroyed’ or sentiments along those lines…
Of course I’m sympathetic to these concerns, and I understand that it can be very disheartening to have all your good work undone by a seemingly ruthless and unprovoked policy u-turn.Still, I find the complaints hard to take seriously because they are just that: complaints. While people have a right to be unhappy with Google, it is ultimately their prerogative to run their service as they please and throwing the toys out the pram isn’t going to change anything. Instead we should learn from it, and one of the most important lessons here is not to be completely reliant on SEO for 100% of your traffic. SEO is a fantastic tool and a great strategy for promoting your site, but you still shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket if you want your site to be resilient.
So what other techniques are available to you? How else can you generate traffic without being completely reliant on the big G? Here are some great supplementary ways to generate visitors…
PPC
PPC advertising campaigns might not have the lasting impact or the appeal of ranking organically, but they have their advantages – particularly when it comes to getting immediate results that are completely reliable. If you pay a set amount, you will get traffic from your PPC and hopefully that will lead to people sharing and spreading your links around the net for you. This doesn’t just have to mean Google either, Facebook and other companies offer campaigns that each have their own advantages.
There are many more benefits to using PPC as well. For example, you can use an AdWords campaign in order to ‘test’ certain keywords and see which of them brings you the most visitors and the most high-quality traffic. Likewise you can also benefit from using AdWords ‘remarketing’ feature which targets people who have previously visited your sites using cookies. This way you can make repeat visitors out of people who otherwise might have just visited once then forgotten about your site.
Regular Visitors
A site or blog with a loyal regular visitor base is going to be pretty much impervious to changes to Google or any other infrastructures. Once your site is bookmarked and part of people’s regular morning reading, it will have taken on a life of its own and become impossible to take down. Post regularly, commit to quality, and use multi-part articles/mailing lists and community aspects to encourage return visitors. Multi-part articles are great for encouraging people to return if you release them in an episodic manner and can provide a perfect ‘hook’ for getting people used to returning regularly.
Mailing Lists
Speaking of mailing lists, these on their own are a great way to attract people to your site for specific offers or articles. Make an effort to collect e-mails from your visitors as a priority, and you’ll have a great lifeline if ever you lose your ranking – just message everyone on your list and tell them about your new feature or download and you can bring a huge portion of them back. You can get PHP scripts for mailing free online and if you offer an incentive for signing up – like a free e-book (which need only be a collection of old articles from your site) then you’d be surprised what a high percentage of people will take you up on the offer.
Social Media Marketing
The next best thing after a mailing list is to have a popular Facebook page, a Twitter profile with lots of followers or a Google+ page in a lot of people’s circles. These can bring you direct traffic if you create interesting and varied topics, and have great potential to help your content go viral because it’s so easy for others to share the content further. Just make sure that your content has titles with a great hook and eye-catching images, as those are what people will see first and convince them to read/watch.
Apps
Developing an app is a great way to bring more people to your site and a great addition to your SEO efforts. There are many different ways in which an app can be useful as an addition to your main website. For one it is of course a great supplementary source of income which can help if you aren’t making quite as much from your website as you would hope. At the same time though it’s also great for strengthening your brand; tens of thousands of people start using Androids every day so having an app in the store is a perfect way to remind them that your website exists.
Furthermore though, you can also make your app work more fundamentally with your website. For instance, you might accomplish this by creating an app with an RSS feed giving your users a new way to stay up to date with your latest blog posts, or you might use an app that makes it easy for your visitors to post on your forums thereby encouraging them to post more regularly.
Otherwise, just make the app something relevant to your site that people are likely to get genuine use from and use regularly, and you can then use it as a way to market your site and to link traffic there directly.
Books
A book can help you to promote your website and make additional income in just the same way that an app can, and if you use content from your site it shouldn’t take you long to create. As an added bonus, you can include a direct link to your site in an e-book and this way you can use it to get more traffic. This way, even if your book gets copied and shared online, you’ll still benefit.
Mike has been working in Wisdek as an internet marketing consultant for more then a decade now. He loves his job and is thankful to Wisdek for giving him an opportunity to prove himself and having faith in his abilities. You can know more about Wisdek here.
