Organic traffic doesn’t come easily to most websites. Users want a variety of things and creating perfect content to attract them is a difficult task. Search engines have countless criteria by which they decide whether or not to show your website in response to a search query.
Luckily, there are steps that you can take to get closer to more organic traffic for your website. Here are some of the best examples.
1. Identify which links are good
Backlinks have been an essential part of SEO optimization for a while now. There have been rumours that they might become less relevant as time goes on, but this doesn’t seem likely. Even the dedicated teams at Google that try to find ways to circumvent search optimization agree that backlinks are here to stay.
You can get a lot of traffic from Google without too many backlinks, but this is a very difficult task for most websites. The fact is, it’s nearly impossible to compete with most authoritative sites without a healthy array of high-quality backlinks. The difficult part is knowing which backlinks are good and which are bad. Not every kind of backlink will benefit your website, and differentiating them could mean the difference between lower and higher rankings on search engines.
Analyze all your site’s backlinks and compare their value to determine which lead to more organic traffic. The most important elements of a good backlink include things like contextual links, links that are from relevant websites in your industry, and links that are from websites with good domain authority.
2. Engage users and communicate with them
Proper communication with users will keep them coming back to your website. Often, you’ll find that users have questions and complaints that they will voice on your forums and social media. Engaging with them and acknowledging their issues is the best way to go about solving them. This is especially true if you have a content-based website.
The issues your users might have with your content are the same issues other users have with similar content. What this means is that they will use search engines to find solutions and answers that they’re looking for. These search engines will then lead to your website because you actively engage with users and provide the necessary answers. It’s a very organic way to get people to visit your website and blog. Not to mention, they will also often leave satisfied with the answers they were given.
3. Create a keyword database
You can’t work on your search engine optimization without keywords. They tell you the exact phrases people search for online and that can give you a good idea what to put in your content. Just using keywords as you go won’t be enough, you need to do your research and create a dedicated keyword database for your industry.
Check out the most popular keywords used for websites like yours and try to emulate their success. Both short and long-tail keywords must be utilized where appropriate. However, try not to focus all of your attention on search volume alone. Short-tail keywords are great in this regard, but they are generic enough that they are difficult to rank. Long-tail keywords are valuable opportunities despite low search volume, as ranking them is much easier.
There are various keyword planning accessories online that you can use to your advantage. Even Google has one that can suggest the most appropriate keywords and their effectiveness. Ultimately, you will want your own database to best optimize for your own niche website.
4. Stick to quality content
Despite all the new and interesting methods that website designers have come up with to generate traffic, content is still king. A page full of quality content will beat out any other method because it will naturally attract visitors and new users. It will also give you a bunch of good backlinks and social media attention to boot.
You have to create content that is not only high in quality on its own, but high in quality compared to your competitors. Why would someone visit your website if a competitor provides the same thing, but slightly better? Your work needs to be outstanding in order to stick out and a lot of effort needs to be put into it.
Don’t try to force content onto your website before it’s ready. Volume won’t beat out quality. Writing things for the sake of having any content at all isn’t an effective strategy. Competition is constantly improving, which means you also need to be a step ahead of the game.
5. Contribute to reputable sites
If you want to increase the number of visitors that are familiar with your industry, you need to attract their attention. Sydney SEO experts recommend contributing to popular websites that are within your industry’s niche. These websites already have a large following that might be interested in what you have to say. Influencing them with good content and contributions would be your best course of action.
You need to be able to recognize the quality of these websites. Blogging on low-quality websites could potentially hurt your own following.
6. Optimize meta data
The first thing most search engines see on your website is the meta data and keywords that are located within it. The first couple of paragraphs of your content are the most important areas for search engines. If the meta data of your website contains relevant information that connects to user’s queries, it’s going to attract search engines and increase your rankings.
You should also work on optimizing your titles and subtitles, as these are also favoured by search engines. Avoid keyword stuffing in both titles and meta data, because these often lead to search engines avoiding your website.
Conclusion
If you want to increase organic traffic to your website, you need to make changes that will satisfy both users and search engines. Good content and proper search engine optimization are the keys to success for every kind of website. If you follow some of these pointers, your website will start to attract more users and you’ll end up with organic traffic before you know it. Try Hibox to manage your marketing team, improve your internal communication and plan your tasks in the same tool.