Top 5 Ways to Increase Web Traffic That Still Work

Let's invent a bakery site. Sourdough only. Pretty photos, half-decent recipes, 40 visitors a day (your mum, two colleagues and a bot). How do you get from there to something that pays the bills? There's no magic. Just five slightly boring habits that add up. We'll use the bakery as our guinea pig.

1. Chase keywords people really type

Nobody searches for "artisanal fermented wheat loaf". They type "easy sourdough bread recipe", usually while the oven preheats. Write the way people talk and you're already ahead. One phrase per page. Put it in the title, somewhere in the first paragraph, and in a heading. Want spin-offs like "sourdough bread recipe for beginners"? The Keyword Phrase Maker churns them out in seconds. Then stop. Stuffing the phrase in ten more times just reads weird.

2. Fix titles, descriptions and URLs

Imagine the recipe page ranks fifth. Lovely. But if the title gets chopped to "Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe for Beginners That Never F..." nobody clicks. Run titles through SEO Title Length and descriptions through SEO Description Length, which shows a preview of the listing. While you're there, look at the web address. /p=4821 tells nobody anything. /easy-sourdough-recipe does, and the URL Maker builds that from any title.

3. Make pages load faster

Bakery sites are mostly photos, and photos are heavy. One 4 MB loaf shot on a patchy phone connection takes forever. Peek at the dimensions with the Image Dimensions Finder, then squash the file in the Image Quality Changer. Same loaf, 300 KB, and the page is up before the kettle clicks off.

4. Share, then see what worked

Posting the recipe on Facebook, in the newsletter and on a friend's blog is great. Knowing which one sent people is better. Add tags with the UTM Builder and Google Analytics will tell you. Before posting, paste the link into Social Media Preview, because a blank thumbnail on Facebook gets scrolled past, however good the bread looks.

5. Give structured data a go

Recipes are perfect for it. Add the right markup and Google can show cook time and star ratings right in the results. Build it in the JSON-LD Generator, check it with Structured Data Testing, then see what it could earn in the Rich Results Test. Fiddly the first time. Painless the second.

Where to begin

If all five feels like a lot, fix the titles first. Ten minutes, no cost, and clicks can creep up the same week. Then add one more habit each week and don't try to do everything on a Sunday afternoon.

One mistake to skip

Resist the urge to change everything at once. Our baker rewrites every title on Monday, checks the stats on Wednesday, and spirals. She's learned nothing, since no result points back to one edit. Change a few pages, wait, then compare.

A word on patience

Search traffic crawls. Your bakery might not budge for a month, and that's normal. Write down what you changed and when. In three months that list is gold, because it shows what helped and what was just noise.

All of these tools are free at GetOnlineTool.

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