Wondering how to attract more organic traffic to your site? It has been proven that websites with increased organic traffic enjoy higher rankings in the SERPs. With online becoming the go-to space for people to buy, it’s vital that your potential buyers land on your site and not your competitors’ when looking for a product or service like yours. This mostly happens through organic traffic. Consider these stats:
- 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine (Search Engine Journal)
- The first 5 organic results in the SERPs account for 67.6% of all clicks (Zero Limit Web)
- 75% of searchers never scroll past the first page of search results (HubSpot)
Now, that you’ve seen how critical organic traffic can be for your business website, you need to learn about SEO strategies that can help you take advantage of it. But before we dive into that, let’s get some basics out of the way.
What Is Organic Traffic?
When someone types a query in the Google search bar and clicks on the organic listing in the search results to visit a website, it’s called organic traffic. By “organic listing”, we mean results that are not ads. Now, Google’s aim is to help the searcher find the best information they can find as fast as possible. This means the top organic results are usually the websites that align closely with the searcher’s intent, and what Google considers to be the most accurate info to satisfy their query.
Why Pay Attention to Organic Traffic?
So, organic traffic gets you the best leads — the ones with the real intent to buy, the ones that have the highest chances of conversion. But is that all? In short, no. The benefits that a website owner gets when they start putting their efforts into growing their organic traffic goes above and beyond lead generation. Some of them are:
Cost-effectiveness
It may not be easy to claim the top spot in organic search, unlike Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, which puts your website’s link in front of potential buyers almost instantly. But, the cost of organic search efforts is practically zero compared to PPC where you have to pay to play. However, getting good results with PPC is not impossible, if you want one of the best PPC marketing agencies, and let them set up a good foundation for your upcoming marketing campaigns.
Credibility
When a company gets a good amount of organic traffic, it usually means they beat their competitors in terms of credibility and market presence. According to Clutch.co, “The top ad in Google only gets two per cent of clicks, while the top organic spot gets nearly 20 times that. This is because consumers can tell it’s a paid ad which makes them trust it less.”
Competing Power
Aggressive organic SEO strategies can take you miles ahead of other businesses in your niche who are trying to build their online presence. Also, the trick lies in starting early. So, the more years you’re spending in organic traffic efforts and doing it consistently, the higher your website appears in search rankings, leaving your competitors in the dust.
That said, let’s take a look at the most effective SEO strategies to achieve these organic traffic benefits.
SEO Strategies to Boost Organic Traffic
SEO Strategies – Optimise for People
While your website must be search engine friendly, it’s not search engines that you’re trying to impress. Your end goal is to capture the attention of potential buyers and persuade them to buy from you. Therefore, your first step should be to create your ideal buyer personas — the people you’re targeting and who are most likely to benefit from your product/service. Dig as deep as you can to find out more information about them. Go beyond the demographic details to identify their interests, buying behaviours, purchase intents and motivations.
Use that information as a base for doing your keywords research. When you optimise using the phrases they use in search queries, you increase the chances of your site being the one to provide them with the information they need. Simply put, delight people, and you’ll automatically delight the search engines.
Go for Long-tail Keywords
You might be tempted to target the most popular keywords in your industry. But it’s probably not the wisest plan. First, popular keywords are highly competitive, so there are slim chances for your website to actually rank for them. Secondly, popular keywords are generic and fail to engage in qualified traffic. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are more specific. They can be matched to buyer intent, which helps to attract high-quality traffic with better chances of converting into leads and sales.
For example, if you run a company that sells men’s T-shirts, your site isn’t going to appear anywhere near the top organic search results for “men’s T-shirts” as there’s way too much competition going on for those keywords. Especially so if you’re a small business or startup. However, if you use long-tail keywords such as “online seller for men’s Marvel Comics T-shirts” then you just slashed down your competition in one stroke, and you’ll attract buyers specifically looking for men’s T-shirt with Marvel Comics prints.
SEO Strategies – Have Your Meta Sorted
The three main components of an optimised web page or blog post are meta title, meta URL, and meta description. By crafting them the right way and using the right keywords while doing so, you can tell search engines what your page is all about.
While there are tools and plugins like Yoast and HubSpot that allow you to optimise your pages, you’ll often need to spend time on each page to get it right.
Put Serious Efforts into Content Marketing
Content isn’t just what fills your website pages. Content is practically everywhere, and at every stage of your marketing efforts. From blogging to social media, good content is what drives most of your organic search efforts. By creating quality content that resonates with your ideal customers, you’ll naturally improve your SEO. This is also why it’s incredibly important to have a website with a blog. Companies who have a blog get 97% more links to their websites than those who don’t have one.
Another benefit of including a blog on your website is content freshness. You get to upload fresh content in the form of posts on a regular basis. It also impacts your SEO because content freshness has been observed to make a difference in the way Googles reads and ranks your site. However, stay away from spammy or poorly written content. They can sink your site’s ranking and reputation.
SEO Strategies – Link Building Activities
Once you’ve populated your site with content and blog posts, be sure to link them to other blogs in your niche, helping visitors find relevant and helpful content. You should also link within your site but overusing interlinks can look spammy. A helpful tactic to earn incoming traffic is to interact with people on sites like Quora and Reddit and provide genuinely helpful answers on your area of expertise. Including your website link in your answers can contribute to your link building efforts.
Google favours sites with incoming links, especially from other trustworthy websites. High-quality incoming links will boost your site’s ranking. The more authoritative your site becomes for search engines, the better its visibility.
SEO Strategies – Summing up
Organic site traffic is all about giving people what they want when they search on Google. So, when it comes to boosting your organic traffic, it boils down to ensuring three things — quality, trustworthiness, and consistency. If you’re struggling to give enough time to your SEO pursuits, then hiring an SEO agency is a great idea. While it adds some cost to your organic efforts, the results you get are worth so much more.