Have you noticed a lull in your website traffic recently?
Are you worried that you’re losing customers to your competitors?
There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that there’s a problem, but not having the tools you need to fix it.
When it comes to the best ways to increase organic traffic to your website, we’re here to hand you those tools.
Keep reading to learn how to get more — and more targeted — website traffic. Get ready to see your site rise in search engine rankings and conversions.
After this post, you’ll be ready to increase organic traffic and expand your business as a result.
1. Identify What’s Not Working
Before you can come up with an effective way to increase organic traffic, you first need to identify the current problems on your site.
The best way to do this?
By running a website and SEO audit. There are companies that can complete a thorough audit for you, but if you’re on a bit of a budget, there are a few things you can check up on yourself.
Keywords
First, take a look at your Google Analytics data. Examine which keywords are the most effective. (In other words, what are the most common search terms people enter into Google that lead them to your website?)
Then, take a look at how those optimal keywords are used throughout the content of your website. This is what will help you to increase organic traffic.
Are they included in your internal page titles? Your image descriptions? Remember, while you want to include keywords in your written content, there are other ways you can sneak these keywords in to drive up your search engine ranking.
Scrutinize Your URL
Next, it’s time to examine your URL or web address. The less complicated your URL is, the better.
And yes, this is another place where you can sneak in keywords.
Make sure your URL provides a few relevant words about what the specific internal page of your site is about. Avoid long strings of random letters and numbers — search engines can’t tell what your page is trying to do if you’re essentially writing in a gibberish language.
Break up your words with hyphens, and please avoid using capital letters.
Check Your Site’s Loading Speed
Now, it’s time to check on one of the most important ways to increase organic traffic — your site’s loading speed.
A slow website means your web traffic will quickly click away from your site. Google indexes this as less time spent on your site, and your “bounce rate” — the number of times people navigate away from your site — increases.
As you can imagine, that’s not great for SEO.
Use this free website speed checker tool to help you figure out where you stand.
2. Create a Content Calendar
One of the most effective ways to increase organic traffic to your site?
By consistently publishing new content. This tells Google and other search engines that your site is frequently “updated.”
As you probably guessed, sites that are updated more often rank higher in search engine results.
Of course, with everything you have to do in a day, you don’t always have time to crank out blog posts and upload dozens of photos to social media accounts (more on social media later.)
To keep yourself accountable, it’s a good idea to sit down with your team at the start of every month and create a content calendar. Assign different posts to different team members depending on their specific expertise and schedules.
Plus, knowing what’s coming next helps you to avoid publishing shoddy, uninteresting content.
3. Check for Broken Links
Another crucial way to increase organic traffic?
By checking for broken links. First of all, if your website is littered with broken internal and external links, it doesn’t exactly send a message of professionalism to your website visitors.
No one enjoys being redirected to an error page.
Additionally, it can also hurt your SEO rankings. Yes, Google checks to ensure your links are all working, too.
You can use this free broken link checker tool to ensure your links are still in good working order.
4. Create Shareable Content
You’ve heard it a million times: content is king.
And while yes, writing compelling, informative content is important, it also needs to be specifically shareable.
That is, to increase organic traffic, you need to have content that will look just as good on your social media accounts as it will on your actual website or blog.
This means it needs to include lots of images, have content that’s concise, and above all, free from long blocks of text.
You should also aim to create video content, which is highly likely to be shared on social media. After all, recent studies claim users would rather watch a video about a company than read an article about it.
Remember that shared content doesn’t just put you in front of your target market — it also puts you in front of your target market’s followers.
5. Make It Mobile-Friendly
This is a quick tip: if your site isn’t just as optimized as it is for mobile, you’re going to lose a valuable amount of traffic.
In fact, today, mobile traffic is just as competitive as desktop use — and soon, it will overtake desktop use in popularity.
To ensure your site loads well on a mobile device, remove any large images and eliminate pop-up ads.
6. Ease of Navigation Matters
We’ve all left websites not just because of slow loading time, but also because we simply couldn’t find what we needed.
Take a look at your homepage.
Is the menu clearly displayed at the top of it? Does it include photos showing your products and services?
Does it make your most popular items/services easy to find directly from the homepage? Are your fonts easy to read? Does the page look too busy?
Above all, is your website intuitive?
If not, it’s time to make some serious changes.
7. Focus On Your Landing Pages
Again, this is another tip to increase organic traffic that’s all about the importance of relevant, clear content.
Your landing page is a specific internal page that a customer is sent to when they click on one of your links. This can be a link to a blog you wrote on your site, or, for example, a link back to your site in a guest post you did for a site like Entrepreneur or LinkedIn.
While you might think that having your landing page be your homepage is an effective way to get users on your site, it’s not an effective way to get them to stay there.
Instead, ensure that whichever page you’ve chosen is specific to the context of both the content you’re including it in, and the landing page itself.
For example, if you were writing about “getting help for car trouble” for a mechanic blogging site, you should link back to the specific “contact us” page of your website — not a blog post you wrote two years ago about getting mud in your tires.
8. Claim Your Google My Business Listing
Google My Business is an incredibly important tool, as it often pops up right at the top of search engine results when a potential customer googles your company.
This helps you to increase organic traffic to your site.
It allows you to provide what’s essentially a “one-sheet” about your company to your customers. They can see your address, your contact information, your hours, customer reviews — even photos of your business.
It’s a great way to build brand recognition, as well as to get people to click over to your website to learn more about what you offer.
Further, if you don’t claim your own listing, your competition could claim yours as their own. That certainly wouldn’t do much for your SEO strategy — or your reputation.
9. Comment On Other Blogs
A lot of times, blogging for your company can feel like screaming into the void — and often, your traffic data tells you that’s exactly what you’re doing.
So, how can you get someone to listen?
Well, you can start by listening to others. Think of a few of the most popular blogs in your industry. Why not get involved in the discussion in the comments section?
First of all, doing this is a great idea as it shows you’re actually engaged in the hot, relevant topics within your industry. You’ll also become a familiar name to others in your industry.
Additionally, it’s a great way to direct people back to your blog. Every time you leave a comment, always remember to leave a link back to your blog or website along with it.
That way, you’ll increase organic traffic to your site — but that traffic will be from people who are already interested in what you have to offer. This means they’re much more likely to make a sale or take another action on your site.
10. Embrace ALT Tags
This is a great way to give your website traffic the boost it needs — and it’s a lot less complicated than it initially sounds.
Essentially, ALT Tags are part of your overall HTML strategy, and they work especially well when you use them alongside images.
Basically, they need to be a keyword-base description of the image itself (or any other element on your site.)
11. Embrace Going Live
Earlier in this post, we talked about the importance of creating shareable content.
Now, let’s discuss why you need to also embrace one of the biggest trends in social media right now: live streaming.
It’s a great way to increase organic traffic — and have a little fun in the process.
While initially, you might not think that live video will have a major impact on your organic SEO, hear us out.
First of all, especially if you’re trying to tap into a millennial market, you likely already know that the best way to do that is to find them on social media.
Another thing that’s important to millennials?
Trust and transparency between consumer and company.
By live streaming, you’re showing your market that you have nothing to hide. It also helps your market to see you as “real people,” and not just a faceless company. Plus, it’s a great idea to connect with your followers in real time.
You could give a live virtual tour of your office to let your followers get to know employees and see what a typical day looks like. You could also host a live question and answer session, which is a great way to prove you’re committed to transparency.
After your live stream ends, not only will you and your customers walk away with a better understanding of each other. You’ll also likely notice quite a few more hits to your company’s website.
Especially if you mention a few of your most popular products during your live stream, you’ll certainly pique people’s curiosity.
12. Keep Evolving
Our final piece of advice for those who want to increase organic traffic?
Never stop studying, analyzing, and implementing new SEO ideas.
This may mean that sometimes, you’ll need to rely on a team of professionals to help you get everything done. Remember, SEO is not an “afterthought.” It’s the very thing that’s going to get people to come and check out your digital storefront.
If your customers can’t see that digital storefront, they’ll never even know you exist. SEO is the best way to ensure that they do.
Ready to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Site?
We know that, thanks to these tips, you’re ready to get to work in improving your search engine rankings and connecting with your target market on an even deeper level.
By following these tips, you’ll increase organic traffic and experience the kind of growth you’ve been chasing for years.
However, keep in mind that SEO is only a portion of your overall digital marketing strategy.
At Monster Media, we provide a variety of services, including social media management, mobile app assistance, content marketing, website design, and much more.
In short: no matter which aspects of your digital marketing plan you’ve realized need strengthening, we’re here to help you make it happen.
Reach out to us today, and let’s make this the year you finally overtake your competition in search engine rankings — and grow your customer base in the process.
