Increase Website Traffic with Hashtags
How to Increase Website Traffic with Hashtags
Would you like to know how to increase website traffic with hashtags? It’s pretty easy and anyone can see more traffic coming to their blogs or websites by using hashtags properly. Hashtags aren’t just a trendy symbol that millennials use on social media to indicate that they are young and trendy! No
hashtags actually serve a very good purpose and if you use them the right way, you too can get more traffic to your blog or website.
But there is a right and a wrong way to use hashtags. In this post, I will explain what hashtags are, how you can easily get more website visitors just by using them correctly, and the right and the wrong way to use hashtags.
What are Hashtags?
Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know what hashtags are. Until about a year ago, I didn’t know what a hashtag was either. In fact, whenever I heard the word hashtag, I immediately saw images of myself at Burger King having a delicious breakfast complete with golden brown hash browns and a hot cup of coffee. Don’t laugh! I’m serious. Every time I heard the word “hashtags”, I would think of “hash browns”. But hashtags have absolutely nothing to do with hash browns so keep reading if you really want to know what hashtags are.
A hashtag is a symbol (#) that is used before a keyword as a way of helping social media users to find and follow a certain topic. I am assuming that you know what is keyword research is but if you don’t, keywords are “the words and phrases that internet users type into search box of a search engine, such as Google to find websites that match what they are looking for.”
For example, if I want to find easy chicken recipes, I would go to Google and type in the words “easy chicken recipes”. The phrase “easy chicken recipes” would be called a keyword. And Google would bring up a list of websites that are likely to have the information that I am looking for. I would then be able to click on the various links to view the different websites to find easy chicken recipes.
When a hashtag is placed before a keyword in social media, if someone clicks on that hashtag, they would be able to find a list of other posts that include that same keyword. So if I made a post on Twitter and included the hashtag #easychickenrecipes, my post would be included in the list of posts whenever someones types in “#easychickenrecipes” into the Twitter search bar. This is what it would look like:
Note that all the posts in this list have the hashtag #easychickenrecipes. So someone who is on Twitter and wants to find easy chicken recipes, they could easily use this hashtag to find relevant posts. So how would this drive traffic to your website or blog? I will explain how that would work next:
You Can Increase Website Traffic with Hashtags
Okay so how would you actually increase website traffic with hashtags? Let’s say that you wrote and published a blog post about easy chicken recipes and you wanted to share that post on your social media accounts. You would simply go to those social media accounts, include a link back to the particular post on your website and also include the hashtag #easychickenrecipes.
Anyone searching on that social media platform using that hashtag is likely to find your post included in the list. This increases the chance of your post being found and also increases the chances that someone will click on your link and be redirected straight to your website.
Hashtags are very powerful for driving traffic from social media platforms with good search engines such as Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. If I wanted to find easy chicken recipes on Pinterest, here are some of the results that my search would return:
So it is a good idea to use hashtags whenever you post your links on Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Google Plus. You can also use them on Facebook but they tend to be more popular on other social media platforms. I may be mistaken but I don’t think that hashtags are tolerated or encouraged on LinkedIn.
Whenever you publish a blog post, you would optimize it for search engines by including relevant keywords. This means that persons are likely to find your blog posts whenever they use search engines to search for those keywords. That alone would send traffic to your blog or website. But can you imagine also increasing the amount of traffic by using hashtags whenever you promote your blog on social media? The possibilities are great!
Hashtags allow you to reach audiences that don’t necessarily follow you on social media. So hashtags allow you to increase your audience many times over. And because hashtags include keywords, the traffic that you would receive would be highly targeted traffic; traffic that is more likely to convert. And that is exactly what you want…..targeted traffic that is more likely to convert. Now let’s talk about the proper way to use hashtags.
The Right & the Wrong Way to Use Hashtags to Increase Website Traffic
Now there is a right and a wrong way to use hashtags. I see too many persons using hashtags the wrong way and then they wonder why they aren’t getting any website traffic or any other positive results. Here are a few points that you should note when using hashtags:
- Hashtags must be used right before keywords. You can’t just use a hashtag before every random word. That is the wrong way to use them. So posting #Look#at#me#now is incorrect since none of these words may be considered as keywords. They are simply arbitrary words thrown together and all they will attract are hilarious giggles from those who read them.
- Hashtags should not be used at the end of words – only before a keyword. For example #easychickenrecipes# is incorrect. That last hashtag is not necessary.
- Don’t include spaces between words when using hashtags. Write your keywords without spaces and then include the hashtag right before the keyword. So the correct thing is “#easychickenrecipes”, not “#easy chicken recipes”.
- Avoid using more than 3 hashtags in any single post. Two many hashtags are not only annoying but they are also less effective at driving traffic than using only one or two relevant hashtags. I can’t tell you the number of times I have seen people using a million and one hashtags when they really aren’t necessary. I see this especially on Instagram. It’s not right and it doesn’t accomplish anything worthwhile.
If you use hashtags the proper way, you should be able to increase website traffic with hashtags to your blog. Can I get a witness? Have you been using hashtags the correct way? As of today, start using them the correct way and experience the joy of getting more targeted traffic to your blog. Let me know what your experience has been with using hashtags
Have you been able to increase website traffic with hashtags or not?
Use hashatory for hashtag research. Its great!