Summertime has arrived and one of the first things you notice when tracking visitors to your site in Google Analytics is a decrease in website traffic. So what can you do? Since 80% of a website’s traffic begins with a search query, the first thing you can do is review your current SEO strategy. In fact, by upgrading and improving your current SEO strategies you can boost your website traffic considerably. Here are some top SEO tips that will help increase traffic to your website this summer.

Pick winning keywords

Keywords are important for your website because they are an easy and free tool to drive traffic to your website.  Andy Beal recommends investing “Time in researching the keywords that potential customers will use.” He goes on to say that “The terms and keywords that are native to your industry may not match actual search queries.”

There are many free tools available that you can use to research keywords which are relevant to your business and are being used by your competitors. Here are a few inexpensive tools we recommend.

1.   Google Keyword Planner (Free)
2.   KeywordTool.io (Free)
3.   SEMRush (30-Day free trial)
4.   Ubersuggest (Free)
5.   Moz’s Keyword Explorer (30-Day free trial)
6.   Open Site Explorer (30-Day free trial)
7.   Alexa (7-Day free trial)

While we’re on the topic of keywords, it is important to also mention the use of long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are “Those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling,” according to Wordtracker.com. These types of keywords don’t’ necessarily help in increasing website traffic, but provide a better way for you to connect with potential customers.

Yoast.com goes into more detail on why you should put more focus on using long-tail keywords.

Create and publish fresh content more frequently

If you want to increase website traffic this summer, you need a site that is alive and active – that is, you need to focus on creating and publishing fresh and high-quality content regularly. Search engines like Google will improve your site ranking when you update your website regularly with fresh content. In addition, the more content you publish, the more keywords you will have, and the more visitors you will attract. Research by HubSpot found that companies that post at least 16 or more blogs per month get 3.5 times more website traffic than those companies which post 4 or fewer posts per month.

According to Jayson DeMersm, CEO of AudienceBloom, “Your content strategy is the backbone of your SEO strategy because it fuels your social media campaign (which acts like an amplifier to spread your content’s reach) which improves your ability to earn inbound links.”

Be sure to include internal and outbound links

If you want to see an increase in traffic to your website this summer, you also should consider including both internal and outbound links. Internal linking involves connecting one page of your site to another page on your site. For instance, in writing one blog post–like this one–you could link to older blog posts or link to other pages in your website. This type of internal link allows you to distribute ranking power throughout many pages of your website and can be achieved primarily by creating lots of content and properly using anchor text.

You can also drive traffic to your website and improve your search engine ranking by including outbound links. When you link out to authority sites in your niche, you not only build up trust but “you build incentives for the Linkerati (bloggers, social media sophisticates, online journalists, website builders & forum participants) to engage with your site,” writes Moz.

All companies are competing for viewer eyeballs and thus for viewer dollars. Use analytics, fresh content, and smart keyword strategy to ensure that your site stands out.