You want more and more qualified people to find your business's website, but business owners frequently find it difficult to grow certain sources of traffic even after investing heavily.
Solid traffic improvement is crucial for increasing conversion rates over time; however, before you even think about adressing conversions, consider how you can attract qualified traffic that will ultimately help you to generate more revenue.
This post covers several basic strategies that can help the average business owner to grow organic traffic.
How To Improve Your Organic Search Visibility
Publish Quality Content Frequently
Whether you're creating a new blog to address your buyer persona's most pressing questions, or expanding upon your website's current content, it's crucial that you update your website with new content as frequently as possible (without letting quality suffer). Of course, you can't just write anything you want and hope that it sticks.
Take an hour or two to research plausible topics that will help expand your website's vision; consider which types of content will attract users who are seeking solutions to problems (problems that your business is experienced at solving!). Content that acts as an advertisement for your business doesn't tend to perform well. Instead, try to post answers to questions that your prospects might have.
Content that is designed around user intent and provides actionable advice will inevitably impress both searchers and Google.
Improve Local SEO Using Google My Business
Whether you offer your products and services to local consumers or nationwide buyers, it is essential that you make sure you are optimizing your website for local SEO.
When people perform a search in a major search engine (i.e. Google) for your products or services only one of two outcomes is possible: they will find your website, or they will find your competitors.
Sure, you may have a loyal, local customer base, but you won't be able to attract newer and younger customers without the help of online marketing tactics and local SEO.
Make sure that you have claimed your business on Google, and that you have fully set up a "Google My Business" Account. We've included an example below to show you how it will look once you've set up your business in Google. Doing so will help your website to show up in search results when Google notices that a user is searching from a nearby IP.
Going Social
SEO strategy has evolved to include social media platform optimization, as business turn to Facebook and Twitter to draw in millenial searchers who are using social media as a search tool. If your business has a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account, be sure to take some time to optimize these pages.
Sharing your fresh new content across social media platforms will help to increase your online visibility, though it only has a modest impact on SEO. Check out our recent post for additional tips: "Getting Found: How Social Media Strategy Affects SEO."
Social media and SEO are inherently related:
- Google utilizes Twitter to discover new content.
- Google prioritizes social relevance over technical SEO.
- Social shares help to build links in a non-deceptive way.
Diversify Your Content With Videos
Chances are, at one point in time, a friend or family member has sent you a link to the latest hilarious YouTube video. Video marketing is one of the next big trends, due in part to the ease with which users can share videos amongst their friends, family and coworkers. Videos are not only more entertaining and engaging than their text counterparts, they also work to increse SERP rankings.
Still, you may be unsure of the type of video content you should create to maximize traffic. If that is the case, you are in luck, as Google Analytics can point you in the right direction. Log in to your sites' Google Analytics account and determine which pages draw the most traffic using the Landing Page analysis. This will give you a general idea of the topics that will be best to cover when putting together a video content strategy.
Keyword Research: Tying It All Together
For any of these strategies to work, it's crucial that you know your personas and topics that you want to rank well for. It's important to develop a list of 7-12 topics that fit your business niche, then use those topics to branch out and hone in on more specific keywords.
Once you develop your initial list, begin to consider the phrases your audience would use in their searches. Remember, this is an ongoing process, so don't worry if you are not confident with your initial list. For more in-depth instructions and tips, use our post "How To Do Keyword Research For SEO" to get started.
How Long Does It Take To See Results?
There are several different factors that determine how quickly results will follow after you've put in the nitty-gritty work.
A large site could possibly see results in a few days if a search engine is crawling the site on a regular basis. Generally, smaller sites take longer because they get crawled less frequently (since Google knows that they don't update as frequently, hence they are small). When search engines look through the content on your website, they are crawling your site.
As they crawl your site, they index content that will appear in the search engine. If you are nervous about the results, wait at least a week (maybe closer to a month) before you consider changing your SEO strategy. Adding fresh and creative content regularly is the best way to guarantee results from SEO.
ImageWorks, LLC | CT SEO Company
Never depend on SEO alone for the growth of your business. Often the businesses that fail are the ones that depend on SEO alone for the entire growth of their business. The companies that survive and thrive are the ones that have a solid approach and market in a variety of ways both online and offline. SEO can be a big piece; however, it is only one slice of the marketing pie.
By integrating all of today's Web tools such as SEO, Social Media, Pay Per Click, and Blogs, ImageWorks can provide a level of permission based inbound marketing that will turn your site into a lead generation tool. With continued nurturing programs, you become a trusted source, and prospects convert to customers.
