How to increase traffic on your website using 3 simple methods➡️
Hello, and welcome!
Today, I’m going to show you how to increase traffic on your website using 3 simple methods.
These methods are practical and proven because they have been able to bring us more than 100, 000 visitors since the beginning of 2021 alone.
This was done with no advertising, no social media and no paid service to improve our Google ranking.
This was done solely through focusing on:
- content creation
- (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation
- implementing long-term strategies
We started Learn English With Africa in October 2015. So far, we have published 191 posts with a total of 336, 086 visitors and 563, 095 views (as of Friday, 23rd April, 2021).
These posts aim at teaching vocabulary and grammar in a creative way. Short stories, dialogues, images, videos and audio files also accompany these lessons for better illustration.
Below are some of our most visited posts:
Vocabulary Posts
- Describe your City or Village: This lessons shows you how to describe a city or a village in a detailed way.
- Describing Schools: This is a thorough post that gives you a lot of language tools in order to describes schools in an effective way.
Grammar Posts
- Reported Speech in the News: This a grammar lesson which shows when, how and why reported speech is used in the media.
- Dialogue with the verb to BE: This is a funny and interesting dialogue that uses the verb to BE in context.
Posts with Short Stories
- The Perfect Present, with the Present Perfect: This is an advanced short story about an immigrant couple living abroad. One day, the wife gives a Valentine’s present to her husband but he does not want it. What will happen next?
- When Lions Come to Town, with Adverbs of Time: This is a beginner short story about a boy who learns to be courageous with the help of his grandfather.
All the above posts have thousands of views.
In the next steps, I will show you what you can do on your website in order to achieve the same results.
Here we go!
Step 1 (How to Increase Traffic on Your Website): Focus on Your Content
Pour your energy into creating quality content that will last for years. Avoid distractions and be patient because, oftentimes, excellent results appear over time. Some posts are like wine. They need to mature a little bit.
For example, this post only had 29 views in 2016. Yet, it got the following views subsequently: 805 (2017), 1 595 (2018), 4 242 (2019), 5 187 (2020) and 3 055 (January to 23rd of April 2021).
This means that when you create content, do it for its intrinsic value regardless of what readers currently like/want/need/crave or not. A good example is when we created the ‘Describing Hospitals‘ post. This post got only 28 views in 2018 but got 4 247 views in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The truth is that people will always need to talk about hospitals.
Here are 8 golden rules for creating effective content:
- Conciseness: do not beat around the bush. Present arguments and support them with facts. Choose quality content over quantity.
- Relevance: target the right audience and give them what they want.
- Expertise: know your subject very well before any publication. Do proper research and avoid plagiarism.
- Structure: provide clear guidelines as to how the content should be consumed. Use headings or subheadings, different colours and have identifiable paragraphs.
- Language: ensure correction and readability. Read (aloud) your articles several times before publication. Use the right vocabulary or terminology in order to drive your ideas to the right audience.
- Presentation: mix textual and visually-appealing graphics. Add video and audio documents to spice things up.
- Relatability: make sure that the content speaks to both heart and mind.
- Attractability: Catch the reader’s or viewer’s interest immediately. You can do this through images or clever turns of phrase.
- Value: write as if you were going to submit your article to a reputable media institution like the New York Times or the BBC. You will thus create more valuable content in order to meet those high standards.
- Consistency: create content on a regular basis and stick to your schedule.
Step 2 (How to Increase Traffic on Your Website): Focus on SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is very important for websites to take SEO into consideration because this is part of what helps them to rank well on Google or not.
On this website, we use Yoast plugin in its free version. It gives important guidelines as to how we should write our posts. It literally gives us a green light when the post is SEO friendly. On the contrary, it gives us a red light when the post does not respect SEO rules. (Watch video entitled “How to Increase traffic on Your Website” at the end of this post for better illustration).
There are 5 main things you need to religiously follow when dealing with SEO.
- Choose the right long-tail keyword or keyphrase and include it in the title, in the first line of the first paragraph, in all headings and subheadings and in a few image descriptions (not all images should include your keyword). In this post, our keyphrase is ‘How to increase traffic on your website.’ Ideally, each post you publish should have its on keyword or keyphrase to avoid duplicate content.
- Write a meta description for your post. This is what people will first read on Google before they actually visit your website.
- Provide appropriate tags for your post and choose appropriate categories.
- Create a post that is at least 300 words. Count one keyword or keyphrase for every 200 words. This means that if you write a post that has 800 words, you should insert your keyword 4 times (excluding those in the headings or subheadings.)
- Include external and internal links.
- Use the passive voice in moderation or parsimoniously. Write using the active voice: ‘Canva provides a lot of free templates.’ Sometimes you can write: ‘A lot of free templates are provided by Canva‘. Ideally, only 10 percent of your article should have the passive voice.
- Use linking words to structure your text.
- Vary your vocabulary.
- Aim for simplicity.
Step 3 (How to Increase Traffic on Your Website): Focus on Implementing Long-term Strategies
The internet is like a jungle and there is a lot of advice out there on what you should do or not do on your website.
This problem is doubled when you happen to be on social media. The feedback that people leave or do not leave does not necessarily vouch for the quality of your content.
Luckily enough, there are other tangible metrics such as Google Analytics that enable us to see if a post is doing well or not. This objective result will enable us to implement long-term strategies that are not dependent on subjective opinions of random users.
Here are 6 durable things you can do on your website in order to have perennial results. This will help you bring more organic traffic to your website.
6 Long-term Strategies to Implement
- Treat your website like a luxury brand. Pay attention to small details and make sure that your content is recognisable, special and exclusive. Avoid distractions and focus on improving the quality of your products. Besides, make sure that the only place where people find your content is on your website.
- Ensure that your website is in pristine condition all the time. Carry out updates regularly (you can also automate these.) Make sure that your site loads fast. Learn how you can increase the loading speed of your website here.
- Invest in your website for long-term results. Choose the right hosting company and install few but excellent plugins if you have a self-hosted site. Do not clutter your website.
- Do not chase cheap money (irrelevant adverts, affiliate marketing, etc) because it can have severe repercussions for your website (chaos, bad user experience, slow loading speed). The little amount of money you earn does not compensate for the loss of value in your brand. Channel your energy into creating your own valuable and unique products. It will take time for you to find a proper niche market but once you do, you will have grown a solid and stable business that promotes your values.
- Check the posts that are doing well and optimise them by creating templates that you can reuse for future posts. Remember that most of the times, 20 percent of your posts bring 80 percent of your traffic. Identify those valuable posts and promote them.
- Be proactive and educate yourself. The industry keeps changing and there are new things to learn every single day. Invest that knowledge in your website by improving it wherever necessary.
I hope you found this information useful. If you have any questions, you can ask them in the comments section below.
Good luck with implementing these tricks on your own website. They do work!
Further Exploration:
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About the Author
Thandi Ngwira Gatignol is the founder of Learn English With Africa. She was born on June 11th, 1981 in Blantyre, Malawi. When she was 19, she left her country of birth for France. She currently lives with her two daughters and husband in Poland.
Thandi holds a Bachelor’s degree in English studies obtained at the Université Paris X Nanterre in France and a Certificate in Journalism from Malawi. She has taught English as a French Ministry of Education certified teacher both in France and in Poland. She speaks six languages fluently, including French, Polish and Italian. She is now learning Kiswahili, German and Spanish. Salt No More is her debut novel and you can find her other books here on the website or on Amazon.
English Article: How to Increase Traffic on Your Website (3 Practical and Proven Ways) Level B1-B2© Learn English With Africa, May 2019
2 Responses
Very much useful for all the site owners who are looking for organic traffics.
Thanks a lot for your feedback Udhay. Much appreciated.