Organic traffic is perhaps the most valuable kind of traffic for an online business because these are the people who visited your site through unpaid means. On top of that, they account for 51% of web traffic and 40% of revenue. The best way to generate organic traffic is to rank higher than your competitors in search engine results pages. Studies show that 75% of users never click past the first page of Google, so to maximize organic traffic, you need to adopt search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to increase your website’s ranking and visibility on search engines.
How to increase organic traffic
The best thing about organic traffic is that it’s free! If you want to increase organic traffic, it’s not about paying more for ads or PPCs. However, it’s not an easy pursuit either. Many businesses go as far as outsourcing their SEO strategists from companies like Indianapolis Digital Marketing Agency because the process is too time-consuming and confusing, especially if you have no prior experience in SEO. Search algorithms and user search habits also change over time, so it needs constant monitoring and reworking. Despite those daunting challenges, some businesses have achieved SEO success on their own, and here are a few quick tips from experts to increase organic traffic.
1. Take advantage of social media
On average, people spend about 4.5 hours a day on their phones, and in the US, people spend about half of those hours on social media. With 3.81 billion people around the world using social media, it would be unwise not to use it to your advantage. Work towards building a social media presence on major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Whenever you make content, include links to your website and other social media sites. Add share buttons to your site to encourage people to share your content on social media. It sends a positive message to search engines if people leave social media to engage with your content.
2. Improve your click-through rate
Your click-through rate (CTR) is the number of times your website is clicked divided by the number of times it shows up on search engine results. By identifying your click-through rate, you’ll know which content on your site performs better than others. Create a list of your best performing content and analyze what makes them appealing to users and emulate those elements in future content. Take advantage of keywords and meta descriptions, but don’t overstuff your blog post with keywords to appeal to the search engine. Remember that in the end, the content you generate should still put your audience first and not the search engines.
3. Generate quality content through blogging or video production
Notice the emphasis on quality. If you remember, in #1, we recommended adding share buttons to your site to encourage people to share it on their social media. Well, first and foremost, you’ll need to produce content that’s actually worth sharing. People won’t share blog posts or articles that are boring and poorly produced.
Blogging is perhaps the most effective way to increase your organic site traffic because you can use long- and short-tail keywords in the title, tags, and body to give yourself a boost in search rankings. Generate engaging, well-written, and insightful content that is relevant to your business and your target audience. Aside from text-based content, consider investing in producing video content as well. YouTube is second only to Facebook in terms of the average number of monthly active users, with 1.9 billion people flocking to the platform each month. This sends a clear message that there is a high demand for content in video format. The majority of viral content is also in short video format, so try to incorporate these into your marketing strategy. Take advantage of the fact that long-form videos can hold people’s attention longer compared to their text counterpart. The longer users stay on your site, the more search engines will tag your site as relevant and high quality.
4. Use internal linking
Once you’ve generated enough content, you can begin to interlink different pages on your site to guide visitors to other relevant content. If you use this technique effectively, it can keep visitors on your website longer, which increases your search rankings. However, if you overdo it, search engines may flag the content as spam if there are too many links on a single page. Too many links on a single article will make the reader think that your goal of the page is to advertise other parts of your site rather than be informative.
Keep at it
Do not expect your organic traffic to skyrocket overnight. Developing an effective SEO strategy is a long-term process of planning, testing, and adjusting. There isn’t one surefire recipe for achieving increased organic traffic because each industry and its respective target markets have different preferences when it comes to website design, browsing, and search habits. Additionally, if you do luck out and successfully increase your organic traffic, don’t think your job is done. Continue to refine and improve your strategy to achieve long-term growth. Many businesses made the mistake of getting too complacent, and in this fast-paced, oversaturated business landscape, you run the risk of falling to the wayside if you aren’t constantly on alert.
If you’re still having trouble developing an SEO strategy or just don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to reach out to third-party services like Indianapolis Digital Marketing Agency. They have all the necessary expertise for online businesses looking to boost their visibility on search engine results pages. Their experts are attuned to SEO trends as well as how different search engine algorithms work. They also offer creative services in case you need help generating content. Having the assistance of professionals gives you peace of mind because instead of running on hunches and guesswork, you’re getting expert advice and guidance. SEO is also a very time-consuming process, and by outsourcing, you can focus on running your business.