How to Get More Traffic on Your Brand Site in 2026
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Your website is more important to the business than ever before. As more consumers take advantage of online purchasing and rely on the Internet to find the things they need, it makes sense to do everything possible to drive more traffic to your site. The good news is that you don't have to wait. It's possible to begin making some changes and watch your traffic increase in a matter of days.
Why Should You Increase Online Brand Visibility & Awareness
For years, brick and mortar was the lifeblood of the Canadian economy. We saw the big players move into shopping centres, and small independent stores flourish on quant downtown streets. However, we are in the middle of a digital revolution. Gone are the days when you could rely on walk-in traffic; instead, top major and independent companies alike are looking to enter the digital space. In fact, 72.5 percent of Canadians primarily relied on online purchases in 2025 to buy goods or services. This is a record number that will only continue to climb, which is why today more than ever, your brand's visibility on search engines and social media is one of the key strategies for a successful marketing approach for a Canadian company in 2026.
Whether you are driving traffic to your site via organic search, email newsletters, or something else, there are many ways to get eyes on your site.
Organic Search Traffic (Traffic from Search Engines)
Keywords Still Matter
You hear conflicting opinions on the importance of keywords. Some people think you still need to use multiple words or phrases repeatedly while others say to avoid them altogether. The truth actually lies in the middle.
If you want to know how to increase website traffic, you must be aware of the right keyword phrases to include in the text. There are a number of online tools that keep you up to date on what keyword phrases people are using to search for what your company offers. Your goal is to know how to use them just enough on each page. It's also important to make sure they are used naturally within the content. Anything that seems contrived or unrelated to the topic of the page will quickly drive your site to the bottom of search engine rankings.
Build Website Structure & Create Content
One of the best ways to ensure that you can attract and cultivate an audience is by building your website and creating the content. Whether you are using a service like Wix or looking to customize and go the way of WordPress or something else, the real crux of this effort is in creating a site structure that will work.
Let's say you are a window washing company in North York: you want at least a home page, a service page that details your window washing services, and a contact page. In contrast, a company that does a little more, like a Barrie landscaping and snow removal company in Toronto , may want multiple service pages. At the end of the day, you will want to include a page per service you offer, and contact and home pages.
Once the site structure is organized, then the real work begins. Content is king when it comes to organic search traffic. Your content should include some keywords, key phrases, and the location you are targeting. To find these keywords and phrases, you can utilize the built-in tools on your web hosting service, or pay for a third-party service that will provide you with popular keywords in your area or region.
Post Regular Updates on Your Website
Next, you will want to ensure that your website is updated regularly. Whether you are posting blog posts, company updates, case studies , or even publishing positive reviews, new posts will help Google and other search engines continue to rank your site.
In the days before the Internet, business owners understood that revising printed sales pieces at least once every 18 months was essential. Doing so allowed them to constantly approach consumers who had seen the old materials but not the new ones. Each new encounter was an opportunity to convert a prospect into a customer.
The same concept holds true with websites. Even if you have some of the best content the Internet has ever hosted, it will be stale after a time. Readers will lose interest when they see the same old thing year after year.
There is more than one way to present your company and its product line. Set up a review schedule and take a second look at your content. What can be changed to make it fresh? Are there things you can rework so they are likely to get more attention from the major search engines? If you make it easier for the content to place higher in searches, you are sure to increase the traffic to each page.
Share Your Content On Social Networks and Crowdsources
While it may seem complicated, social media is your friend in generating organic search traffic. Look to provide information or show off your service with a website that is easily accessible. For instance, pool and pressure washing companies that show off their cleaning services have recently seen great success on Instagram and Tik Tok.
Make the Site More User-Friendly
Websites should not be designed for web developers. They should be designed for the average consumer. Something may look exciting, but if a visitor finds it difficult to navigate or has trouble finding the information he or she seeks, the stay will be a short one.
A better approach is to make sure the site is attractive but easy for anyone to navigate. People should have no trouble scanning a page and seeing where they would like to go next. Ideally, there is always an easy way to click on something and get back to the home page if desired. At all times, visitors should have the option of clicking on an icon that gets them to some type of customer support. Make your site a friendly one for most people and you can expect more traffic to come your way.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile Use
Desktops and laptops are not going away, but more people are using smartphones and tablets to access the Internet and search for what they want. It's up to you to make sure your website displays properly on a smaller screen.
You could choose to maintain your traditional site and build a mobile one. There is also the option of building an application that users can download to their phones and tablets. Either way, you want to ensure visitors using any Internet-connected device can navigate with ease and find what they want. All it takes is one round of dealing with pages that take too long to load or text that is too small to read for users to leave and never come back.
Check Your Data
The only way you will know whether or not something is working is to track your website traffic. Keep track of your baseline, and then plug and play. One thing to note is you must look at the medium and long-term when doing organic work, as it is not an overnight success, but rather a long-term strategy.
Get Your Website to The Top of Google
With your website constructed, social media on point, and a list of blogs scheduled to go up on your site, it is time to focus on ranking. Website ranking can be challenging, and you should not expect results overnight. You will want to build out the backend of your site with backlinks and internal linking to ensure that your site can load quickly. Content creation and social sharing will do wonders, as will ensuring your site is mobile-friendly. It may take time, but your ranking will slowly grow over months.
Local Search Traffic
You may have heard the term local search. Depending on your industry and your target audience, local search may be the most powerful option that you have for your company. Local SEO come to the front when someone searches "Industry/Service Near Me".
For local search, the work is relatively minimal. You need to have a business profile on Google My Business, Bing Places, and Apple Maps. Fill in the information and link your site so that you can cross-post and continue growing your brand. However, one thing that will matter quite a bit is positive reviews - the better the reviews, the better the position of your business on the map.
Build Your Company's Social Network
You have a great website, but getting people there is a problem. Are you utilizing social media to the best advantage? Build your social media pages and then start by inviting all your current customers to like or follow them. Create posts that spark interest and include links back to pages on your website. If they are good enough and you post on a regular basis, your clients will share them with their friends and followers. That in turn leads to new likes and follows that ultimately direct more people to your website.
These are only a few ways to increase traffic to your website. An expert in Social SEO can evaluate your current efforts and come up with more strategies that ensure you reach the right audience. Start today and see what a difference those changes make over the next 30 days. You won't be disappointed.
Social media will be your best friend in accessing new potential clients and growing your brand. Ensure your business information is up to date and provides links to your website. If you publish blogs, you can generally cross-post on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn with ease, while Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube reward short, punchy video content.
Generate Referral Traffic
Another great way to generate traffic is through referrals. Whether through press releases, guest posting on sites, or your business listings online, this is a tried and tested method to grow your online brand.
Paid Traffic
One of the other ways in which you can get your content in front of the masses is through paid traffic. Pay-to-play exists, whether paying for guest posts on larger publications or paying to be at the top of Google or Safari. It is expensive, but can also work quite well. However, one thing to note is that once you stop paying, your results may go away.
Email Newsletters
Yet another tried and tested method is the email newsletter - however, to be effective, you will need an extensive database of emails, attractive offers, and software to keep the process simple. These email blasts must be short and to the point. This is not a one-time effort that will last for months; email newsletters are a commitment and offer short-term success with each wave sent out.
Should You Outsource Your SEO & Marketing?
There is no simple answer - setting up and maintaining your brand online is a significant investment of time and energy. Many companies look to leading SEO and internet marketing companies to build, manage, and test their online brand. This process is an investment, but still, the majority of Canadians are turning to the web more and more for their services as the years go on. Without a proper online brand, you may be missing thousands of potential clients every day, and the cost to utilize experts like SEOlogist is worth its weight in gold once you start seeing the results.
Get More Website Traffic FAQs
How is getting traffic to a brand site in 2026 different from a few years ago?
In 2026 a big share of discovery happens inside AI powered answer experiences like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, Gemini and Perplexity, not only on classic blue link SERPs. That means people often get a summarized answer without clicking, so your goal is to be the source that those systems quote and link. At the same time, traditional SEO signals like relevance, experience and authority are still used to decide which pages feed those summaries. The brands that grow traffic now treat AI answers and organic search as one blended ecosystem, not separate channels.
What is Generative Engine Optimization and how can it help my site in 2026?
Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, focuses on making your content the preferred source for large language models that generate answers, rather than only ranking in standard search results. Practically, that means structuring pages around clear questions and answers, entities, and well labeled sections that an LLM can safely reuse. It also involves technical clarity like schema markup and consistent author and brand information so AI systems can trust who is speaking. Done well, GEO increases how often tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude surface your brand when explaining your topics.
How can I make my content more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews and similar features?
Aim for concise, factually solid explanations that directly address common queries, supported by deeper sections for users who want more detail. Use headings, lists and structured data so Google can easily identify which part of a page answers which question, then cross check that the page demonstrates real experience and expertise. Google’s own guidance encourages focusing on helpfulness and clear page purpose, not tricks or shortcuts. When your best answers live on pages that are technically sound, they are more likely to power AI style summaries.
How do I make my site “LLM friendly” for tools like ChatGPT Search, Gemini and Perplexity?
Language models do better with pages that have clean HTML, descriptive headings, and minimal clutter around the main content. Clear attribution, robust “About” and policy pages, and consistent internal linking help them understand who you are and when to trust you. Avoid hiding key information behind logins or heavy scripts when you want it to be cited. As more LLM based search tools crawl the web directly, these basics make your site easier to interpret and reference.
How can I actually measure my visibility in LLMs and AI driven search in 2026?
Marketers now track brand mentions and citations inside AI answers, not just clicks and rankings, using emerging “ AI visibility ” dashboards and manual testing. You can monitor how often tools like Gemini or ChatGPT reference your domain for priority topics, and whether the sentiment of those answers is positive or neutral. Some SEO platforms have started to treat LLM visibility as a separate metric alongside classic organic traffic and positions. This turns LLM optimization from guesswork into something you can benchmark and improve over time.
What role should classic keyword research play when answer engines handle so many conversational queries?
Keyword research in 2026 is less about repeating exact phrases and more about understanding intent clusters and the natural language questions behind them. You still map topics to pages, but you also design those pages to answer follow up questions that LLMs are likely to surface. Long, conversational queries that look like full sentences often reflect how users speak to AI tools, so they belong in headings and FAQ sections. This way your keyword work feeds both traditional ranking signals and GEO.
How can I use my site content to power AI experiences instead of only reacting to them?
Treat your brand site as the canonical knowledge base for your products and services, then let that content feed both on site assistants and external tools. You can structure documentation, guides and FAQs so they are easy to plug into a retrieval based chatbot that lives on your own domain. At the same time, well organized content makes it easier for external AI systems to pull accurate, up to date information about you. This turns your site from a destination into a hub that supports many AI powered touchpoints.
How do user generated elements on my site affect GEO and AI visibility?
Reviews, Q&A sections and community content add natural language variety that helps models understand how real customers talk about your brand. When these elements are moderated and clearly separated from your official copy, they become rich training signals without confusing your core message. Some answer engines highlight sources that show multiple perspectives rather than only polished marketing text. That means a healthy mix of genuine customer language can improve how confidently AIs surface your site in their responses.
What technical foundations support both SEO and GEO for traffic growth in 2026?
Fast performance, secure connections, and clean URL structures still matter, but now they also influence how efficiently AI crawlers and renderers can digest your content. Machine readable signals such as schema, sitemaps and consistent robots rules guide both search indexes and LLM based systems to the right pages. Clear separation of main content from navigation and ads reduces the risk of models picking up the wrong text blocks. Investing in this technical groundwork gives every optimization, human or AI facing, a stronger base.
When should a brand consider outside help specifically for GEO and LLM optimization?
If your team understands classic SEO but feels unsure how to respond to traffic shifts caused by AI summaries and agents, it may be time for specialized support. External experts can run audits focused on AI Overviews gaps, LLM citation patterns, and schema strategy rather than only on keyword rankings. They can also help you prioritize which content to adapt first for GEO, and how to test its impact on both traffic and assisted conversions. In 2026 the most effective partnerships often mix in house knowledge of the brand with external expertise in rapidly changing AI search behavior.
