How do you get more traffic to your website?

As a digital marketer, you probably already know the basics – like optimizing your on-page SEO, posting regularly on social media, and so on – but does it feel like you might be missing something? Or maybe the techniques that worked so well for you when you started out a few years ago just don’t seem to be cutting it today.

Here are 6 traffic-generating secrets that will bring lots of visitors to your website in 2022:

1. Long-Form Content is More Likely to Get Shared

Lots of top digital marketing experts agree that long-form content is increasingly important, and that definitely hasn’t changed in 2022.

Longer content tends to rank well in search engines and gets more shares than shorter content: Backlinko and BuzzSumo found that blog posts over 1,000 words get 56% more shares than posts under 1,000 words.

Long-form content gives you the chance to create something truly useful and memorable. As Ryan Robinson puts it, “Create standout content that helps your readers in a more meaningful way than others currently do. If you can successfully do that, you’ll be rewarded for it.”

2. Quality Backlinks Are Still Really Important

Backlinks have been a ranking factor ever since Google began, and they’re still crucial for your website’s search engine traffic.

Of course, you don’t want to simply get as many backlinks as possible, regardless of the quality. (Backlinks from very low-quality spammy websites can actually harm your search engine rankings.) Instead, you want to target backlinks from relevant and reputable websites.

Although most digital marketers will think of backlinks purely as a boost to SEO, backlinks can also be an important source of direct traffic. If you write a guest post for a blog that’s highly related to your own niche, for instance, you’ll likely get some very targeted traffic as readers click through to find out more about your website.

3. Long-Tail Keywords Are Much Easier to Rank For

More and more content is being created every day – and other websites are trying to rank for competitive search terms, too. If you have limited resources, it may seem impossible to compete.

This is where long-tail keywords come in. Instead of trying to get one of the top spots in Google for a huge, competitive keyword like “beach vacations,” you might want to look for a much longer and more specific keyword like “most affordable family beach vacations.”

4. Email Lists Are Still Highly Important

You might think that, in a world of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, email has had its day. But the truth is that email marketing definitely isn’t dead.

Many people still use email extensively – and email marketing has consistently shown a much higher conversion rate and return on investment than social media and other channels.

5. Mobile-Friendliness is More Critical Than Ever

Mobile traffic has increased year on year over the past decade, with 55% of global web traffic from mobile phones, 3% from tablets, and 42% from desktop devices.

This means that it’s crucial for your traffic strategy that your website is fully functional on mobile devices. That doesn’t just mean that your content should be easy to read, or even that it should be straightforward to place an order using a mobile device. You want to test all your website’s features, too.

For instance, if you want to make it easy for people to share your content, use something like the website tools from ShareThis. Their share buttons are designed to work well on any size of screen or device.

Mobile-friendliness is important for your SEO, too, as Google fully rolled out mobile-first indexing in 2021.

6. Google Recognizes and Rewards Expertise and Authority

Google’s algorithm includes something called E-A-T, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s one of the ways in which Google decides how to rank your content.

Google pays attention to signals that the content creator has the expertise, and that the content and website (along with the creator) are authoritative and trustworthy.

In practice, this means producing content that’s factually accurate, well-reviewed, and with links to sources of facts and statistics where relevant.

As well as being good for SEO, this type of content is good for users: it’s more likely to be shared on social media as people find it useful and trustworthy.

The basics of getting traffic and seeing digital marketing success are always going to remain the same. Create high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience, promote it effectively, and make sure you’re using all the tools at your disposal – like your email list – to drive traffic to your site.