How to increase website traffic: Use short-form video

If you’ve been reading my blog on copywriting closely, you could see that I often write about hotel websites.

I do that, because it became a habit of mine to look up different hotel websites, see into their website copy, analyse them and contact website owners with suggestions how to increase their website traffic.

First and foremost I advise them about how they can improve their website copy.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, because these hotel websites are mostly Croatian. They show their weaknesses immediately on your first website visit.

Increased website traffic is what all websites would like to achieve. Not just websites made to attract guests planning their next summer holiday.

It’s a universal desire. There’ s no difference no matter what kind of business field we look at.

The more visits a website has, the more likely these visit will end with a booking, a purchase or subscription.

Increased website traffic means more interest.

This interest coud be the result of many things:

1 A demand has either been created for something and the customer is searching for it, your website being one of the offerers of the desired product, and the customer knows about it.

2 Maybe it was a recommendation that made a potential customer look up your website. 

3 Or your website succeeded to draw the customer’s attention by creating stories or texts which had a high organic reach.

You hit their nerve, made them want to act on the offer you’ve made with your website message (copy)= YOU APPLIED SEO.

How to increase website traffic (and convert visitors into customers)?

Let’s look at what Google says about that:

These are 8 tips from Google when you type in “how to increase website traffic”.

The first one among them is apparently the most important, if you apply SEO as a tactic to get more website traffic.

I’m following that suggestion, too.

Use SEO copywriting and keywords to increase website traffic

And speaking of SEO, also think of places where you can insert your keywords you’d like to rank with on search engines.

You’re placing those keywords in your blog, where else?

You can also rank with your service page and homepage too.

In my case, that would be the page where you can book copywriting and SEO services, but blogs are especially cut out for generating more views apart from your homepage. At least, that’s the way it is with my website, 

but

How does SEO increase website traffic?

SEO drives traffic to your website because it enables search engines to understand your website content and they’ll then know where to put your site within the search results.

Your website will be more visible, if you use keywords right in the website’s text structure.

By choosing the right keywords. Those keywords your potential clients mostly type in to the search bar to find answers to their queries.

If your potential client is looking for a solution, they might want to read longer content, not a single information they can find on a homepage (like services or credentials), but a substantial writing describing a process (if they want to solve the problem themselves).

A blog offers more content, and can provide answers to users. You can produce more blogs and thereby increase the chances of ranking with more keywords.

Tip No.3 mentions this: “Craft engaging, high-quality content”, so these blogs must certainly be compelling, providing users with insights.

But sometimes you’ll want to write a shorter text not to plague the readers and give them the information they need right away, without fluff.

Since I’m not a fan of paid ads and I like to pick my brain more, and succeed on my own than put faith in digital agencies (not saying they are less knowledgeable than me), we’ll skip digital ads  and all sorts of unnatural boosting methods in the above list of suggestions Google gives us, and turn to another great tip:

Get backlinks from noteworthy websites to get traffic to your own website

“Getting more backlinks from trusted sites” as Tip No.7 is a way to grow big and very quick too.

But, you need to know the owners of these backlinks, or at least you must have worked with them on some projects for them to give you the opportunity to place your link on their websites.

You can always contact journalists of prominent newspapers like Forbes, The New York Times, Inc.com or similar, who write on the subject you cover often on your blog.

Or, if they are researching new topics to write on, you can offer your insights which they can included in their writing.

One suggestion Google didn’t mention when I typed “how to increase website traffic” into the search bar is SHORT-FOR VIDEOS.

Try short-form videos to increase website traffic

Short-form video are on the rise.

Just as Youtube Shorts.

Since 2024, I’ve been more active on YouTube, somehow feeling that video there will be a hot new thing (although videos have been around for more than 20 years).

Social media platforms, which haven’t favoured video placements so far, denying them much visibility and reach, are now regarding them as desirable.

You add variety to your existing content forms! Many social media users have been heavily relying on text only. Because of fear and not having seen video too much in their feeds.

Attention span, though, is a big problem.

Like with text, where it’s said that you need more than 2 minutes to read it, it’s likely that you’re going to skip it.

Unless you really have the time.

Short-form video adds another layer to your website content

The best practice is to create short-form videos up to 30 seconds (look at some I’ve made so far as YT Shorts).

Then you can:

a) insert them into your website copy or blog, and make your writing more attractive. Thereby, you’ll enrich your content by adding an audio-visual dimension.

b) upload them to YT and enter a description, add keywords relevenat to your business and invite visitors to your website. It’s one way of increasing traffic to your website!

Text is too dry sometimes.

Stories are best shown with videos. You can tell a story on a video and trigger more emotions from the one watching it. Especially, if the topic lies close to your heart, you’ll be more “invested” in it (you’ll be emotionally charged and involved).

Or, if you’re not prone to showing yourself on videos, you can position the camera to show what you’re doing with your hands.

You can speak as you walk and show your surrounding.

By the way, such videos are currently even more popular!