While traffic that comes from paid advertising is valuable, it’s still not as good as organic traffic. Not only is organic traffic free, and therefore more financially viable for your business, but it’s also a far more sustainable way to get visitors to your site. You need as much consistent, free, organic traffic as possible for your website to become a success, regardless of what industry you’re in.
Organic traffic can often feel elusive. While it can be a struggle to get the kind of visitor numbers you want, there are certain steps you can take to help increase the numbers.
Add SEO keywords to the page title, meta description, and tags
When it comes to on-page optimization, there are a few important components: page title and meta descriptions. The goal is to have a compellingly written single sentence (or two) that will entice people into clicking on your links in SERP (search engine result pages) and reading more of your content on the website.
When writing your page title or meta description for an article you want people to link back to you, try using actionable SEO keywords: “free ways to”, “unlimited ways to,” “things that will save you money,” “ways to make your life easier and simpler,” “ways to automate every aspect of your life,” or any other catchy phrase related to the topic of the article.
Use your keyword phrases in social media posts
Once you have your keyword phrases, be consistent with them, and include them in posts you make on social media. Using the same phrases over and again will increase your brand recognition and help people find you when they’re online.
Make sure pages are mobile-friendly
Your website needs to be mobile-friendly and responsive on any device, not only desktops. More people than ever are browsing and buying using their phones. If your website is not optimized for mobile users, you will lose out on a lot of potential customers. Check the functionality of your website using a phone and tablet in order to find any problems that need fixing.
Create a blog
Make sure you are consistent and post regularly with quality information. The more frequently you post new content, the more search engine authority your page will have with that specific keyword phrase. Long-form content is also better than short-form, for example, one quality post of 2000 words is better than four posts of five hundred words.
Link out to other websites you find valuable
If you find a website that offers good quality information and is related to your niche, it’s a great idea to link out to it. Your text can say something like “Read this interesting article on [name of website]” or “Here’s a great article that will help you learn more about [topic].” Try not to go overboard with this though, or else Google might see your links as spammy. And definitely don’t put in links to any of your competitors.
Optimize meta tags and description for images
A number of websites like Facebook, Tumblr, or Blogspot show images in search results pages when someone searches for a specific phrase related to that image. Social sharing and comments on these images can lead to more traffic to the website itself. Just make sure the meta tags and description keywords reflect the content of the image.
Create a sitemap
Create your sitemap, and submit it to Google and Bing webmasters tools so that they can crawl your website. The XML sitemap is a structured file that can be submitted to search engines so that they can easily crawl your website. Make sure you have a sitemap on your website for both Google and Bing, as they are frequently updated and constantly change their algorithms.
Build links on other websites back to your own website
These types of links from other websites are called “backlinks” and they are powerful signals to search engines. They show search engines that someone thought your content was valuable enough for someone else to link back to it. You can hope other websites link back to you, or you can even reach out to relevant sites and ask for a collaboration in order to have your site mentioned on theirs.
In conclusion
Getting organic traffic and building up your visitor numbers is an ongoing process that needs constant work. Even when you implement every step listed above, you still shouldn’t expect things to happen overnight. However, by doing everything you can and implementing good SEO practices, you will have a lot more success.
