SEO: What is the most effective way to increase traffic to your website?
In today’s digital landscape it is advantageous to create and maintain a web presence. Ensuring that this web presence can be found by visitors who are looking for what’s being offered (goods, services, or information) is an ever-changing challenge (McIntyre, 2015). Search Engine optimisation (SEO) is an important domain of marketing to understand because the higher a site’s ranking on a search engines results page (SERP), the more clicks are expected for the Web site (Mikulin 2013). When a consumer searches a term they are presented with a SERP. This SERP lists web pages that are related to the searched term (Figure 1). Within this SERP there are paid and organic results. Sharp (2014) highlighted that from research 90% of individuals who search a term on Google automatically avoid the Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements and go straight to the organically defined search results. He continues to say that being the organic number one on that SERP means that on average you can expect 33% of the traffic from consumers.
(Figure 1)
According to Google(2017), determining a site’s ranking is proprietary and it depends on thousands of factors. Baye et al (2016) explains that there are two ways to really push an organisations ranking organically to the top of a SERP. The first they describe at the ‘black hat’ strategy.
To develop a website is a marketing strategy which is more effective and least costly to reach many people. Promoting a website in search engine result list is one of the key of creating a profit producing web site. Sometime to get higher ranking in search engine result listing, SEO techniques are used in an unethical manner called spamming (Swati et al 2013). This has been found to boost figures on SERP’s but not improve the amount of clicks within a website. Such techniques not only mislead the search engine algorithms but also lower the quality of search results and increase traffic. Spamming techniques can come in the forms such as Invisible text ,Keyword Stuffing, Link Spamming etc.
The second method focuses more on improving brand equity. This strategy recognizes that consumers tend to click retailers that are more recognized, trusted, have reputations for providing value etc. In contrast to ‘black hat’ strategies, using white hat SEO techniques enables search engines to return quality content to their consumers. These techniques are beneficial to both users as well as search engines.
Effective SEO requires On-site optimization and Offsite optimization to work in tangent to provide the best results(Shi et al 2010). Swati et al (2013) explains how Keyword techniques are crucial for on-site optimisation. They go on to explain that users enter keywords to search information on search engines. Keywords represent the relationship between a search term and several billion of web pages. On-site optimization includes website design elements such as keyword formatting, keywords in meta tag, keywords in title tag, position of keywords, external link, keyword density etc. These elements are controlled and embedded on the site itself. Off-site optimization revolves around the links that point to the site from other web pages. These links back to the site are called back links. Site with most back links in most cases will come out on top (Swati et al 2013). High quality external links pointing to a website are called inbound links. Total number of inbound links is called as link popularity. In Google, page rank of website determine according to quantity and quality inbound links. To promote site in top ranking list, the quantity and quality of external links are still recognized as the major ranking factor (Kumar & Saini 2011).
When deciding on the best strategy around SEO, a decision has to be made with regards to how the traffic is going to be generated and why. Increasing the level of traffic often stems from the need to drum up high user interest, social power and the potential to increase profits. Profitability is the focal point for every business and to do this you require consumers to be visiting your web page where sales are made. The potential restriction on this strategy is that not all traffic is ‘good traffic’. Parsons (2014) explains that when increasing traffic to a webpage you need to ensure that the traffic is not only coming due to a viral video , point of reference etc. These users can be labelled as disinterested and will not actually be of profitability to the company.
Feifei and Guangnian (2009) suggest the algorithm to focus on when looking to improve SEO is one which assigns a numerical weight to a webpage according to its relative importance. It uses incoming link information to assign a global importance score to all pages on the web. The number of incoming links from quality sites measures the popularity of a page. SEO is based on quantity and quality of both inbound and outbound links.
References:
Baye, M. , De Los Santos, B. , Wildenbeest, M. (2016). Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. 25 (1), p7-32.
Feifei X. and Guangnian Z., Design and implementation of a Java-based search engine algorithm analysis system, Proc. 4th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, 1040-1043 (2009)
Goodwin, Danny (2012), “Organic vs. Paid Search Results: Organic Wins 94% of Time” (available at http://searchenginewatch. com/article/2200730/Organic-vs.-Paid-Search-ResultsOrganic-Wins-94-of-Time/) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.
Google (2017) “Explanation” (Available at http://www.google.com/explanation.html.) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.
Kumar R. and Saini S., A Study on SEO Monitoring System Based on Corporate Website Development, International Journal of Comp. Sci., Engg. and Infor. Tech., 1(2), (2011)
Mcintyre, E. (2015). Search Engine Optimization . Available: http://www.erinmcintyredesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Search_Engine_Optimization_Erin_McIntyre.pdf. Last accessed 6th April 2018.
Mikulin, Rebecca (2013), “Golden Triangle Study Findings Reviewed: Google Proves It’s Critical to Be in Top Three Search Results” (available at http://eyetools.com/research_ google_eyetracking_heatmap.html) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.
Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M., & Smit, E. G. (2011). Introducing COBRAs Exploring motivations forbrand-related social media use. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1),13-46.
Parsons, J. (2014). The Difference Between Good Traffic and Bad Traffic. Available: https://growtraffic.com/blog/2014/09/difference-good-traffic-bad-traffic. Last accessed 6th April 2018.
Sharp, P. (2014). The First Page of Google, by the Numbers. Available: https://www.protofuse.com/blog/details/first-page-of-google-by-the-numbers/. Last accessed 6th April 2018.
Shi J., Cao Y. and Zhao X., Research on SEO Strategies of University Journal Websites, Proc. 2nd International Conference on ICISE, 3060-3063, (2010)
Swati, P, Pawar, B and Ajay,P. (2012). Search Engine Optimization: A Study . Research Journal of Computer and Information Technology Sciences . 1 (1), p10-13