A study by BrightEdge found that 51% of traffic to B2B and B2C websites comes from organic search compared to just 10% through paid search.
As a business or a brand, you cannot afford to miss out on this significant traffic that costs you less to acquire, is intuitive and gives you long-term benefits. Sure, getting higher organic traffic is not a walk in the park. It requires a lot of patience and to-and-fro rewiring of your SEO strategy. However, with appropriate techniques in place, you can get it done right.
Searching for ways to drive traffic by ranking higher on Google? You’ve stopped at the right place.
What Is Organic Traffic and How Can It Benefit Your Business?
Organic traffic is the unpaid, direct traffic from Google search results that you get on your website. Unlike paid traffic, organic leads help you in the long term. This kind of traffic is great for businesses because it shows that real people are interested in what you offer. By making your website search engine-friendly, you can get more of these visitors. Organic traffic is helpful because it’s free and often more reliable. It helps your business become known, gain trust, and turn curious visitors into customers, making it grow over time.
Now that you are here, let us just cut to the chase and dive right into the top 10 ways to boost organic traffic on your website.
1. Keyword research
The first and the foremost important technique for ranking on Google is doing thorough keyword research. Keyword research will help you decide what pages your website should have. With a handful of targeted keywords at hand, you can create a theme for your website content which further simplifies creating subpages for different keywords based on user intent. A well-thought-out keyword theme for your website can ultimately help you rank higher and drive more traffic to your website.
2. Rank in the ‘People also ask’ section
‘People also ask’ section on Google consists of questions related to the user’s search query. ‘People also ask’ or the PAA section is a distinct feature of Google SERPs. In this section, you can see a snippet and the link to the article that is ranked most relevant for that question. Ahrefs found that 43% of search queries in Google show a PAA box, so why not rank in one of them?
There hasn’t been much study on how users interact with the PAA box. However, ranking in the PAA section has its own set of advantages. Google often shows similar types of questions in the PAA box for most search queries. Hence it becomes easier to rank for a combined set of keywords. Besides, Google might use the same source to answer multiple questions for different search queries, thus giving you a chance to fetch more clicks and impressions through commonly asked questions. Besides, the PAA section allows you to rank twice on the first search result page on Google, thus driving higher organic traffic to your website.
3. Optimising On Page and Technical SEO elements
Optimising key SEO elements ultimately helps you get more click-throughs and attract more organic traffic to your website. Some of the significant factors that affect the click-through rate are:
- Headings: Writing compelling headings can effectively drive more traffic to your website. Attractive headlines can urge the reader to click through the resource to know more, thus driving more organic traffic. Ideally, headlines consisting of power words, ‘How-to’ headings, and listicles, are proven to drive more CTR.
- Meta description: Besides heading, meta tags have the power to drive a click to your website. Meta descriptions are the content snippets that appear on the SERPs. They give the reader a brief insight into the featured content. Optimising meta descriptions can compel the reader to click through them.
- Internal links: Internal linking helps drive more traffic. Besides, it also helps the visitor to stay longer on your website. Linking up to 3 or more internal pages in your content helps the viewer explore your website and get the utmost value, thus improving your overall ranking and traffic percentage.
- Schema markups: Optimising schema markups for different pages on your website help you rank in higher search results. Schema markups are additional results such as ratings, reviews, and FAQs that are displayed on the SERPs. Schema markups help enhance the credibility of your website and can drive more CTR.
4. Rank the website for Image search
Ranking your website for image search can help you gain more organic traffic. Besides optimising the alt tag for images, various factors affect image SEO. Covered here are a few image SEO basics which can help you rank for image search.
- Image alt tags: Descriptive image alt tags help Google understand the context of your image and make it more accessible for Google to show up your image in the search results.
- Filename: Google determines the subject and content of the image by tracking the content on the webpage and through image captions, filenames and image titles. Including a clear, descriptive file name, description, and caption to your image can boost the relevance of your image in the search results.
- File size and type: Google supports image file types, including BMP, GIF, PNG, SVG, JPEG, and WebP. However, PNG and SVG file types have smaller file sizes, up to 15KB or less, which can help with the easy loading of the images.
- Image sitemap: You can provide URLs to images that Google might miss crawling otherwise through an image sitemap. With the help of an image XML sitemap, you can host the images on CDNs, i.e. the content delivery networks.
5. Optimising low ranking pages
It is crucial to determine the poor performing, low ranking pages on your website. These pages can be the heavy baggage that might be pulling your SEO efforts down. It is important to find such pages on your website and fix them such that they provide a boost to your SEO strategy. A great way to find these pages is to look for their metrics using Google Analytics. Instead of getting your hands on the first page that you come across, it is advisable to study all the low ranking pages, prioritise based on their importance, and optimise the ones that primarily need your attention.
Optimising basic SEO elements, looking for duplicate content, optimising the content of the page based on the user search intent, optimising the page for target keywords, and building authority for the webpage by adding internal and external links, are some of the ways in which you can optimise the low ranking pages, and get the most out of them. Using social media for promoting articles and resources from these web pages is another way to drive more traffic to your website.
6. Authority backlink building
Backlinks are one of Google’s vital ranking factors for ranking web pages. Web pages with higher backlinks earn higher organic search rankings, thus improving your chances of driving more organic traffic to your website. According to Ahrefs a page with more backlinks receives higher organic traffic from Google. This means authority backlink building is one of the most important steps in improving the organic traffic to your website. Getting backlinks from trustworthy, authoritative websites, optimising the anchor text for target keywords, getting links from topically similar websites, and using links with a ‘dofollow’ tag are some of the ways to build backlinks that boost the organic traffic on your website. Using a ‘dofollow’ link on exact match keywords can help in to boosting the ranking of the keywords and thus drive more traffic.
7. Competitor content analysis
SEO competitor analysis is essential for optimizing your website for more organic traffic. Knowing what your competitors are using to attract people to their websites can help you understand what audience segment are you missing out on. It is important to bridge this content and keyword gap that allows your competitors to gain more traffic. Understanding how your competitors are attracting consumers to their business can help you reflect on the content that you’re missing out on.
Analyzing what works for your competitor, and their best performing content can help you tap into what your target audience is looking for and ultimately attract them to your business. You can determine your lacking points and leverage the content strategy that helps you bridge the gap between you and your competitors. Competitor analysis also helps you understand the type of backlinks and keywords that work for your competitors. Mapping different SEO metrics for your competitor’s content can help your figure out the content gap. Tools such as Semrush can help you determine the traffic your competitors are driving. You can also perform a keyword analysis to find out which keywords are working well for your competitors and eventually ramp up your strategy to rank higher for those keywords.
8. Optimising GMB for local businesses
Creating your business profile with Google Business and optimizing it for GMB listing is one of the simplest ways to gain organic traffic to your website. Google Business is a free feature that Google provides for businesses to manage their online presence. GMB is one of the prime drivers for local SEO. Optimizing GMB for your business ultimately leads to a better chance of ranking for local searches. A study by Google found that 50% of consumers visited the store the same day they performed a local search for services like “local SEO services“. And you’d definitely not want to miss out on that 50% of potential customers who could actually walk into your store just because you didn’t rank in the local search results. Here’s how you can optimize your business for GMB:
- Use your actual business name
- List a local phone number which counts as a ranking factor
- Keep all the business information up-to-date including address, website, category, operating times, etc.
- Write an attractive business description
- Add high-quality photos. A business profile with photos is considered to be more reputable and gets more click-throughs.
9. Driving traffic through video content
Video content has become an integral part of content marketing strategies for brands as they’ve proven to be more engaging than other forms of content. In a study, Wyzowl found that almost 69% of consumers preferred learning about a brand through a video, and around 84% of consumers were convinced to buy a product or a service after seeing the brand video. Given the statistics, it is no wonder that video content can not just help you drive more traffic to your website, but can largely impact your sales and revenue. Videos are thus a great way to build brand awareness amongst your audience, drive traffic to your website and convert leads into sales. Different types of videos such as explainer videos, or vlogs can serve different purposes for your brand. Besides creating video content, it is imperative to leverage your brand’s presence on YouTube, which shall further assist you to boost organic traffic to your website.
10. Optimising for Google news
Ranking in the Google news section is one of the efficient ways to reach new audiences and drive more traffic to the website. For content businesses such as news websites, ranking in Google news can help to improve your brand value, get more traffic to your website and gives you more chances of getting your website indexed in the Google SERP. Improving your website’s rankings for Google news increases the authority of your website as Google very carefully approves of the content under the news section. Relevance of content, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, location and language are some of the ranking factors Google uses to rank webpages in Google news. Being a dedicated news website, you can optimise headlines, featuring unique, yet relevant news content, having an XML sitemap for Google news, and a dedicated page of the author can help you rank in the Google news and can help you drive more traffic to your website.
Conclusion
Unlike paid traffic, organic traffic is real and proves to be way more beneficial than paid traffic. As compared to paid traffic, leveraging SEO techniques to acquire organic traffic is much more cost-effective, and compounds to give you long term benefits n your efforts. When done right, organic traffic can help you rank higher in Google SERPs, making your online presence more valuable and credible, and far-reaching. People who intuitively choose to interact with you and your business can be retained longer and can eventually be bought down to the sales funnel without additional spending. Given the benefits of organic traffic to gain a permanent place in the ranking, optimising your website for higher organic traffic is a must. Above-listed is some of the most efficient ways to boost organic traffic for your website, however, these techniques are just the tip of an iceberg. Calling more organic traffic to your website requires efforts in the right direction and it is always a good option to partner with an expert SEO team who knows the ins and outs of the SEO game. Being a result-oriented SEO agency, we at Intent Farm have been implementing excellent SEO strategies for our brands. With sharp-witted SEO campaigns, we have helped our conglomerates achieve a significant rise in organic leads, revenue, and ROI. Looking for ways to grow your business with an effective SEO plan in place? Write to us at brand@intentfarm.com, and we shall get right back to you!
