If you’re wondering how to increase organic traffic to your website or blog, wonder no more! Organic traffic is simply traffic, or visitors to your site which isn’t paid for. It is free traffic, the best kind of traffic!
Much of a bloggers free traffic will come through Google’s organic search engine. The results of a Google search will bring up paid for advertising on the right and at the top of the results, and free ‘organic’ search results in the main body of the page. To get your website on to this section of the page you need to prove to Google that your content is the best for any particular set of keywords which is typed into the search bar.Â
How To Increase Organic Traffic To Your Website
Short ‘tail’ keywords with three or less words in them will be very competitive in Google’s organic search results. For example “make money online” will be very competitive and you are very unlikely to compete for this term. The sites which rank for this term will have been around for a long time and also have a huge authority with Google on the subject. You need to aim for ‘long tail’ keywords which have a chance of ranking in the organic results.Â
Long tail keywords are keywords of usually four or more words like “how to increase organic traffic”. They may not get as many monthly searches as “money making online”. But, you will have more chance of ranking your article title at or near the top of the Google’s organic search results and getting visits. One visitor a month for a long tail keyword article is better than no visitors a month for a short tail and overly competitive keyword combination.
Finding long tail keywords which are regularly searched for is done with Google’s keyword planner. You need to target your market audience.
Why Must You Get Targeted Visitors?
Traffic in itself isn’t the goal. Your goal is sales. This means you need to get the kind of traffic to your site who will fall over themselves to get what you have. When writing articles for your blog, keep this in mind. All traffic isn’t always the right traffic. Why is target market important?
Simply because you want your visitors to be interested once they arrive on your blog. If you have anything to sell, they should be interested in that too. Make sure, then, that the keywords you choose have something to do with your specific target niche. Type a couple of keywords into the planner and you will get a list of longer tail keywords with their monthly search numbers beside them. Don’t get greedy and go for the large numbers as these are the more competitive keywords. Choose ones which are less competitive.
How to choose less competitive keywords
Once you have found a keyword set type it into Google’s search bar in “quotes” for the number of competing pages for this term. You should get a number appear at the top of the screen. Choose a long tail keyword with ideally less than 10,000 competing pages for a chance to rank. The less the better. See this article on finding long tail keywords for more info.
Build your article around this new keyword and use the plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast. It’s a free plugin which helps you target your keyword by putting it in the title, url, meta-tags, description and meta description. It should also appear in your article text.
Write at least 1000 words in your article and ideally more to rank in Google. The more word the better. Upwards of 3000 words will give you more chance of ranking and maintaining your Google place too. As blogs get more competitive this number will continue to increase. As your site grows so will its authority. Don’t expect to rank straight away if you have a new site. As time goes on you will develop some authority and your site will increase its authority for each article you write, and the older it gets.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is also found by leaving comments on forums and blogs with a link back to your site (where allowed). You can submit your site and articles to article and blog directories and it is also useful to write for other people’s blogs as a guest writer with a link back to your site. Links will bring traffic directly and also help improve your authority with Google.
Quora.com
Use Quora.com to answer questions within your business niche. Answer in depth and leave links back to useful content. It’s a great way to link back to your build your reputation as someone knowledgeable and increase organic visits.
Social media
This is another area where you can promote your blog or website for free. There are various tactics to build an audience to your site but the best one is to provide content which is interesting and people want to read. No-one wants to be spammed! Submit your content to the various social media sites to share with friends and contacts. Social media shares is a factor used by Google too, to determine the worthiness of your content. So start with great content, write good headlines to get people to open your content and more people will share.
Headlines
Many bloggers say using attention grabbing headlines is the best way to get more views. Use Buzzsumo.com to see the top shared articles within your business niche. Of course you content also needs to back up the value you promise in your title. However, if your title isn’t attractive, less people will click on it and read it.
If you know of any other methods of how to increase organic traffic please comment below and share.