10 Simple SEO Methods to Increase Organic Traffic

Getting traffic is the main goal of having a business website, right? Prospective buyers visit your website, are wowed by what you have to offer, and it’s done! Profits.

Alright, everyone knows that it’s not that easy. Particularly in the B2B sector, a plethora of factors come into play between someone visiting your website and them making a purchase or generating a lead. However, without website traffic, profit cannot possibly occur. And organic search traffic is the best kind of traffic, in my humble opinion.

It doesn’t call for knowledge of PPC campaigns or an advertising budget.
Every time social media platforms alter their algorithms, it doesn’t suffer.
If you’re blogging for business, which you should be, it’s free!

The issue is that obtaining organic traffic is fraught with difficulties related to your industry, type of business, available internal resources for SEO efforts, and Google’s mood on any given day.

And that’s the topic of our conversation today! How to beat the odds and boost organic search traffic. Whether you want to see steady growth or you have an underperforming site, I’ll share tips that work for any type of business website.

You are welcome to jump straight to the traffic-generating advice by using the table of contents!

What is Organic Search Traffic?

The term “organic search traffic” describes website visits that you receive when someone clicks on your link and finds your content organically in the search results.

I say “naturally,” but the magic of SEO and content is what makes you appear high enough to get clicks, and thus, organic traffic; we’ll get to that.

Examples of search results that could generate organic search traffic are as follows:

Among the URL results was a service page.
A blog post that appeared in the URL search
A category or product page that appears in the URL search results
One of the recipes from the rich recipe results
The “website” link that appears next to standard search results in your business listing
A link to your website that appeared in the “people also ask” section of Google
A URL to a webpage that shows up when searching for images or videos

Links pointing to your website from Google or Bing Ads are not considered organic search traffic. Although they do show up in the search results, they are not organic because you paid to have your content displayed.

Why is Organic Traffic Important?

These are six factors that make organic search traffic crucial for your company.

1. It’s inexpensive, or at least free. Even if you have to pay an hourly rate for content creation and optimization, it’s still less expensive than running advertisements for the majority of industries.

2. It draws in new clients. You’ll draw in website visitors who are eager for what you have to offer as long as you’re focusing on the appropriate search intent and subjects that matter to your audience.

3. It is available to small companies. To produce fantastic content that people enjoy, you don’t need a large budget or a ton of marketing experience.

4. It enhances your standing. People are more likely to choose your business and to view you as trustworthy the more times they see your name in the search results.

5. It provides you with insights about your audience. To inform business decisions, you can use information about the terms people use to find your website and how they interact with your content.

6. It raises the likelihood of conversions. Every user that clicks through from the search results to your website presents an opportunity to capture leads, pique interest in more content, and increase sales.

How Can I View My Traffic from Organic Search?

You are already receiving some organic search traffic to your website, unless it is extremely new. Use Google Analytics to view it in all its splendor.

Google will be the source of the majority of your organic visitors. Additionally, your audience may use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and other search engines that they prefer (or are compelled to use at work). You may also receive traffic from search engines such as Yandex, Baidu, Sogou, and Naver if your audience is international.

You can begin examining which pages those visitors land on, how they interact with your website, and what conversions they accomplish as soon as you locate your report on organic search traffic.

This will greatly assist you in honing your digital strategy. You can probably push organic traffic down the sales funnel a little more forcefully if it is very engaged and likely to convert. You should concentrate on enhancing your conversion optimization strategy if organic traffic has a higher likelihood of reading a post and then leaving it.

You can view organic website traffic in Google Search Console under Performance > Search Results, if you’re a data nerd and would love to see more of it.

It will not take long for you to notice that the quantity of search clicks displayed in Google Search Console and the quantity of organic search website visits in Google Analytics are not the same. This is due to:

Not all search engines are included; only Google search traffic is reported.
Data is aggregated differently by Search Console and Google Analytics.

Google Search Console tracks individual clicks in search results, but Google Analytics associates all subsequent website visits from a single user who found you through organic search with that same traffic source.

Here’s Bounteous’ excellent explanation: “Suppose a user came to our website five times, using Google for the first visit and a bookmark or the web browser bar to access the URL the other four times… Google is credited with all five sessions by GA, but Google Search Console only records one click.

It’s a lot to process, I know! However, you are capable of doing this. Let’s get to the good stuff now.

10 SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic

As you investigate these and other SEO strategies, keep in mind that your audience should always come first. You’ll succeed if you produce amazing content and keep up an excellent user experience. Contrarily, using excessive amounts of keywords or purchasing links won’t help your website expand and may cause it to be de-indexed, which will be difficult to recover from if Google ever allows you to rejoin the fray!

1. Keywords and search intent

Over the past five years, keyword strategy has undergone significant change. While target phrases and keywords are still crucial for your pages and posts, search engines use them differently depending on where you put them.

“Keyword stuffing,” or using the same phrase repeatedly in your content, is no longer an effective strategy for drawing in searches. If you do this, your content will rank much lower. In addition to understanding synonyms and natural language searches (voice searches), Google and other search engines are now able to determine the intent behind a query.

Consider the subjects you wish to photograph and their goals. Employ wording and keyword combinations that members of your audience would use in that particular search. The following are the ideal locations to use the actual keywords:

Within the URL
In the title of the page or post
In headings (particularly those with H1 and H2 styling, which denote important content),
The opening paragraph of your document
You mentioned in your meta description
In any image’s ALT text on the page

2. Consistency, quality, and E-A-T

Search engines prefer new and excellent content. Google’s September 2022 “helpful content update” was solely focused on giving preference to websites that have excellent content that genuinely benefits users. It’s also true that websites that consistently post excellent content are more likely to rank higher than websites that infrequently or never post anything at all.

You don’t have to update your pages daily, as doing so would irritate your visitors. Reviewing the content of your website once a year and making any necessary edits for new SEO strategies is a good habit. Nonetheless, having a company blog or case studies section is the best approach to keep your website updated and boost search traffic. Putting out one informative, well-optimized article every month can have a significant impact.

Showcase your E-A-T, or authority, credibility, and experience, while you’re at it. There are many ways to achieve this, such as providing complete contact information, terms of service, and policy pages; citing reliable sources from reliable websites; prominently displaying author credentials or bios; obtaining links from reliable websites; and maintaining content up to date for factual accuracy.

3. User experience

Google is the search engine superpower because it returns incredibly relevant results quickly. Google wants users to be happy, which is why it gives high-quality websites so much weight.

What makes for an excellent user experience? Websites that are quick to load, safe, have flawless grammar, are easy to read (using page layout and styling to break up copy), and provide pertinent content that answers the query. Google Analytics dashboards provide all the information you need to understand how users interact with your website, and we also like Hotjar and other heatmap tools.

Find out more in UX Design 101: The Elements of a Successful Website.

4. Technical SEO and security

The security of your website is another element that search engines value highly. Google does not want users to visit a website that will expose their personal information. Because of this, the majority of browsers alert users if a website they are about to visit is unsafe (uses the insecure HTTP protocol instead of the secure HTTPS protocol). Additionally, poorly ranked websites will have numerous broken pages (404 errors), redirect chains and loops, and issues with the site code.

To keep an eye on the technical health of your website, we advise regular website maintenance, SEO audits, and dedicated hosting on a secure cloud server.

5. friendliness on mobile devices

Search engines will not be considering you seriously if your website is not yet optimized for mobile devices. Your website must display properly on all devices, with text that is easy to read and buttons that are simple to tap or click.

The good news is that it’s now more affordable than ever to have a quick, mobile-friendly website. Every Anvil website is created (and tested) to be compatible with multiple devices.

6. Link structure

Links have a significant impact on how search engines rank your E-A-T. One of the best ways to boost search traffic is by being aware of and making improvements to your link structure. Three different types of links need to be examined.

Backlinks, or links pointing to your website from other websites, are the most valuable kind of links. Having your pages or posts featured on prestigious websites allows you to take advantage of their SEO “juice,” as the link indicates to Google that these websites think highly of you.

Internal linking is essential to the crawlability of your website. “Orphaned pages” are those that have no links pointing to them from other pages on your website, which may indicate to a crawler that the page is unimportant or an accident. It is therefore best practice to include links to relevant content on your own website.

Through the linked text and the destination URL, outbound links assist search engines in determining the subject matter of your content. An additional advantage is that the other company may view your website in their Google Analytics as a source of referral traffic. In return, they may choose to collaborate with you or share your article on social media.

7. Image optimization

The search engine bots aren’t the only ones that scan more than just your copy on the page. Since image optimization is frequently disregarded, it’s a fantastic method to give your website a competitive advantage. All you need are optimized attributes and files with the proper size for quick page loads.

Make sure to rename your images from their original file name, if at all possible, including the page’s focus keywords. If the keywords make sense with the image, include them in the ALT text that you add to each one. Adding copy here will enhance the user experience for those with vision impairments, as screen readers use ALT text to describe photos. Remember to optimize the audio and video track titles and descriptions as well!

To speed things up, we advise using a CDN service (like Cloudflare) to host the images off your website. The majority of CDN services reduce the file size of your images for much faster delivery.

8. Local SEO and NAP

Local SEO is an unique field. The local pack, which consists of the top three businesses that show up on the map and receive the most clicks, is where you are competing to rank in those “near me” searches. Your brick and mortar store needs strong local SEO if you want to see an increase in search traffic.

- - Take control of business listings on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business.
  - Make sure that all online listings, including your website footer, contact page, Google Business, and social media profiles, have your NAP (name, address, and phone number) 100% correct.
  - Increase the number of citations for your company by listing it in local directories and apps, like the Better Business Bureau, Apple Maps, and Bing and Maps.
  - Reviews! Since reviews have a significant impact on local ranking, solicit in-person reviews as well as links to your Facebook, Google, and Yelp pages.

9. Social signals

The data that search engines compile from your social media activity is known as a social signal. Don’t worry, having more likes and followers won’t affect your ranking by itself. However, some search engines do understand that you have an active social media presence, are involved in the community, and have accurate business information on your social media profiles.

Social media can also help you rank higher if many people share your content and it gains backlinks. It can also help if you use relevant keywords in your posts and bios. Relevant tweets and LinkedIn company pages will appear in Google search results.

10. Meta descriptions

Too many businesses overlook meta descriptions as another simple and fast way to boost organic traffic. The text that shows up beneath the title of your page or post in search results is called a meta description.

While meta descriptions don’t directly affect rankings, the content you use is very important to your click-through rate. Consider the title as the hook, and your one opportunity to convert a scroll into a click is in the meta description. You want to write compelling copy that sets your content apart from the competition and persuades readers of why you’re the top search result.

These are our best recommendations for boosting search traffic, but SEO is a tricky game that requires constant attention to detail. Keeping an eye on industry trends is crucial because what is effective today might not be a ranking factor tomorrow. You can gain confidence in assessing the SEO health of your website by enrolling in one of the many free digital marketing courses available.

Increase Organic Traffic