Organic traffic. It’s what every business owner, marketer and SEO specialist wants. It’s also, on occasion, one of the more elusive metrics to really hone in on and improve.
Organic traffic is just as much something you can optimise as it is dependent on user experience, how well-perceived your brand is, customer needs at the time of them seeing your ad, or your brand’s website in their SERP.
But, there are techniques to improve your organic traffic. Ways that you can boost your website to gain the attention of those most likely to click through to your page, fall in love with your brand, and become loyal customers.
How? Well, aside from letting an expert web development agency take the reins and implement a strategy based on years of getting small and medium businesses out in the wild — there are tips that you can carry out, from small changes to SEO strategies.
If you’re considering a web development agency or would like to try your hand at maximising your visibility before taking the plunge with one, and what to know more, then read on.
1. Blog Regularly
While it might not be a way to bring in guaranteed revenue in the way that social media or Google ads might be, creating, optimising and implementing a blog strategy is one of the best ways to consistently keep your website visible to interested users.
But, the most important thing is to ensure that you’re creating content of value. If you’re not writing content that speaks to your market and allows you to more closely explore your niche, optimised for your audience — avoid it. Your content needs to be information your users want to read. Rather than just content for the sake of it.
Regularly uploading valuable content onto your site that’s relevant to your customers and is high quality, is a great way of letting Google bots know that your website is worth ranking higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is critical for any brand, as this is where your audience sees you and has a chance to interact with your website.
2. Use Long-Tail Keywords
It can be tempting to just hone in on the keywords that are really broad, those high-traffic keywords that have amazing metrics and will surely get your site in front of thousands of in-market users.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. As any good web development agency will know, targeting only those high-traffic keywords in any strategy, whether that’s SEO or paid advertising, is a sure-fire way of driving up your costs, getting knocked out by competitors, and wasting time.
Instead, look for more niche keywords. Long-tail keywords — keywords that are more specific to your product or service — will not only allow you to find and fill gaps in the SERP, but they are easier for your site to rank for on those same SERPs alongside your competitors.
Finding those smaller keywords, while they might have less monthly traffic, means that you’re more likely to be seen by users who actually want your product.
It’s a way of owning a sphere of influence for your specific product or service. And in time, Google will understand that your site is a great destination for what you’re offering, and will boost your content in search rankings and help your perfect customers find you.
3. Optimise For Your Readers, Not Search Engines
While this might seem contradictory to the purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), it’s in fact one of the best ways to ensure that you’re creating a high-quality user experience.
Purely creating on-page copy, whether that’s for your website pages, your product collections or your blog, that’s just for search engines is not a beneficial way to increase your organic traffic. It means you’ll have content that looks and feels spammy, written just for bots crawling your site, rather than for your buyers’ personas.
Don’t have a buyer persona? Write one. They’re essential for knowing who you’re addressing your content to — regardless of where it sits on your site.
Tap into the main issues or pain points of your customers, while defining your tone of voice, and make sure it’s cohesive across your platforms. You want your users to feel that the content on your site is written for them, not just crammed with keywords that don’t fall naturally into place.
Because as well as keywords, the ranking of your site depends on how your users interact with it. If you please your buyers’ personas, you will demonstrate to search engines that your website is not only functional, but relevant, and engaging.
Google is self-serving. It wants to promote content that provides good experiences for its users. Creating content that’s optimised but also relevant, and of quality, is one of the best ways to provide that. Ask any web development agency and they’ll tell you the same.
4. Use social media
We’re likely pointing out the obvious, but building a presence on social media networks like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are activities that get your brand name out there.
Polish up your profiles, make sure that your tone of voice and branding is cohesive across your platforms. One of the best ways to up the volume and frequency of your posts on social media is to combine content that talks about your brand, from the brands perspective, with content created by other people. Depending on the platform, this could be retweeting other content created by relevant users, or getting user-generated content on your profile.
Draft a social media checklist for actions to take each day. Engaging with other users’ content before and after posting your own is a great way to increase the likelihood that your content will be delivered further.
While it’s a lot of work, and there are no guaranteed results — especially now that platforms like Instagram, in particular, are clamping down on the reach of organic content — growing your online presence on social media is a way of reaching new users, boosting your followers and getting the attention of relevant, interested parties.
Write and share worthy content. Promote products in a way that answers customers’ questions, and get your users involved and sharing your brand.
5. Use Data And Metrics To Inform Your Changes
What do brand marketers, business owners and a web development agency all have in common?
Platforms like Google Analytics are a gold mine.
You can track visitors, and monitor how people who find your site through organic channels use your website. Google Analytics, and other analysis-based platforms allow you to review metrics like bounce rate, the number of pages visited per session, and how many users find your site at all. It’s a complex and valuable tool for figuring out patterns in your customers’ behaviour.
Review the pages that are the most frequently viewed. See which pages are the ones most commonly landed upon at the beginning of a session. Monitor how many people are bouncing off your site — leaving before taking an action — and which pages have the highest bounce rate.
Identifying how your customers or potential customers are currently interacting with your site is one of the best ways to determine what’s working and what isn’t. You can see which keywords are the most popular in organic channels, which allows you to better optimise your content. You can view, with a tool like Hotjar, which buttons are clicked most frequently, allowing you to track the highest converting pages.
These metrics are incredibly valuable. It’s what your web development agency will review to see what constant optimisations can be made to improve the user experience of your site.
Overall, this is just a short introduction to what you can do in order to boost your organic traffic. There are numerous ways to do so, and all of them depend on the audience you’re trying to reach, the products or services you’re offering and your core KPIs.
So, while maximising your organic traffic is definitely something that you can achieve under your own steam, it’s also highly worthwhile to look into a specialised web development agency to assist youa. With their knowledge and experience, you’ll be scaling in no time.
