Google search is the ultimate traffic source for any business. After all, it’s the primary driver of online visibility in almost every market, and searches terms are a great way to find potential customers. That said, most businesses overlook this opportunity as a source of traffic. This article explains how you can leverage Google search results to drive more visitors to your website and how you can improve your own search engine ranking by following these simple tips.
Keep Content Fresh and Relevant
Google’s main aim is to return the most relevant results for any search. So, if your content is dated or irrelevant to the market, you’ll likely be penalized and won’t appear in the top results. That’s why it’s important to keep your content fresh and relevant.
For example, let’s say you run a plumbing business and you’ve written a blog post about How to Choose the Right Plumbing Tools. That’s great – but what if your blog post is now out of date? Or worse, it isn’t relevant to the type of plumbing tools customers are actually buying right now. Google isn’t going to show that post on a search result – and if your online visibility isn’t great, you won’t receive any traffic.
Build Strong Backlinks
Backlinks are links to your website from other websites, such as press mentions, mentions on forum threads, or blog posts. They’re a great way to direct a large volume of traffic to your website. Google actually prioritizes backlinks in its algorithm. The more backlinks you have, the higher your search engine ranking will be. So, the more websites that link to you, the better your traffic will be. The key here is to build backlinks from websites relevant to your business.
For example, let’s say you run a website about scuba diving. You can try to get a backlink from a scuba diving forum. If you want to drive more traffic to your website, you can ask forum owners if they would be willing to link to your site in return for a link to their forum.
Utilize Rich Snippet Optimization
Rich snippets are special snippets of code that specific search engines use to display more information about a product on the search engine results page (SERP). For example, if you search for “best coffee grinder”, you’ll likely see a SERP that looks like this:
You’ll notice that the search results are more visually appealing and that there is more information about each product, such as the number of stars, price, and a small description. That’s rich snippet optimization. The problem is that not every eCommerce site is displaying rich snippets. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your site is optimized to display them.
There are a number of plugins available that let you customize your website to display rich snippets such as the following:
- Clickable or “Smart” URLs
- Product Labels
- Better Product Descriptions
- Product Ratings and Reviews
- Use Product Videos
Create Unique Content Based on Keywords
People searching for products and services online usually type in long-tail keywords that are more specific and less generic. When you create content based on these keywords, you’re more likely to rank higher in search engines.
For example, let’s say you’re an eCommerce store that sells coffee grinders. People may search for “best coffee grinder” or “best electric coffee grinder”. However, if you’re creating content based on these generic keywords, you may not appear as prominently on the search engine results page. However, if you create content based on more specific keywords such as “best manual coffee grinder for home”, “best electric coffee grinder for home” or “best coffee grinders for home”, you’re more likely to rank higher in the SERPs.
Conclusion
Google search is the ultimate traffic source for any business. After all, it’s the primary driver of online visibility in almost every market, and searches terms are a great way to find potential customers. That said, most businesses overlook this opportunity as a source of traffic.
Keep your content fresh and relevant. Build strong backlinks, utilize rich snippet optimization and create unique content based on keywords. These are three effective ways to increase the traffic to your website from Google search results.
