WordPress is by far the most popular content management system with an average market share of 50-60%. The difference between 1st and 2nd position is huge, next in line is Joomla with barely 6%! There is a big chance that if you have a blog or website, you’ll be using or will have considered the WordPress solution in some way.

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The majority of bloggers or website owners dream about six digit monthly traffic levels and if they are not new to search engine marketing they will have probably tried many tricks, 10 steps, 32 ways or so-called ‘quick fixes’ to increase traffic. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you believe in a quick solution you should stop reading this article now and go and try out another ‘5 steps’ illusion.

Are you still there?

If you are serious about increasing your traffic you must understand that it won’t happen overnight, and it will take a lot of testing, failing and starting all over again. You may get frustrated, disappointed and ready to quit, but if you overcome it you will start to see the results you have always dreamed of.

Like with any science (did I just call SEO science?) there are some simple truths or fundamental laws you need to keep in mind. I mean, what are the chances of someone jumping from a rooftop and floating in the air instead of falling? I would say close to 0% (with the exception of Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman and a bunch of other superheroes).

Why? Because of the fundamental physics law called gravitational force of course. You may say ‘never heard of it’ or ‘I don’t believe it’. The thing is that regardless of your beliefs, education or political sympathy, the fundamental law will do the trick.

The same applies to SEM, there are some fundamental things you need to think about if you dream about making any progress in your quest.

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1. Advertise

You may be be tempted to say: “I knew it! Another pitch.” Hmm, did you really expect to earn without spending first? If you are hoping to bring more traffic to your site you need to understand that organic and paid activity go hand-in-hand and complement one another, once they are correctly implemented.

Focusing on high commercial intent keywords could mean fierce and expensive competition, but the profits can be worth it. If your pocket is not so deep I would encourage you to look closer at the variety of re-marketing paid campaigns including but not limited to: upsell, cross-sell, abandon basket remarketing, RLSA, RLSA + competitors, etc.

2. On-Page SEO

There are some vital search engine optimization processes and on-page SEO is one of them. Now, if you think that this means stuffing keywords in the meta-title or meta-description section, you are stuck in 1993.

Search engines have become much smarter and now require a much more sophisticated approach. Don’t get me wrong, optimised meta-data and content keywords are crucial for your website, but the key is to be much more diligent about using them in the most natural way possible.

Since I love to be practical, here is an ideal web page formula, according to MOZ:

  • Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
  • Include subject in title tag
  • Include subject in URL
  • Include subject in image alt text
  • Specify subject several times throughout text content
  • Provide unique content about a given subject
  • Link back to its category page
  • Link back to its subcategory page (If applicable)
  • Link back to its homepage (normally accomplished with an image link showing the website logo on the top left of a page)

Recommended WordPress plugins: Yoast, All in One SEO Pack, SEO Ultimate

3. Implement structured data

Also known as a schema markup, it’s a simple bit of code injected into the <head> section of your website to provide information (details of the site or product) to search engines to improve their understanding of the content and increase clickthrough rates (CTR).

Recent studies suggest that implementing schema markup can increase the CTR by up to 30%. Personally, I would be less optimistic and say that for the average eCommerce website, correct implementation of the rich snippets may result in a 17-21% increase in CTR. By the way, the key sentence in the above claim would be: “correct implementation” as there are a hundred of websites that suffer from the incorrect use of structured data.

Trying to make your life a bit easier, here is a simple example that any organization should have implemented on their website:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "your company name",
"url": "your website",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.facebook.com/yourcompany/",
"https://twitter.com/yourcompany/",
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourcompany/"
],
"telephone": "your company telephone",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "your company street address",
"addressLocality": "town",
"addressRegion": "shire",
"postalCode": "postal code",
"addressCountry": "country"
}
}
</script>

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And a few online tools to make your life easier: Google structure data test

Recommended WordPress plugins to insert custom HTML code to the header: Simple Header Footer HTML, WP Custom Header Footer or Header and Footer Scripts.

The three points I have mentioned in the article obviously aren't the only methods to increase traffic, but will most definitely put you on the right track.

If you're looking for more, we are here to help, contact us to discuss your requirements today.

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