‘An exploration of techniques involved in generating online traffic to your portfolio’
Visiting a page via the internet in the online world is known as ‘traffic’. It is essentially the number of people who are visiting a site, which can show how popular it is (Generating Daily traffic to your website quickly, N.D).
The first topic in the exploration of generating online traffic is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – This is how search engines attempt to filter results that are most relevant and authoritative to the users search (What is SEO?, 2017). In other words, it is about being unique. A well optimised site can provide the right information, at the right time, for the right person (Lieb, 2009).
Mobile app optimisation is becoming huge as there are more and more people on their mobile devices rather than a desktop or laptop. According to Chaffey, the number of mobile users overtook desktop users in 2014 (2017) – which is huge for technology and leads onto the next point. When creating a site or app then the loading speed needs to be quick and responsive for mobile users, if not then there’s a big chance you can lose customers and users who don’t like waiting for it to load.
(figure 1)
Using keywords is an important technique to generate traffic to your site. It is valuable because it could potentially decide whether your site is going to be a success. If you do a bit of investigating into your field/market then you can find out where your market’s keywords are and include them in your site – and at the same time enhance your understanding of your target audience (Fishkin and Staff, 2016)
Another way in which a company or individual can successfully generate traffic towards their site is by using Social Media Optimisation (SMO). Social media has become an important marketing strategy for almost any business – there are not many people who aren’t on a social media site such as Facebook and/or Twitter. Therefore, targeting these sections as part of a ploy to generate traffic to your site is imperative in your marketing process, whether you are an existing business or a starting out new (Safko. L, 2010).
My Portfolio
As I will be advertising my portfolio as a ‘Freelance Videographer/Photographer’ it would be important to use these words in titles and headers, and also use words related to this and the job. This is because when people search the internet, they are mainly searching to find an answer to a question. So my portfolio will need to include answers to people’s searches. By adding my location to the end of ‘Freelance Videographer/Photographer Leeds’ this will be helpful as it narrows it down for the people searching and improves my chances of being found.
Another helpful step to take will be to look at competitors websites to match them and ‘steal’ their keywords, because if they’re on the first page then they’re doing something right (Shivar, 2016).
As you can see on these two websites, the keywords are pretty clear; Freelance, Cameraman, the equipment they use, info/about, the city – and these two freelancers are on the first page of results when searching for ‘Freelance Videographer’. The difference between the two of them and what makes one better is the design. Aidan Metcalfe’s home page is instantly more eye catching than Tim Hollingworth’s. This is down to simple design elements such as the font, size of font and a simple yet more effective element in this case of black font on a white background.
Bibliography:
Chaffey. D (1 March 2017) Mobile Marketing Statistics compilation, Mobile Marketing analytics, Smart Insights [online] available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/ [accessed 10 March]
Fishkin. R and Staff. M (2016) The Beginners guide to SEO, Moz.com [online] available at: <https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo> [accessed on 8 March] <==== VERY USEFUL RESOURCE
Lieb, Rebecca. The Truth About Search Engine Optimization. 1st ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: FT Press, 2009. Print.
Safko, Lon. The Social Media Bible. 1st ed. Noboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
Share of U.S Digital Media Time spent on by platform (2013-2014) [online image] available from: <https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/21/majority-of-digital-media-consumption-now-takes-place-in-mobile-apps/> [accessed 10 March] Figure 1
Shivar. N (8 April 2016) How To Decide Which Keywords To Use: Keyword Research For Beginners, ShivarWeb [online] available at: <https://www.shivarweb.com/3179/keyword-research-for-beginners> [accessed 10 March]
The Internet Marketers’s Guide to: Generating Daily Traffic To Your Website Quickly, (N.D) available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V-JYU-W8tGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=generating+traffic&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=generating%20traffic&f=false [accessed on 6 March 2017]
What is SEO? (2017) What is SEO? It’s Simpler Than You Think, Red Evolution, available at: https://www.redevolution.com/what-is-seo [accessed on 6 March 2017]
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