Supercharge your website traffic with digital marketing

Team Koobr highlight seven quick wins in digital marketing that you can implement today in order to increase your website rankings. Read on below to see more proven techniques that will help you to increase your website traffic, increasing the chances of you getting valuable enquiries.

1) Keyworded content

When SEO first started, it was all about keywords and not really anything else. To try and get the best out of Google’s algorithm at the time, you just need as many keywords in your blog or page as possible. Whilst this sort of made it sense, it led to plenty of keyword stuffing. Sentences didn’t make sense and it felt like an out of date cheat code with digital marketing stuffed in every sentence. Digital marketing would be everywhere. Every sentence would have digital marketing stuffed in it needlessly. (See what we did there?).

But you get the point. It got to a point where it was more than shoehorning. Keywords were ruining sentences and were just not relevant to the page. Google got wise to this and, as with everything, updated its models. Now, keyworded content is more about intent. Obviously, you still need to include keywords in your headings and subheadings, from both a Google and customer point of view. These are to attract the eye of the customer when they are scrolling through your website looking for the answer.

One change that you can make today would be to assess your pages of the highest importance. Run through them as though you are a customer (or ask someone else to) and see if they can identify the keywords you are wanting to rank for in the blog. That is a good test to see if your content has the right direction and keywords implemented. Hopefully, they’ll land straight on the paragraph where your keyword is in the subheading!

What do the experts say?

Yoast put it perfectly when they say:

“Using headings creates texts of higher quality that are easier to read. A better text is better for users, which is better for your SEO. If visitors can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll probably leave your site and look for another answer to their question.”

2) Anchor Texts

From keyword rankings to anchor texts. This is another quick fix that you can make to your website to ensure it ranks well. Remember, whilst we are making changes to specific pages, the higher these pages rank can only do good for your website. Eventually, a sign of a higher ranking means that your site is trusted by the search engine and thinks it will provide value to your site.

What are the differences between anchor texts and hyperlinks?

Anchor texts are the terms and content. The hyperlink is the actual URL of the page that the anchor term is leading to.

So, how do anchor texts have an effect on your site and keyword rankings? Well, they work internally and externally. The quick fix you can make to your site is your internal linking structure. Make sure you are linking to the correct pages with the right anchor texts. For example, if you are offering a social media service, you would link to your social media page as we have done here.

The ideal anchor text is to the point and obviously needs to be relevant. Internally, you will send the search engine crawlers to various pages on your sites using these hyperlinks. It will also work well for the customer and that is why relevance is so important. There is nothing more irritating for a customer than feeling like they have been misled. Imagine clicking on a hyperlink that says it is going to lead you to a flooring page and you end up on a page for gardening tools. It is a frustrating experience.

The quick-change you can make on your website regarding anchor texts is to check all the hyperlinks and ensure they are pointing to the right pages. If you can, internally, make them as keyword relevant as possible. If you’re an IT expert offering computer services, your anchor text should be computer services where applicable. Just make sure it’s not stuffed in somewhere and is actually relevant to the piece.

What do the experts say?

This is how MOZ describe an anchor text:

3) Backlinks

Backlinks are important in SEO and driving more traffic to your website. They’ve actually replaced keywords in a weird way. Whilst it used to be all about keywords, external backlinks now play a major part in how your website is performing. This is because these links provide search engines with a guide on how informative your website is.

For example, if a website like Forbes or The Marketing Institute links to your site and their article is on digital marketing, you may have hit the jackpot. These websites carry such a high authority with search engines that they are trusted to provide their opinion. If they link to an article on your site, it means they trust it and like the information that is given. That is then relayed back to Google or other search engines.

In backlinking terms, the anchor texts are important this time as they will help you rank for certain keywords. If you want to rank for a graphic design agency or creative agency, ideally you will have a link back to your site. The anchor text for that backlink would want to be as close to the keyword as possible that you are wanting to rank for. We’ll link internally here with creative branding agency, but you can see for reference how you would want them to look on an external article.

What do the experts say?

Mailchimp simplifies what a backlink means in SEO and website terms:

“Links on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website. Backlinks are also called inbound links because they represent another website’s traffic coming to your own site. The quality and quantity of your backlinks can help you rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.”

4) Calls to action on your digital marketing

Calls to action are some of the smallest, but most effective changes you can make to your site. It will help improve conversions, and thus, make your website supercharged.

A key aspect of digital marketing, calls to action dictate to the customer what you want them to do next. That is why they would hugely benefit your website. You can tell them where to go and which pages you want them to land on. With the majority of visitors coming to your site (based on the average percentage) coming from a search engine, these people are looking for info, whether it be a sale of a product or a service offering. If someone lands on Koobr’s site, for example, the chances are they are looking for marketing services. They may even be looking for advice on how to supercharge their website…

So, a well planned call to action could gain further interaction from those who land on your page. You obviously want to keep them on your page and not direct them to leave your site, so it is good to tell them where to go next.

This is an alternative marketing direction and moves away from ‘in your face marketing’ that some people describe it as. You’re not saying ‘BUY NOW’ or ‘ORDER HERE’. You are simply guiding a customer to more informative pages where they can then make their own decisions.

The prime example is your emails. Use your calls to action on your website like you would on your emails. If you’re sending out an email, you’re likely to have buttons that redirect back to your website. Use your calls to action in the same way you would with an email. The stats speak for themselves!

What do the experts say?

Optimizely defines a call to action like this:

“A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action. A call to action is typically written as a command or action phrase, such as ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Buy Now’ and generally takes the form of a button or hyperlink.”

5) Develop a social media plan as part of your digital marketing

Social media plays an integral part in supercharging your website. It is perhaps the most underrated aspect of digital marketing. This is because it won’t always make you money directly, But, with customers often needing at least 7 touchpoints before being converted, social media allows retargeting methods. It can provide both free and paid options to hit your target audience.

The website aspect of social media is quite simple. On your website, you need social media icons to link to your social media pages. They need to open in a new tab otherwise you are taking customers off the page and they may not find their way back. They also need to be clear and clickable. If a customer lands on your social media, they can then like or follow your page. Once they have done this, your organic and paid social marketing should land on their news feeds again.

With links in your posts, it can direct the customer back to your website. Their mind is refreshed and they have a look around your website again. This drives organic traffic to your site, resulting in search engines having a greater opinion of your site. There’s more on why social media can benefit your website here.

What do the experts say?

Them again: SEMRush talk about what impact social media can have on your SEO:

Social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking, but the links you share across social platforms increase brand exposure.

6) Use eye-catching images with alternative text

This is more pertinent for a website like Koobr who bases its livelihoods on producing eye-catching images. If we had a range of distorted and fuzzy images, despite advertising as a graphic design agency, the conversation would not get above 0%. How can you trust a graphic designer to produce nice images for your website and socials if they can’t do it for themselves?

Your images can have a big impact on your conversion and bounce rates though. It’s not just for graphic design agencies. It’s about gaining the trust of your customers. If you can gain the trust of your customers, you can gain the trust of search engines. They are also handy for your calls to action. The aim of your images will depend on your website service, but their importance cannot be underestimated.

Our tip would be to fill your website with images to separate your texts. Essays like this one need to be split up with images to keep the reader engaged. The images could also be click-throughs to other pages. If they’ve got a call to action on there, an eye-catching image can draw in the customer and entice them to click through.

They also provide the option to give you extra keywords on your site. Search engines can not always read images and so you can use alternative texts to tell the search engine what they are. If, for example, you include a graphic design case study or presentation in your blog, the image might not mean anything to a search engine or someone who cannot see the image. Therefore, writing an alternative text would help them to understand what it is. Write something like ‘example of Koobr graphic design logo with red background’.  This explains what the image is whilst also including a keyword.

What do the ‘experts’ say?

Koobr talked about the importance of images in their SEO below:

“Using alternative text in images is something that can be easily missed by Web Developers, SEOs and Content Writers. Put simply, the alternative text describes an image to Google because it won’t be able to read or view the image when crawling the page.”

7) Learn how you can speed up your website

This one is quite simple and a really quick change. Just run a speed test on your website. The quicker your website is, the better it is. There are some great websites you can use which help you to test the speed of your website. If your website speed test throws up a range of issues then you can identify them and pass them on to a web developer or someone who can help you to fix these issues.

Website speeds and page loading times play an integral part in SEO. It has an impact on bounce rates. If a website does not load up quick enough, then the customer is likely to click off due to frustration.

Run a speed test on your website and learn what aspects of your site could be holding you back. It could be you have too many images on your site or they are too large (the latter being most likely). Although most WordPress sites will automatically be able to shrink your images, the size of them could still be having an impact on your website. Having a speedy website is so important to your digital marketing and reach.

What do the ‘experts’ say?

Bitcatcha put a list of the top ten things which could be slowing down your website:

“But behind the scenes, hundreds of requests are instantly pinged around the world to bring you the images and text. There’s a lot going on in those few short seconds, and there’s a lot that can go wrong.

Things can start to slow down, taking your website with it.”

Bonus tip – Let Koobr help you with your digital marketing needs

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