How do I increase traffic to my store?

One of the many intriguing questions I get regarding traffic sources for your website is “how do I increase website traffic organically?” In other words, “how do I increase website traffic without paying for it?”

There are numerous ways of going about increasing the amount of traffic to your site with nothing more than sweat equity, and I’ll attempt to help you build a better plan to execute this strategy.

The catchphrase Search Engine Optimization or SEO is banged around like a cheesy infomercial online, and numerous companies are offering a particular amount of “organic traffic” for a nominal monthly fee. Beware of this practice as it’s mostly someone running a script that simulates traffic to your site to appease the analytics Gods.

To put the Creatibly version of search engine optimization, SPW into action a few areas of content must align.

The search engine algorithm is so old and so large at this point no one person knows exactly how a search engine delivers a result explicitly. If they did then that one person would be at the top of every search and no one person or business is. If a service provider is telling you that they will put you at the top of a search result, then they’re lying to you.

What you can do to increase your chances of higher search rankings is to increase the amount of relevant content you’re putting out.

Relevant content is critical, the algorithms aren’t dumb, and they’re built by people whose business it is to deliver relevant search results. Trying to game an algorithm with search engine optimization is a bad idea. What is “gaming an algorithm?” It’s generating content and using keywords that aren’t relevant to why the user shows up to your website. An example of this sort of gaming I’ve seen by search engine marketers is quite crude; the tactic typically revolves around posting content on your site that’s simply about current events and nothing about your website. An example is that you have a kid’s toy company and you have a new truck toy, and you’re posting about fires in California because that’s what’s hot then you’re going to get ranked down by the algorithm.

Relevancy will win 100% of the time, you’re on my site, I’m a designer and marketer, among other things, and you’re reading about marketing and design. That’s relevancy in action; it drives actual users who require practical information to the right place.