There is a common belief that the more website traffic you get, the more opportunities you have to convert users.

This is essentially true, but sometimes, with more traffic comes lower conversion rates. Why?

This often happens because the traffic isn’t targeted. You want high quality leads in your website traffic because they are more likely to purchase your product or service.

So how can you optimize your website for more targeted traffic, but not have to spend a ton of money doing it, or hiring someone else to do it for you?

1.    Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

When you start out, focus on finding keywords that represent your niche to base your blog content and store pages on. When building a strong foundation of relevant keywords, aim for one to two main keywords per webpage.

You can use SEO tools like Ubersuggest to help you find relevant keywords. To start with, find keywords where the search volume is 10,000 searches per month. After you spend a few months creating quality blog content and optimizing product pages with these foundation keywords, you can focus on going after the higher volume keywords.

2.    Enhance for Long Tail Keywords

Although focusing on short keyword research is essential, you should also pay attention to long-tail keywords. They are keywords that are more specific and have less search volume, therefore, less competition.

Whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for a particular product or service and are more likely to convert. This way, you can create a website experience tailored to the searcher intent and more likely to deliver the content they are looking for. This helps you drive more organic search traffic to your site from a targeted group of users.

3.    Rejuvenate Your Content

This is an easy hack to drive traffic to your website and doesn’t take much time. All you need to do is remove outdated content from your webpages – refresh it with sections of content or change a few paragraphs and then relaunch the content as new. It is essentially a quick touch up on old webpage content.

4.    Submit Your Website to the Search Engines

You can request search engines to crawl and index your site. Although this isn’t essential, it helps increase your website’s odds appearing in the first page of results for relevant queries. Here is a beginner guide to submit your site to the major search engines.

5.    Drive Your Backlinks

Backlinks are becoming one of the most essential components of SEO. Backlinks are when an external site links to your site. It indicates to Google that your site is trustworthy and relevant. They also have the potential to drive traffic to your store or website because users on those sites click through and explore your site.

6.    Publish New Content Regularly

Google loves fresh content and even better if it’s delivered daily. New content means products, blog posts SlideShare presentations, webinars or updates. Anything that you end up hitting the publish button for.

This doesn’t just help Google find you, it gives your users a reason to keep returning to your website. If they subscribe and are regularly notified when new content is available, they’re more likely to keep coming back.

7.    Create Shareable Quizzes

Quizzes are useful tools to generate website traffic. When your user finishes a quiz, they can share the results through the social sharing feature at the end. Their networks can click on the link and take your quiz giving your increased traffic. Make sure you have a process for them to sign up to do the quiz to grow your email list at the same time.

8.    Maximize Your Social Media Share Buttons

Always add social media share buttons to shareable pages such as your blog posts, product pages and other website content. These share buttons make it easy for your users to post your content. When their network views the post, they can click through to your site. This action gives you social proof and traffic.

9.    Consider Contests and Giveaways

Having regular contests and giveaways can be a regular part of your marketing strategy to boost your website traffic. It gives users a reason to visit your site, not to mention the word of mouth marketing you’ll ignite if you incorporate a social sharing component to the campaign.

10.  Email Marketing

Email marketing is an oldie but a goodie. When you keep growing your list, you can keep driving website traffic to your store as long as your customers stay subscribed. Also, email marketing remains the only marketing channel you have complete control over.

Building a list can take time, so it’s important to start as soon as possible. There is plenty of information out there on how to build lists. Just try one thing at a time. Don’t over complicate it…but consistency is key.

When starting out, increasing traffic to your website can often be very intimidating. Just take it slow and build a solid base with one or two consistent actions daily. After a few months, you will be able to see a regular targeted traffic flow that you can captivate with your unbelievable offers. Read here for more SEO tricks to skyrocket your website traffic.