4 Essential WordPress Tips to Increase Website Traffic

| 5 minutes read

Growing traffic rates is a constant priority for all businesses, whether it be paid or organic. There are thousands of tips and tricks out there on ways to incrementally increase website traffic by a few percentage points.

When it comes to WordPress, many developers struggle with the question of how to drive traffic to your website through design and performance. WordPress is considered to be the most used content management system (CMS) website platform in the world. There are thousands of themes and design features to personalize your site – so how can you create the optimal design combinations to increase website traffic?

If you take a look at all of the ideas and suggestions out there, you will realize that it boils down to a few simple steps: improve your website’s design and performance.

Search engines do not want to reward websites with poor designs with top spots on the SERPs. Additionally, consumers will not interact with a poorly-performing site for long – and a high bounce rate will also hurt a site’s rankings.

While there is no exact recipe for success when it comes to growing traffic numbers, there are some key WordPress tips you can use to create a better site. Let’s dive in.

1. Make Mobile Design a Priority

The majority of people will first stumble upon your site through their mobile devices.

Currently, about 55% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices, while 43% is from desktops. If you’ve done any research about website design, you know how crucial mobile optimization is. Customers will almost instantly exit if they run into any UX errors, such as weird layout, difficulty navigating, or sizing issues.


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Even though most WordPress themes are optimized for mobile, it is crucial to spend as much (if not more) time improving your website’s design for mobile users as it is for traditional desktops.

You have to think about all of your design elements and how they will appear on the smaller screen. In some cases, your mobile design may look completely different than your desktop version to support a better experience.

When you are making WordPress mobile-friendly, it is highly recommended that you start with a testing tool to pinpoint your current weaknesses. Google offers a free mobile-friendly testing tool, which is a great starting point.

It is highly recommended that you partner with a developer who specializes in responsive design.

2. Integrate Plugins for SEO

Plugins are one of the best ways to take your WordPress site to the next level and integrate features to improve performance. There are plenty of SEO plugins for WordPress available, so it’s crucial to understand which ones will help to increase website traffic.

When you’re searching for WordPress SEO plugins, keep an eye out for elements that will influence traffic-building factors.

Here’s are the capabilities you should keep in mind.

A. Keyword Optimization

Look for plugins that provide insight related to keyword data, such as density numbers, traffic rates per keyword, or even suggestions. Incorporating keywords (particularly long-tail phrases) into your website content is one of the simplest ways to grow organic traffic and boost your rankings. For WordPress, Yoast is the go-to for SEO.

B. Back-end SEO Management

One of the more confusing aspects of SEO is optimizing the elements that aren’t visible on your pages. Things like tags and meta descriptions need to be constructed specifically for keyword inclusion. Again, Yoast is ideal for this.

C. Local SEO

Although online businesses may not necessarily target local audiences, you can still benefit from incorporating local SEO into your website. However, this does need to be based on data – such as regions where clusters of your customers come from or areas with high demand for the products you sell. WordPress plugins that offer schema structured data optimization are a fantastic resource. Consider using the Business Profile plugin.

D. Internal Linking and Backlinking

Backlinks and internal linking structure are crucial for SEO ranking since this provides search engines with signals on the credibility of your site. Using a plugin that analyzes your current links and sends alerts for missed opportunities or potential errors is a great way to improve your WordPress site’s performance. Consider looking at Easy External Links or Urlink.

3. Automatically Share Links on Social Platforms

Organic traffic doesn’t just come from Google – social media is one of the leading sources to drive in new visitors. Many consumers use sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter specifically to discover brands, products, or information.

Many social media sites are turning into search engines of their own as consumers can enter in tags or keywords to see posts that contain them within the platform.

For instance, Twitter users can insert a word or phrase to see Tweets, news posts, or shared articles about the topic. Another important social platform that is often overlooked is Pinterest. This social media site is essentially a visual search engine and it is great for driving traffic to specific pages or blog posts.

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So, one way to start attracting more traffic through social media is to share links frequently on these platforms. You can even use a WordPress plugin to auto-post to social media – like Social Media Auto Publish – every time something new is created. This will automatically create a hyperlink with a preview of your content – along with an image that will be searchable on social media platforms.

4. Try Out Guest Blogging

You may be surprised to learn that content not on your own WordPress site can help or hurt your rankings. This is because Google pays very close attention to external links. According to Moz’s research, linking signals make up 27% of the ranking factors that Google uses!

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It’s usually pretty hard to earn external links organically – especially good ones from high authority sites. So, you may need to take this into your own hands to get links from other great sites that lead back to your own.

One of the best ways to do this is to guest blog on sites that also reach your target market. Take a look at blogs and online publications that publish content related to your industry or that overlaps with products or services you sell. Then, pitch some ideas to them for posts where you can naturally include a backlink to your site.

There are tons of benefits of guest blogging that go beyond just increasing your link signals for ranking purposes. First, it can grow your organic traffic as readers click on hyperlinks in the posts that get published. Additionally, it can help to establish your brand as an expert and build up recognition with new audiences.

Conclusion

When you are building a WordPress website, it is important to focus on incorporating elements that will attract your target customers. Organic traffic does not grow by accident – and the best way to increase website traffic is with strategic planning.

If you need help with WordPress development and want to drive in higher traffic numbers, you need to work with a developer that understands the ins and outs of WordPress. Annexcore specializes in WordPress services and we help businesses create an optimized site to help them grow.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact AnnexCore today.

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