Why organic traffic still matters to small business
Organic traffic is vital to driving new customers and leads to your small business’s website. I’d say it’s even more important than paid, referral or social traffic.
Why? Simply, organic traffic is targeted. People visiting your website from a search engine’s organic results have a specific search intent. They know what they’re looking for, and if your product or service can provide a solution to their problem, they’re more likely to convert.
You might be here because your Google Analytics data isn’t adding up even though you’re posting consistent, high-value blog content. It’s emotionally draining to see all the hard work you’ve put into building a robust brand blog go unnoticed by search engines and your audience.
But by employing just a handful of these seven tips, you can double the amount of organic traffic to your blog in less than three months. Sounds like a dream, right? Let’s jump in!
Refresh old content
In addition to improving the user experience, updating old content helps drive more organic traffic to your blog. Google rewards content that’s fresh and new. Instead of crafting a new pillar piece, refresh your existing skyscraper content or older blog posts to make it easy for people to find helpful content on your blog.
When content becomes outdated, it won’t rank as high in search engines anymore. There a couple of ways to prioritize which blog posts you update:
- Check your analytics and pinpoint content that doesn’t get as much search traffic as it used to
- Use your Google Webmaster Tools account to identify keywords you’re ranking for that could benefit from a boost
Follow these steps to refresh your blog content:
- Update the content with fresh perspectives
- Remove any outdated/inaccurate information
- Add more valuable content
- Add more relevant images/infographics/videos
- Integrate LSI keywords (keywords or keyphrases related to your main keyword)
Promote new posts on social media
Simply writing good content isn’t going to cut it. Once a post goes live on your site, you’ll want to promote it across your social platforms.
While social media itself has no direct impact on your blog’s SEO rankings, when more people share your content throughout social media, it generates social signals that indicate your posts are useful to your target market.
Your social media content can drive quality web traffic to your blog. When you create and publish social content that provides value or inspires your target audience, they’re more likely to become loyal brand advocates.
Let’s dive into some techniques for leveraging social media to drive quality traffic to your blog:
Scout Facebook for groups relevant to your niche. Join the ones with an active community populated with your target audience or ideal client. Engage with the community by liking and commenting on others’ posts and building up a rapport for weeks (even months) before promoting your own content.
Over 70% of Instagram users watch Instagram Stories every day. Leverage your Instagram Stories to promote new blog content to hook existing followers. You can also share an Instagram post pushing your latest blog and craft an engaging caption leading with an interesting fact or question to draw new readers in. Don’t forget to include a call to action directing people to tap the link in your bio to read your blog.
When it comes to Pinterest, good visuals are the go-to. Best practice calls for at least 10 unique pins for every new blog post to help drive traffic to your website. Keep in mind, while Pinterest is a visual search engine, it’s a social media platform first. Like any other social media community, make sure you’re active, connecting with others in your niche and re-pinning other user’s content.
Optimize your headlines
Only 20% of people who scan your headline will continue reading your content. A headline can make or break the success of your blog. Your headline is a promise to your reader, and you need to make good on that promise.
There are tools that can help fine-tune your blog headline for your target audience and search engines. Additionally, WordPress offers free and premium plugins to test headlines against the competition.
Play with images, infographics and gifs
Incorporate visual content in your blog posts to help your readers process information more efficiently.
If a reader does navigate away from your image-rich blog post, they’re more likely to have absorbed something about the post, helping your message and brand stand out in their minds.
Offer freebies and content upgrades
Who doesn’t love free stuff? I’m going to be contrarian here and say giving away your ideas for free is not a death sentence for your small business.
Content upgrades can drive traffic to your blog from organic search, word-of-mouth, social networks, and even publications. You just need to offer something of value your target audience is already searching for and can benefit from.
Take these examples into consideration:
- A printable travel and hiking guide to Joshua Tree National Park
- An elopement planning workbook
- 50 blog post templates for outdoorsy e-commerce brands
- Instagram strategy workbook
Offering freebies are almost guaranteed to drive traffic and quality leads to your blog if you back them up with valuable, long-form content.
Optimize your sites speeds
Your website’s loading time is more important than you think. Slow loading times can cause a major drop in conversions. Yikes!
Page loading times are a ranking factor for Google. Still, the real benefit here is keeping your existing readers coming back to your site and providing an incredible user experience.
You can get a feel for your current site speeds with Google PageSpeed Insights.
Several factors could be bogging down your website’s site speed, and this tool will pinpoint these problem areas that should be addressed.
Make your content shareable
Look, you’ve put in the work to craft informative and valuable content for your audience, but that’s only half the battle. If you don’t make it easy for someone to share your content, you’re likely losing potential traffic.
You should have sharing buttons accessible for anyone to share your content on social media. Identify the social media platforms that your audience uses the most and add those sharing buttons to your blog.
Additionally, when your audience stumbles across your blog but feels it’s not relevant to share on their social network, they might send it to a family member, co-worker, or a friend. Research shows that direct messaging is the only thing people do online more than social networking. Sharing buttons creates an opportunity for your blog to reach new readers, customers or clients.