Blog

How to increase organic search traffic to your website

Getting their website listed on page 1 or position 1 of Google’s organic listings is a common goal for many website and small business owners. Understanding how to increase organic search traffic to your website is the first step in achieving this goal. However, the truth is that increasing your SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Position) takes time, sometimes years, and there is no quick win but the higher you rank the more rewards your business will reap.

Don’t be phased by the effort and time needed and don’t give up! In this article, we’re sharing our top 7 tips to increase organic search traffic to your website and give your SEO strategy a kickstart so you can earn your place on Google amongst the competition.

What is organic search traffic?
“All visitors to your website coming from a search engine, such as Google or Bing, excluding paid ads.”

A quick Google search on any topic will deliver pages of results for users to scroll through and find the content or webpage they are looking for. Depending on the search phrase there may be paid ads at the top of the Google page and below these will be the organic search results, when a user clicks on the latter to visit a website that is organic search traffic. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the type of digital marketing which is focused on increasing a website’s organic search traffic by getting each webpage listed higher in the organic search results.

How to measure organic search traffic
It’s easy to measure your website’s organic search traffic thanks to website analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, both are free and user friendly. Now is a great time to create an analytics account as you can benchmark your performance now and monitor improvements after you’ve implemented our tips to increase organic search traffic for your website!

The main types of website traffic
A healthy or strong performing website will receive traffic from several sources, these volumes may fluctuate over time as your digital marketing activity shifts. For example, when you run a campaign on Google Adwords “paid search” traffic may deliver your highest volume of visitors. Below are the typical types of traffic to websites:

Direct: All traffic when the user types the company url into their browser and all traffic where the referrer or source is unknown.
Organic search: Traffic from search engines that is not paid for.
Paid search: Traffic from any ad on search engines via Google AdWords or another platform.
Referral: Traffic via another website that is not a search engine.
Social: Traffic from a social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In etc.
Email: Traffic from correctly tagged email campaigns.
Other: Any traffic that cannot fit into one of the above sources or has not been correctly tagged.

The importance of organic search traffic
Organic search traffic helps users who do not know your brand name discover your website on search engines when they are actively searching for your products and services – the size of the opportunity here for brands is huge! For example, if you are a property law firm there are a lot more potential clients searching for “conveyancing solicitor” than there are for your firms name – and your competitors could well be capturing this users instead of you.

Small businesses and emerging brands who have correctly implemented on-site SEO and have an ongoing SEO strategy will find that organic search traffic is their biggest source of targeted traffic which consistently drives them leads or generates sales.

how to increase organic search traffic

7 tips to get more organic traffic to your website
Getting ahead of major brand in terms of SERPs is tough and to be honest a bit unlikely if you’re competing on a hyper competitive search terms such as “womens dresses” or “swimwear”. The good news is Google is HUGE and there is a place and opportunity for every webpage whether you are targeting niche longer tail keywords or generic search terms. The trick is knowing where to focus and how to do it! To get you started, we’ve compiled our top 10 tips to help increase organic search traffic to your website:

1. Improve user experience across your site
Google favours websites that offer a user-friendly experience and provide users with the content or answers they were looking for. When a user clicks through to your website they need to stay there and browse your website, if they click straight back to Google this may flag to Google they had a poor experience. If your website has a high bounce rate it may struggle to rank well on Google, to lower your bounce rate always ensure you add quality content that is optimized for the web and designed to engage your target audience.

2. Speed up your website
A slow website not only frustrates users it may also fails to impress Google’s bots, the lower the site speed, the lower the SERP – especially if your competitors have a faster site. One of the best ways to reduce site speed is to reduce the file of size of any images just be careful you don’t reduce their quality and create a poor user experience. There are many free site speed checking tools to choose from, why not Google them and see you ranks first?

3. Conduct keyword research
If you know what your target customers are looking for, in their own words, you can create content to answer their questions and engage them with your brand. Be creative when selecting which keywords to target and consider less competitive keywords as you’re most likely to be able to rank higher for these and get more organic search traffic than ranking lower for a hyper competitive keyword

There are many keyword research tools for you to choose from and begin compiling a list of keywords or search phrases to target. We recommend Answer the Public, Moz and AHREFs.

4. Optimise your meta data
You must literally spell it out to Google what each of your webpages are about so that it will show your web pages to users Googling topics you talk about. On your website Google reads page title, meta description, image ALT text, URL and more. Make sure you include relevant keywords and search phrases to help search engines find you and increase your organic search traffic.

Tip! Choose one target keyword to per webpage and include it in your meta data.

5. Get backlinks from business directories
Listing your website in business directories that have a great reputation with Google, such as Yell or Yelp, can improve your website’s reputation and increase SERPs for local keyword searches. They also make your brand discoverable to users searching for your product or services in their local area in these directories too.

6. Create local landing pages
When users local to your business need a product or service they often go straight to Google to find what they need. For example, they may search for “new build conveyancer in Leeds” or “best nail salon in York”. If you add a quality page of content to your website that specifically targets this keyword or search phrase the chances are it will rank highly on Google – more so than your homepage could.

7. Share great quality blog content
Blogs are an effecting way to increase organic search traffic by writing about topics your targets customers are Googling, once you have the prospective customer on your website you can guide them through to your websites more commercial pages where they can send an enquiry or make a purchase. For more about content marketing and blogging that improves SEO read our expert tips.

Digital marketing and SEO expertise
If your business goals are to increase traffic to your website or improve your brand’s presence online, then an accomplished digital marketing agency can be a valuable extension to your brand’s core team. Effective SEO strategies take creativity and skill, they are not learnt in a morning’s training session and digital marketing channels do not work in silos. Outsourcing your digital marketing needs to an expert with a solid reputation is a cost and resource effective solution to help you to achieve the results you want efficiently, and long term.

Ready to grow your brand’s digital presence?
It’s time to explore how digital marketing can help your startup brand or small business. Hi Digital are a boutique digital marketing agency dedicated to growing small businesses with effective digital strategies. We’d love to help you reach your business goals and be a part of your brand’s growth. Please email us info@hidigital.co.uk or please get in touch with using the form below to book a free consultation with us.

Alternatively, find out more about what we do or discover free digital marketing tips on our blog.