When it comes to website traffic, no one can rely entirely on referral or paid traffic. Generating organic traffic is the most sustainable way that works in the long run.
That is why, in this post, the focus will be entirely on ways to generate organic web traffic. This is not one of those long lists of tips and tricks, but a solid 5-step approach that can almost guarantee results.
Are you ready to learn more?
Here are five tried-and-tested tactics to generate website traffic organically. These tactics will not just work one time but will show results over the long term. Let’s get started.
1. Create Targeted and Useful Content
The most important advice anyone can give you for increasing organic website traffic is to write for your target audience.
Before you create content, you should have a good understanding of who your target audience is, what they like to read about, etc. You need to do thorough audience research to understand who you’re writing for and then create content that your audience will love.
Your content should be current, relevant, actionable, and accurate. There is no substitute for good content if you want to drive organic traffic to your blog.
2. Optimize Your Website Content for Keywords
This is a tactic that everyone knows about, but few do it right.
Optimizing for keywords does not mean keyword stuffing. It means that you need to maintain a good keyword density to rank high on the search engine results pages (SERP), but not so much that it is flagged as spam.
So, what should you do?
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Use a keyword research tool to find and select keywords that you want to target.
- Also, do some competitor research to see which keywords and topics they are targeting.
- Create a separate list of keywords for your landing pages and your blog.
- Make a content calendar with publishing dates, topics, and keywords targeted by each piece of content.
- Maintain 1-1.5% keyword density for blog posts and slightly higher for landing pages.
- Start posting SEO-friendly content and track the results.
An additional tip is to use more long-tail keywords that have decent volume and are more targeted. This will help you generate more relevant organic web traffic.
SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand and these keyword optimization tips are useful for both. Use these tips to make your website more SEO-friendly to generate more organic traffic.
3. Choose Trending Topics in Your Niche
Just like keyword research, topic research should also be an integral part of your SEO strategy to increase web traffic organically.
There are two important aspects to this. First, you should find the most popular and trending topics in your niche that people will love to read about. Second, your content titles should be able to grab the audience’s attention and get them to click on your search result link.
You can find hot topics using any good SEO tool and by checking on what your competitors are doing. To choose an appropriate title, search for that topic on Google, and check the first few results.
This will give you an idea about what kind of topics rank and what the user intent behind those searches is. It will make it easier for you to create content that is in-line with audience expectations.
4. Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is something that stays relevant over the years and continues to drive organic traffic on its own.
This could be something like an exhaustive resource on a topic covering everything a beginner would like to learn. It could also be a checklist, cheat-sheet, or any other type of actionable content that tells people how to do a certain thing.
Take this exhaustive glossary of terms and definitions created by the Search Engine Journal. This is the type of content that will never become outdated and will continue generating traffic.
Image Source: Search Engine Journal
Think about such topics from your industry and create an exhaustive resource like this that will not only rank but will also continue generating traffic for years. Also, don’t forget to optimize your content for SEO.
Some common types of evergreen content include lists, how-to guides, case studies, lists, encyclopedia-type entries, checklists, etc.
Pro Tip: Keep adding more information to your evergreen content from time to time, to make it more exhaustive. This will help you promote content through multiple channels and drive consistent traffic. Above all you don’t have to just depend on organic search traffic.
5. Leverage Structured Data and Rich Snippets
Getting more organic traffic is as much about higher SERP rankings as it is about getting people to choose your link over other search results. While the tips for generating more traffic mentioned above focused on the ranking part, this one tackles the latter.
What exactly is structured data and how can it help you get more organic traffic?
Structured data is basically a coded form of data that helps search engines understand your content better. Not just that, search engines also use it to display your search results in a better way using Rich Snippets.
Search results with rich snippets appear differently than other results and users are more likely to click on them.
Here’s an example of search results with (the first one) and without (the second one) structured data.
Image Source: Google Search
The one with structured data has a picture, rating, and other details that regular search results don’t have. Search results that appear in the form of rich snippets have a higher likelihood of getting clicks.
So, use structured data to get featured on the SERPs as rich snippets and generate more organic website traffic.
Ready to Increase Your Website Traffic Organically?
These are the most effective ways to generate organic traffic for your website and improve your search rankings. Use all five of these to see tangible results in terms of a steady increase in your website traffic.
Also, conduct a website audit periodically to understand which pages are generating more organic traffic for your blog or website. You can use these insights to create more such content for your target audience.
Overall, remember that the key to generating organic traffic is good content. All the best!
