Hello,
I created DrivingTests101.com, a free driving test prep website. It offers rule and sign, multiple choice questions to help you pass your written driving tests - 279 tests covering every vehicle type and state/province spanning 11 countries. We monetize via ads (Google AdSense/Admob).
Our mobile apps gets 50k downloads/month, but our website only gets 10k UV/month, whereas competing websites (DriversPrep.com and Driving-Tests.org) that only focus on the US market get 500k UV/month, or 50x the traffic we get!
I know our content is good because of our successful apps, but we are not driving traffic to the website.
How can I meaningfully increase traffic? Improve SEO? Obtain links from media?
Thank you,
Brian
You don't seem to have any customer engagement and informative work beyond the 10 articles I see on the site.
If you are getting 10k UV already, you need to only combine content and email marketing to increase the visits, but if you really want to grow to 500K UV or more, you will need to do a lot of activities, repeatedly for about 6-9 months..
Then there are other things you can do.which will result in more downloads or purchases for you. (You should not assume that traffic means business, there are other methods such as Performance driven marketing, which is something you can easily qualify for...)
Anyhow, if you just need traffic and links, here is a brief summary list of things you can do and it will generate traffic, will not be flagged or getting booted by Google for any algo changes...:
Since Content is the KING, we will focus on content driven marketing, here is a rough layout of the activities:
1. Set a Regular Writing Schedule
2. Create a Free Giveaway Worth Wanting (but it should get you subscribers)
3. Create Your Social Media Accounts
4. Join Quora
5. Leverage Rich Snippets & Google Authorship
6. Interlink Your Posts
7. Leverage Your Expertise, do some presentations and publish them on slideshare and such places
8. Get a good Guest Blog done
9. Blog Commenting is important, but only so so... Forum Commenting will help you build up your online reputation
10. Expanding on Social Profiles, Advertising on Facebook, Marketing on LinkedIn, Google+
Pinterest (do checkout tools like hootsuite.com)
11. Create an Infographic, Gifographic at least 1 in a month, this is sure to get you good places and backlinks
12. Look for Interview Opportunities, yup, some PR and Help A Reporter Out (http://www.helpareporter.com/) they need stories & you can provide them, if any... will be fantastic.
13. Don’t Neglect Local SEO
14. Creating Animated & Whiteboard Explainer Videos (cost about 15$ on payperhour type sites)
15. Using Zemanta, a “Content Discovery Network”
16. The Power of Retargeting - yes, check out sites like http://www.adroll.com/ http://www.ebayenterprise.com/marketing_solutions/display_retargeting/ http://www.chango.com/solutions & https://retargeter.com
17. Syndicate your content, case studies through Outbrain.com type sites, that will show your quality posting in probably all top media sites.
Hope this helps.
Ravi VC
I echo the comments of the previous experts. As one SEO expert told me, search engine optimization is on-going exercise, not a one time event. This is the situation here, and I would separate you efforts between new and returning visitors. Sites in general that get a high number of visitors on a monthly basis usually have a core group of returning visitors that leverage it for content sharing or expertise on a regular basis.
In the case of returning visitors, you could have a forum/testimonials for people have who have taken the test, leveraged your service and done well. You could also look to start with other languages for content for other countries to provide a point of differentiation to your US only competitors. Blogging, linking to articles relevant to your user base, also curating news through sites like Paper.li or Rebelmouse provide an easy content option without much effort.
For new visitors, media exposure and references from top opinion leaders in the space can help. I would look to other portals in your industry or that attract the age group you are targeting and request the site owners to write a piece, send out a communique and/or reference your service to the targeted audience. Getting local media in your areas to report on your service can also provide exposure. I always focus on finding the free avenues first and when you find the highest referring sites, focus any ad dollars there to get the best bang for the buck.
Getting website traffic is a tricky issue, unless we define 'traffic' in the right sense. An online advertisement gets impressions on the ad but it is not traffic to the website unless the ad impression is clicked and visitor reach your page, So online advertisements is a way to get traffic to the website without any page rank on generic search. But it is spending money. On any online advertisement platform one has to spend a lot money and bid against a keyword to get ad impressions. Out of hundred thousand impressions your get approximately 100 clicks.
For a beginner the best way to get traffic is keep writing good content. Useful content. Use all general and generic promotion techniques like promoting the website through search directories, social media promotions, forum promotion, email promotions. Try to get a good page rank with the content for a keyword that you would like to promote. The more back links from popular websites you get, you will be nearing your goal.
If you are a newbie
1. keep writing content once in two days. Let articles be of 1000 words long and content engaging.
2. Promote your website to your near and dear and take their negative comment and improve the content quality.
3. Sign up for all social media network and create your blog pages.
4. Go to every website with similar content as of your page and contribute to that website with a comment. You get a back link
Wait for your turn.
For experts who can afford a spend
1. AdWords is the best way to get a quick promotion and traffic.
2. Face book and twitter ads will improve traffic
3. Outbrain is a good advertisement platform
🔥 7 Evergreen Ways to Get Traffic I learned by owning a online magazine 🔥
To have a successful online magazine your need traffic. POINT.
It’s what everything else stands on.
Unfortunately, when I started my video games magazine (which then turned one of the leading publications about the topic in Italy), I didn’t have the budget of large publishers.
In fact, I was 13-years old, I didn’t have cash at all
(I mean, besides the one, my grandparents were giving me for Christmas and B-days :-D)
Social media weren’t even a thing (it was 2007!)
I had to base everything out of evergreen ways to rank over my competitors
I gotta be honest, SEO was my main hustle at that time, but besides that
The following list of tactics has helped me as well in my ranking efforts, and got me traffic from sources that,
Even if you’re not an SEO pro, you can still exploit RIGHT NOW:
1- Interview Someone in Your Niche. I not only cold outreached to key personalities in my industry (producers, developers, etc.)
But also to whoever else had a medium-large active following.
For me, these were all the “clans” of players (small-medium groups of people that plays together at certain games).
And all the online games, the latter had thousands of active members, and I was interviewing them with the agreement that they would have shared the link to their X, XXX+ members’ newsletters.
Usually, these online games were struggling to get exposure (they didn't have huge budgets), so it was win-win.
2-Organize a Contest or a Giveaway. I used to partner with video games producers for this kind of stuff. For instance, we organized a fantasy soccer tournament for different years with the distributors of PES.
Outside of the videogames world, you can easily partner with SaaS, products-based businesses, etc. if you have an engaged following and subscribers, for them, it’s a cheap and effective way to get visibility for their products so they’ll probably agree. For you, it's a great way to get traffic and build a community.
Use Viralloops or a similar service for the giveaways.
3- This one is common sense, but ask for feedback to others in your industry.
Do you remember MSN? Each time I had a huge announcement, a new design of the website, I was asking for feedback to others in the video games industry. This helped me to get traction when starting out, and to remain top-of-the-mind, but also they were helped me to find bugs or misspelled words.
People love to give feedback if you're not asking for them, what the hell you're waiting for.
4-Be a Regular On Niche Forums (Now It's More About Reddit, Quora, and FB Groups.)
6-Get Interviewed
7- Partner up with complementary products/services. I used to partner with complementary (but not competing) websites to produce backlinks organically.
I would suggest effective on page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO
1. Use Short URLs with Keywords.
2. Meta Descriptions Help On-Page SEO.
3. Front-Load Your Keyword In Your Title Tag.
4. Use Your Keyword in H1, H2, or H3 Tags.
5. Use Your Keyword Once In The First 150 Words.
6. Mix Content With Synonyms and LSI Keyword.
7. Improve On-Page SEO via Optimized Images.
8. Be Creative When It Comes To Content.
9. SHOULD Include Crosslinking To Related Content.
10. Speed Matters For On-Page SEO.
Off-Page SEO should include articles and content on reputable and related websites to yours. Also, mentions of your site, partnering with other similar websites. For example as its a driving test related site, you may want to consider posting an article on https://learntodriveschools.com/.
For more information check https://visualwebz.com/on-page-seo/ and https://visualwebz.com/off-page-seo-benefits/
You can also call or visit Visualwebz.com and I can provide a more in depth analysis and what should and can be done.
