How to Generate Organic Traffic to Your Website

Around 75% of search engine users never click on links past the first page of results. If you want to increase your website’s organic traffic, your web pages must appear in the first few results.

What is organic traffic anyway? It refers to hits or website visits that are the result of “free” or unpaid methods. This is the opposite of paid traffic which is through means like pay-per-click advertisements.

Organic traffic often has a much better ROI than paid traffic. It also tends to drive more traffic in the long term.

If you haven’t a clue how to increase organic traffic to your website, don’t worry! This digital marketing guide will tell you everything you need to know to get started.

Choose Content Topics Based on Keywords

Harnessing the power of keywords is the key to your organic traffic success. Keywords (or keyword phrases) are search queries that users enter into search engines to find the content they need. If they use a keyword that your content ranks high for then they are more likely to click on your webpage.

You should write content that targets keywords that has all three of these factors:

1. Relevant to your business
2. Have low competition from other websites
3. Have a high number of monthly searches from users

For example, if you run a travel website about Morocco, these target keywords will be relevant to your business:

• Best time to visit Morocco
• Top riads in Marrakech
• Best things to do in Morocco
• How to get to Morocco
• Casablanca vs Marrakech

Whether these keywords will generate traffic or not depends on the last two factors. You can attempt to find this out by using a paid research tool like SEMrush.

You can also find secondary keywords this way. Secondary keywords are less effective but are close to your primary target keyword so your content covers more bases.

Let’s say your target keyword is “best things to do in Morocco.” Your secondary keywords could be:

• Free things to do in Morocco
• Best things to do in Morocco
• Top Morocco attractions

You should select a handful but don’t go overboard. This might make search engines like Google think you are writing spam content. If they do, they will penalize your website and decrease your search engine rankings.

Go Further With Keyword Optimization

So you’ve found great keywords for your content that will boost your organic traffic. What do you do with them?

You need to use them in strategic places around your content. These are places like:

• H1 content title/heading
• URL
• Some H2 and H3 sub-headings
• Introduction and conclusion
• Meta description
• Sprinkled in your content

This technique will leave search engines in no doubt about the topic of your content.

Write Catchy Titles That Beat the Competition

It’s not enough to have the keyword of your content in the title. You also need to ensure your titles are catchier than the competition.

For example, your competition might have a piece of content titled, “12 Top Things to Buy in a Marrakech Souk.” If they do, you should have 13 on your list.

Create Long-Form and Helpful Content

Let’s face it, you don’t need to please all the search engines to increase your organic traffic. You only need to please Google.

Google prefers to rank content that follows its E-A-T guidelines higher than other content. This stands for:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

Content on your website needs to provide users with lots of helpful information. Write long-form content with at least 1,200 words. Make sure your content lives up to the promises it makes in the title.

Create “Featured Snippet” Friendly Content

Type any search query into Google’s search bar. You might find that you receive an answer to your question without having to even click on a link.

This is because Google has given you a “featured snippet” from one of the highest-ranked sources for this keyword. If an excerpt from your website becomes a featured snippet then this is sure to boost your organic traffic.

You can do this by making your content as digestible and easy for Google’s bots to scan as possible. Break your content up with subheadings and use bullet points and numbers for lists.

Use explicit, easy-to-read language. You could also highlight key pieces of information in a fact box. Even better, use a question-and-answer format when you write out these facts to mimic what users might type into a Google search bar.

Increase the Number of Links to Your Webpages

One of the best ways to boost the authority of your web pages is to get other high-authority web pages to give yours a vote of confidence. How do they do this? They give you a link back to your website.

Internal linking from one of your web pages to another can also be beneficial. You can link from one of your most popular web pages to a brand new web page to get the new page to rank higher and faster.

Keep Updating Older Website Content

Even though your web pages rank high in search engines results pages now, they might not forever. More competition might pop up or your content may become out of date.

That’s why it’s important you keep checking the rankings of your pages using a sophisticated tool. Find out more about using a website traffic checker tool here.

When you spot your pages starting to slip down in results, update them. Search engines like Google love older URLs but they also love fresh content. Revamp the title, sub-headings, content, images, and links, and make sure it’s all accurate.

One thing you should never do is change the URL. Search engines will register this page as brand new which will erase all the authority it’s gained.

Skyrocket Your Organic Traffic With These Stellar Tips

To increase organic traffic to your website, you need to make it easier for search engines to understand the purpose of your content. You also need to do the same for users too. And if you follow this guide, you will no doubt generate more traffic and achieve more success online.

There are so many skills required to run a website. Browse our tech articles for lots of useful hints and advice!