It is, unsurprisingly, hard to surf the ever-accelerating wave of digitalisation. A website for yourself, your brand, your business is long considered a necessity and everyone from journalists to potential clients will measure your credibility, in part, on the basis of your website and digital portfolio. Building a website can be daunting enough -- but it doesn’t have to be something to shy away from! Have a look at our guide on how to build your own website here. In any case, building or owning a website certainly does not guarantee success. This is why this article will walk you through ten easy steps by which you can increase organic traffic to your website. 🚉
Before we take a walk in the organic traffic park, let’s start with the basics, such as: what is organic traffic? The digital marketing agency Reliablesoftnet poignantly summarises it in an article as “visits to a website coming from a search engine’s organic results and not paid ads”. This means that you want to attract visitors to your website when they are searching for specific things online. How, then, can you guarantee that your name shows up for the right keywords and questions? Here are ten steps to guide you.
1. Constancy 📲
As the title suggests, we have to constantly put out content, if we want to stay on top of things. Obviously, the more we put out, the more there is to show up if someone looks anything up. You might think, however, that no matter how much content you create, high ranking names and brands will always be the first to show up and thus no one will find your website. In this Forbes article, you are let in on a little secret: “You can piggyback off the authority of high-ranking domains by offering to write pro bono guest posts.” In this sense, the constant creation of content is not linked to your own page, necessarily, but your page will benefit from it. 🙌
2. Consistency 📲
Sounds like the first tip? In a way, it is. It’s just refined. Instead of constantly putting out content on your website whenever you have a spare second, try to develop a strategy or a schedule. Think of it as a bus station simile: No one wants to wait around for hours, not knowing when a bus will come; but if you have fixed times people can rely on for a bus to show up, your bus stop is more frequented. Setting fixed times to upload content will not only give you a more organised take on your website content creation, but it will give your readers the same clarity. 👁
3. Reader 📲
You might fancy art for art’s sake, but this doesn’t apply to content for content’s sake. You should not upload things on your website, just because you want to convince the google algorithm that you’re important. Every post or article should showcase your expertise and address issues and questions relevant for your (potential) clients. The keyword, just like in every form of writing: reader focus! This idea, creating content relevant for your clients, and thus gaining credibility and clients through expertise rather than advertisement, is called content marketing, the basics of which you can read up on here.
4. Relevance 📲
In addition to the relevance for the reader, you should engage with the hot topics of the day to mark the overall relevance of what you’re writing. How does your business cope with recent developments? How do current day issues affect your clients and what can be done about it? Try out different angles to make your expertise relevant for more people. 👥👥👥
5. Different Forms 📲
Aside from writing, content can take a variety of forms: you can add gifs to your posts to break up larger chunks of texts -- the meta-example being my article here. You can incorporate images or create infographics. You could think about doing short clips, interviews, or testimonials in an extra category of your website. Use the multi-faceted possibilities the digital age has to offer.
6. Different Channels 📲
Of course, different forms of content can also be distributed on different channels. Although organic traffic relates to search engine results, putting out content across all sorts of platforms and social media channels and linking it to your website, will increase the number of people engaging with your website. Or they might just see a post and then decide to look you up. 👩💻
7. Links 📲
This brings me to links and backlinks. Much like linking your website on your social media posts or guest writing articles for other publications that then link back to you, you can actively engage with others to get backlinks. Perhaps you have read an article by someone, which relates to a topic you are writing about. Link them in your article, and ask them to give you a backlink. It’s mutually increased credibility.
8. Collaboration 📲
Links, of course, are only one form of collaboration. You can work with others on a variety of projects, from interviews or testimonials to videos. As long as you get people engaged, their network will become your network and this increases your reach. If you’re mentioned on their websites, traffic will be generated towards yours, because visitors will look you up. 🤝
9. SEO 📲
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, which, in short, is how you can increase your visibility on search engine results and make sure you appear at the top. If you feel a bit lost with that, check out the basics of SEO on our blog here. And if you’re doubting whether it’s worth investing your time into this science of SEO, perhaps this Forbes article on why SEO still matters in 2020 will convince you. To break it down, SEO will help you to to figure out which keywords you want to be associated with and develop strategies to link you to these searched keywords. 💬
For more tips on SEO, check out Articulate Marketing’s top tips here.
10. Web Analytics 📲
Creating and developing strategies, but to find out what works out and improve things, you will need to evaluate your strategies. A good way to monitor your successes is by using web analytics. If you’re uncertain about how to use web analytics, check out this Harvard Business Review guide.
To summarise,
“it’s about shifting away from the ‘throw enough at the wall’ mentality and onto a more focused and precise strategy”, as this Cambridge Web Marketing article poignantly summarises. We hope these top 10 tips can help you generate more organic traffic to your website and would love to hear about your experiences!
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About the Author
Sarah is a PR assistant at GuidedPR. She holds a BA hons in English and Comparative Literature and has just moved to London to start her MA in Modern Literature and Culture at King's College London. She's usually busy writing and consuming caffeine. ☕☕☕
Find her on Linkedin here.
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