If you are running a website, you probably spend a good amount of time thinking about traffic. Every time a page is refined, or new content is published, it almost becomes an obsession to keep checking the number of new visitors coming to the website.
A healthy traffic flow comes from multiple channels such as organic, direct, paid, and the various campaigns you run. If the traffic flow is not in good shape, it can be challenging to scale your digital visibility. Poor visibility will lead to fewer leads, ultimately resulting in reduced customers.
Organic traffic is key
So, how can you make more people come to your website? Organic traffic can be the solution. Organic traffic is the traffic your website receives when people click on your website in the search results. It brings you highly targeted prospects and proves very cost-effective in the long run.
But what can be done to receive more organic traffic? You can consider effective growth hacking strategies used by successful websites to boost their organic traffic. Most websites rely on quality SEO services for the best results.
But if you’ve decided to take matters into your own hands, we already have a list of 6 such top strategies that you can try right away. So, let us begin.
1. Rework your keywords strategy
No matter how strong your keyword strategy is, it will always have some gaps. This is completely natural because newer keywords keep emerging and every new product/service you add opens up a plethora of new opportunities.
Even if you are very careful with the content production process, it can still take a good amount of time to incorporate such new keywords.
With that being said, you should never accept a keyword strategy that is based on gap-filling. The keyword opportunities you miss can easily limit the growth of organic traffic.
Moreover, the time you spend incorporating newer keywords can provide an advantage to the competitors. Therefore, you should regularly identify keyword opportunities and add them to your strategy to boost traffic and visibility.
Using a keyword difficulty checker
One of the most effective ways to find newer keywords is to target keywords with low competition and higher search volume. A Keyword Difficulty Checker tool from Ahrefs, SEMRush, or MOZ can be very helpful in the process.
Most of the popular tools work in the same manner. Here’s how to use SEMRush’s Keyword Overview tool for this-
- Enter relevant keywords in the tool, and it will provide its “Difficulty Score”
- Try several different keywords and look for ones that are easy to rank for but still have higher search volumes
- You can also customize the search for different countries
- The tools will also provide additional details, such as related keywords, keyword variations, and commonly asked questions related to the keywords
2. Identify under-performing content and fix it
It is not uncommon to have content that just fails to deliver as per your expectations with regard to your marketing objectives, like driving traffic, referrals, or conversions. However, it can be helpful if you identify such non-performing pieces of content and fix them.
One of the primary reasons why you should do this is because such content will consume the limited crawl budget or how the search algorithms choose which pages and how many pages of a website should be crawled.
If your website has plenty of ineffective content, the search engines will crawl through them and leave your website before even reaching the good content.
You can use Google Analytics to identify such under-performing content. Follow these steps-
- Log into your Google Analytics account and click on “Behavior” reports
- It will provide a quick overview of the pages that people have visited on your website and the actions taken by them while going through your content
- You can also choose traffic channels and compare the traffic against a preferred past period
- Choose the traffic channel as “Organic” and compare it against the previous year’s traffic
- If you’d like to check the traffic of individual pages, you can go to Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages
Once you’ve identified such under-performing content, you can diagnose the reasons and make improvements to ensure that they adequately contribute to your organic traffic. In some cases, you might also have to completely scrap the content pieces altogether.
3. Work on user experience
Google uses 200+ ranking factors, and user experience (UX) is one of the most important. Google wants people to reach the information they are looking for as quickly as possible. But at the same time, it also wants to provide them with a user-friendly experience.
So even if you are targeting the right keywords and have valuable content, you might still not rank in search results if the UX is not up to the mark.
If your website is outdated or the pages are not trustworthy, it will directly impact your search rankings and the organic traffic you receive.
And if you do receive some organic clicks, most people will find the website experience unimpressive and leave without even going through your content, resulting in higher bounce rates.
So, how do you improve the UX of your website? Focus on these tips:
- Make sure that the CTA is appealing and placed correctly
- Use targeted headlines
- Use bullet points to organize essential information
- Prefer using properly optimized, original images
- Keep the pages consistent
- Work on website navigation
- Optimize the website for mobile
4. Improve website speed
Website speed is also one of the ways to boost UX. However, it is such a critical component of the overall user experience that it deserves a special mention. Nobody, including people and search engines, likes a slow website.
If the website speed is slow, rest assured that it can be very challenging to rank at one of the top spots in search results.
You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check the speed of your website. The tool also provides excellent recommendations on how you can improve your website’s speed.
Apart from TTFB (Time To First Byte) or page speed, you should also watch out for Google’s Core Web Vitals. The vitals take website speed a significant step further by teaming it up with UX elements.
Using an inferior quality host is often the primary cause of having a slow website. So, upgrading to a better host could be an easy fix to this problem. Here are some other tips that can help:
- Avoid using several plugins
- Optimize image size
- Minify HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
- Reduce the number of redirects
- Take advantage of browser caching
- Use a popular CDN (Content Delivery Network)
5. Work on your backlink profile
Backlinks are links from other websites linking to your site. In the eyes of search engines, backlinks are considered upvotes or recommendations that can make you look like an authority in your niche.
Unfortunately, several website owners believe that backlinks don’t work anymore. But the truth is backlinks are still a critical ranking factor.
As several websites have completely ditched the idea of building a backlink profile, you can take advantage of this growth hack to gain a competitive edge. However, receiving backlinks from trusted sources is easier said than done.
Google can recognize poor links, and the search algorithms are built to ignore them. So, you don’t just need backlinks but backlinks from trusted and popular websites.
You can start by checking the backlinks of your competitors. There are several paid and free tools like Ahrefs Backlink Checker that can help.
It will provide you a rough benchmark of the number of backlinks you’ll need to rank higher than your competitors. As for how to get backlinks, here are a few tips that can help-
- In Google Universal Analytics, check referral sources by heading to Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Referrals to know the content type preferred by websites already linking to your website so that you can publish similar content and receive more backlinks
- Send outreach emails to websites you are linking to
- Broken links of your competitors can also provide excellent link building opportunities
- Publish quality content that other websites would like to link to
- Guest blogging is also a powerful link building strategy
- List your website on resource pages
6. Rank for keywords fast with blogging
Last but not least is blogging. If you are looking for ways to rank for non-branded keywords, one of the fastest and most effective solutions is consistently publishing quality content. The higher the number of keywords you’ll rank for, the higher are the chances of receiving more organic traffic.
Besides the ranking benefit, blogs also help position your business or website as an authority in your industry. It also provides you the opportunity to market your product or service to people already looking for related information.
Not to forget that blogging can also play a role in your B2B marketing initiatives and marketing funnel by providing qualified leads.
But if you want to use blogging to boost organic traffic, your blogs need to provide answers to user queries. If the blogging strategy mainly revolves around services or products, it might not resonate with the people.
Here are some tips to help you get started with blogging-
- Use keyword research to create a list of target keywords
- Divide the keywords into transactional and informational search intents
- Categorize the keywords based on buyer persona, volume, or pain point to ensure that your blogs are always user-centric
- You can use a free or paid tool like Buzzsumo or SEMRush to know if your competitors rank for the keywords you’ve selected
- Use a content calendar to consistently publish content that targets your keywords
Consider professional help to dominate search rankings and boost organic rankings
If the organic traffic coming to your website is not up to the mark, you can start experimenting with the strategies discussed above.
While website owners can try to implement these strategies on their own, quality SEO services are highly recommended for quick and lasting results.
As marketing professionals keep themselves updated with the search algorithms and regularly work with businesses across industries, their understanding of the digital landscape is like no other.
Depending on your needs and expectations, they can help create a custom strategy to significantly boost your organic traffic and take your business to the next level.
