How Can People Find My Website?
New owners of websites and blogs are always concerned about the traffic that their websites attract. And regardless of how much they share their websites’ links on the social media, traffic doesn’t seem to grow with the exception of a spike here and there. As a result, the growth of the business or service offered by the website is stunted, and the owners get demotivated. So what is the answer to the question; how can people find my website? One solution, you could have your have your website managed with an agency who knows what it takes to have a strong website to attract new customers. There are loads of agencies that you could use to help you with this though. For example you could check out someone like this Digital Agency Perth, but there are plenty of others that you could use.
In order for your website to attract more visitors, you need to understand how people usually find a website on the internet. Before we begin, ask yourself – what do you do when you want to visit a website? The old fashioned and long winded way is to type the complete URL on the address bar and hit enter. That should get you to the exact site you want and is known as a Direct Search.
But what if you don’t know which site to go to for something you are looking for in particular? These days you simply go to a search engine like Google or Bing, search for the term, and look for the website that meets your needs.
And that exactly is how people will find your website, alongside a few other methods. Let’s take a closer look into that.
Keyword Searches
The most common way for people to discover a new website or blog is through searches on various search engines, like Google. To make sure that your website or blog gets more exposure through the search engines, you must use search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a form of marketing that specializes in improving the visibility of searches organically i.e. unpaid searches. It encompasses a wide range of elements, but let’s focus on the most important bit – the keyword.
Let’s say you want to learn how to build a shed. Most people would just go to Google and type “How to build a shed” or “Shed building tips” or “Shed building” etc. It can be said with a level of certainty that the search results on the first page have all used keyword optimization. Keywords and phrases are those that sum up what the content on your website is all about. So when someone searches for those keywords or phrases, your website gets more visibility organically.
So how do you integrate keywords in the contents of your website in order to generate traffic? Well, truthfully, there’s a lot to be done, including advanced SEO. But for those just starting off, the following basic guideline will be helpful.
Place your keywords strategically. This is something that most people do not understand. While making content for your website, there are certain places where the keyword would be more effective, such as the topic and the first paragraph of the blog or article. You could also include keywords in the page title and as content text.
Use grammatically correct keywords. Search engines these days are smart enough to understand whether or not you used proper grammar. Wrong grammar, especially in the keyword, is never good for your website.
Don’t overuse keywords. Most people tend to use the keyword incessantly on the content. This used to work a long time ago, but not anymore. If you overuse keywords, Google will likely mark it as spam, and your search engine ranking will only go down. Moreover, forcing keywords even when it isn’t necessary will only degrade the quality of your text, and that will adversely affect your visibility. Generally, your keyword should have a density of 3% or less.
So to simplify; if your writing about building sheds and your website/blog has a few pages or posts about shed building including keywords that contain “Shed building” or “Building a shed” in them, then at some point your site will show up in the search engines first few pages.
The exact positioning of your site depends on many factors though. Such as how much content your site actually has, how relevant the search engine thinks your site is in relation to the search term, how new or big your site is, how many visitors your site gets and so much more hidden and constantly evolving search engine analytics.
There is also the niche factor. If your writing about fashion or beauty for example you are going to be competing against some big players so it is unlikely you site will show above theirs. However if you are writing about a unique or specialist subject such as “Indoor football for retired Pakistani Men” then there is a good chance your site will soon be top of the search list!
Just going back to the competitive searches you can get some success here by playing a bit clever. If your market is cricket for example then searching for basic cricketing terms means that your site will fall well behind the more established sites.
However, if you write instead about “Cricket for elderly Indian ladies” then anyone searching for this or very similar term should find your site.
There’s a lot more to know about keyword searches and SEO, but these should get you going for now.
Direct Search
As mentioned earlier above, direct search is the most basic way of searching. All you have to do is type in the domain name on the address bar, press enter, and you will be directed to the website without further ado. But there is one stipulation of this method – it usually only applies to well renowned websites, or websites that are somewhat popular among a particular niche.
Websites like YouTube and LinkedIn get most of their traffic that way, as they are popular websites and people know about them. If you are just starting off, you would probably not get that much direct search traffic.
Referrals
Another popular method through which people can discover your website is referrals. When we eat at a new restaurant and love the food, we often tell our friends about it and the restaurant’s business thus grows through word of mouth. Likewise, when someone likes the content on your website, there is a high possibility that they will inform their friends about it, and many of them will visit the website.
Alternately, the regular visitors on your website can share the link on their own blog or other places, which can also attract traffic to your website. For this to happen, you must have good content on your website – why else would anybody share it?
Paid Searches
Paid searches is another medium of getting better search engine ranking. As people usually tend to click on the first link that appears on the Google or Bing search results, a paid search is a good way to attract traffic. This way, you pay the search engine or any of its partner sites either when the ad of your website is displayed (CPM – cost per impression), or whenever someone clicks on the link and is directed to your website (PPC – pay per click). With PPC, you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad, making your paid search much more effective. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the scope of search engine marketing is much higher.
There are lots of tools you can employ for this purpose, but Google AdWords is the most used followed by Bing Ads. It is also easy to use and you can choose when and where to display your website’s ads, and bid accordingly. However, costs of paid searches can run quite high. So you must strategize properly before using the services of paid searches.
I would advise anyone starting out to avoid this path due to the cost involved. Especially if you are in an environment where you are competing with the big boys who have way more to spend on advertising than you.
As we can see, there are various ways through which people can find your website. Be it a referral or an organic (natural unpaid) search, there’s a lot of scope for your website to be discovered. Whichever method you choose to generate traffic on your website, you must remember that the content of the website is of the utmost importance.
