How to increase website traffic 2017

In 2017, the fundamentals of driving website traffic centered on three interconnected pillars: technical SEO excellence, content strategy refinement, and user experience optimization. The search landscape had shifted meaningfully by that point—mobile traffic had surpassed desktop, RankBrain had become Google's third ranking factor, and sites needed to demonstrate E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) to compete for competitive keywords. To meaningfully increase traffic, agencies needed to audit client sites for mobile responsiveness, page speed, and crawlability issues first. A site could have excellent content but still underperform if it loaded slowly on mobile devices or had indexation problems. Beyond technical foundations, content strategy required moving past thin, keyword-stuffed pages toward comprehensive topic clusters that answered the full scope of user intent. Rather than creating single pages optimized for individual keywords, the winning approach was building pillar content that thoroughly addressed a topic, then supporting it with related content that internally linked back. This signaled topical authority to Google and kept users on-site longer, improving engagement metrics that increasingly influenced rankings.

The third component was leveraging organic channels beyond just Google search. Social media traffic remained underutilized by many agencies—Facebook and Twitter drove consistent referral traffic when content was genuinely shareable and timing was strategic. YouTube was still relatively untapped for B2B companies, making it a high-opportunity channel for agencies willing to create video content. Email lists continued to be among the highest-ROI traffic sources available, though this required building mechanisms to convert site visitors into subscribers. Agencies should have been helping clients develop lead magnets and email sequences that turned one-time visitors into repeat traffic generators.

The most significant difference between successful and average traffic-building efforts in 2017 was consistency and patience. The sites gaining real traction weren't those implementing trendy tactics—they were publishing substantive content on predictable schedules, earning backlinks through genuine value creation, and iteratively improving based on actual user behavior data. This meant moving clients away from expecting quick wins and toward viewing SEO and content as ongoing business functions rather than one-time projects. Agencies that positioned themselves as long-term growth partners rather than quick-fix vendors consistently delivered the traffic increases their clients wanted.