3 Simple Ways to (Massively) Boost Your Site Traffic

byTimMcKinlay

71.4K followers

Updated 3 years ago

Without traffic, it’s (literally) impossible to make money online.

There’s simply no getting around it.

You can have the nicest looking site, awesome copy, great offers… the whole nine. But unless you have people visiting your site (AKA traffic) you cannot make any sales. Just like Apple couldn’t sell iPhones unless people walked into their shop or visited their online store.

How do you get traffic?

Well, the training here in Wealthy Affiliate walks you through this process in detail. Virtually every aspect of building up your site to attract TONS of quality, free traffic is covered. So this is ultimately where you’re going to learn this.

But today I’m going to be sharing some super simple, yet highly effective ways to massively increase your traffic, that I believe compliment what you learn here in the training. These are the strategies I use to increase the traffic on my sites, so I know you’ll find these helpful.

And they mostly revolve around content. Because, like it or not, creating good content is (by far) the most important element in getting lots of quality traffic to your site.

The good news is, you don’t have to be an amazing writer, all you need to do is follow the process laid out for you here in Wealthy Affiliate and implement the tips I’m about to share with you, and you’ll have more traffic on your site than you know what to do with.

With that being said, let’s dive right in.

1. Start by Choosing Winning Keywords

Creating good content is one thing, but unless you start by choosing the right keywords, you’re shooting yourself in the foot before you’ve even started.

I cannot tell you how many sites I see where the content is based on the wrong keywords. Keywords that they simply don’t stand a chance of ranking for, because the keyword is either too broad and competitive, or it’s not based on something people are actually searching for.

Let me give you some quick examples to show you what I mean...

Example 1: Too often I see people writing articles with a title like “How to Lose Weight” or “How to Make Money Online” or “Fishing Tips”... something very general and broad, that they stand a 1% chance of ranking for (especially as a new site). These are keywords that I wouldn’t even target myself, with a well established site and years of experience under my belt. So unless you’re extremely lucky, you are not going to rank for these.

Example 2: Another common mistake I see is creating content that isn’t targeting a keyword at all. Stuff like “I Moved to Iceland With My Wife”. Now I know that’s a ridiculous example lol, but it makes the point. So many people use their blogs as some sort of personal story, and I hate to sound harsh, but nobody cares. And nobody is searching for this in Google. Which means that even if you do rank, it will not lead to traffic.

If you want lots of quality traffic on your site, avoid both of these mistakes.

Targeting a broad, super competitive keyword is a waste of your time because, while people are searching for it, you probably won’t rank for this stuff. And not targeting any proper keyword means you may rank for it, but nobody is searching for it, which means no traffic.

So you NEED to be choosing proper keywords.

Keywords that are based on topics people are actually searching for, and that you stand a good chance of ranking for.

Specifically, you ideally want to be targeting low-competition, longer tail keywords that answer a question someone has in your niche. The good news is, there are millions of these awesome low competition keywords, and they can bring you a LOT of quality, free traffic.

Again, the core training covers this stuff in detail. But here are some excellent tutorials on coming up with good keywords, which I highly recommend you check out:

• Understanding Keyword Research
• Building a Massive List of Awesome Keywords
• Generate Hundreds Of Blog Post Ideas
  

2. Leverage the Power of Google

I love Jaaxy, it’s a great tool, but you should really aim to go beyond this when choosing a keyword to base your article on. Because at the end of the day, no matter how good a given keyword tool is, it’s only a guide.

What you want to do is find a good keyword using Jaaxy, then plug it into Google to see what comes up. Which is worth doing for two main reasons:

• It gives you a deeper understanding of the competition
• It gives you ideas on what to write about within your article

Sometimes a keyword appears to be low competition, but then you look at the search results in Google and see that the whole page is full of authority sites with 5,000 plus word articles. Which means the overall topic is actually very competitive. So, while you definitely don’t want to over analyze this, checking out the search results can help you vett a given keyword. I do this for every single keyword I choose, without fail.

Now don't get me wrong, if you do see major sites ranking for the keyword you’ve chosen within Google, you can still outrank them so don’t let this put you off!

But this does give you a gauge on just how much effort a given article will require to rank. Because you can look at the quality of the content that is ranking and make yours better. And eventually, with lots of great content on your site, your site will gain more authority and can outrank bigger sites.

On the flip side, if you see a bunch of forums, social media pages and generally crap sites/content ranking, you know you’ve struck keyword gold. And the further you develop your research skills, and your content creation skills, the more apparent these opportunities become.

The other reason I recommend analyzing the search results before writing your content, is because this is an excellent way to put yourself in the readers shoes and figure out exactly what they want to know when they punch that search term into Google. So you can then craft your content to suit this.

How?

Well once you type a keyword into Google search, in the middle and bottom of the search results Google displays the “related questions” and “people also ask” sections. Which is basically Google telling you what people want to know who are interested in this topic.

You can also analyze the articles that are already ranking, to see what they’ve written and how they’ve structured their content. Which can further help you create the best content that is going to help your readers more than anyone else. And therefore scoop up all the traffic.

Related training:

• Content Research Strategies
  

3. Structure Your Content for Maximum Results

The third and equally important thing to do, in order to rank for your chosen keyword and get lots of traffic, is to map out your content properly before you start writing.

What do I mean?

I mean, start by crafting a good headline and subheadings first, in a way that addresses the topic in the most helpful way possible, before creating the body of the content.

This is super important. You never want to just go onto the page and start writing, you want to craft your content to answer the topic in a relevant, helpful and engaging manner.

Once you’ve created your headline and mapped your subheadings out, then you can just “fill in the blanks”. Not only does this help you know what you’re writing about, but it helps you stay on topic and maximizes your writing efficiency. It also helps ensure your reader gets what they came for, which in turn will lead to increased Google love and increased conversions.

This may sound simple, and it is, but having an outline of exactly what you’ll be writing about is going to result in much better, more relevant content that ranks and brings you a lot more traffic than someone who just starts writing willy-nilly.

Related training:

• How to Efficiently Architect and Write your Content

Let’s Put This Into Practice (Example)

The best way to illustrate how to put these three tips into action, is with a quick example.

Let’s say I’m in the outdoors niche and found a keyword like “best wood for walking sticks”. This keyword is relevant to my niche, is something people are searching for and isn’t too competitive, which I learned from Jaaxy.

It also passes my analysis of Google’s search results with flying colors, because the sites ranking for this aren’t that amazing and their content isn’t very in-depth or relevant either. Also, during my research on Google, I found what people are searching for based on the related questions at the top and at the very bottom.

Top of Google:

Bottom of Google:

This has given me a ton of insight into what people are wanting to know who type “best wood for walking sticks” into Google. Not just with respects to the core question, but related questions I can cover which will provide more value to the reader, and further boost my rankings and traffic.

Once I have noted these down, read some of the top ranked articles, and furthered my research on this topic, I would begin crafting the title and subheadings for my article.

Here’s what it would look like...

Title: Choosing the Best Type of Wood for Your Walking Stick

Subheading 1: The Top 5 Types of Wood for a Wooden Walking Stick

In this section or another one below, I would be sure to discuss all the types of wood people are asking about which I found through my Google research.

Subheading 2: Woods to Avoid When Choosing a Wooden Walking Stick

Subheading 3: How Thick Should a Wooden Walking Stick Be?

Subheading 4: Is Making Your Own Wooden Walking Stick Dangerous?

Subheading 5: Alternatives to Wooden Walking Sticks

Note: This is not the perfect example, it's just a quick example to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Someone who knows this niche and spent more time researching this topic could probably come up with a better article structure.

That’s it.

At this point I would simply fill in the body of the content, which is a lot easier now I know what I’m writing and how I’m going to be writing it.

And I am very confident that, as long as I had a decent site with lots of great content, I could easily rank for this over time. Because I followed the training, and these simple tips on choosing the right keyword, researching Google’s search results and planning out my content before writing. And as a result, I know I’ll get lots of quality, targeted, free traffic.

How do you put this into practice on your site?

Go through the training, check out the resources I’ve linked to here, and follow these simple tips to massively increase your traffic over time. I guarantee you that if you do this, and put in the same amount of time as someone who doesn’t, you’ll be the one who gets the vast majority of traffic and ultimately, sales.

I hope you found this helpful and feel free to share your thoughts/ask questions in the comments section below. :)

Tim

UPDATE: I have created a full Series of training on this topic here, so if you found this helpful, go ahead and check this out:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/classes/series/how-to-create...