We nearly always mean Google when we speak of search engines. It’s safe to assume that we are talking about Google optimisation when we say SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. But, what’s interesting is the organic search traffic. This is the website traffic you get without any direct action on your part.
Organic search traffic is not that easy to achieve though. A statistic from Advisor web marketing shows that 83% of organic clicks go to the first four results under most categories on search engines.
So, if your goal is to attain a top Google ranking for your site, you have to lay the foundation well in advance to get the traffic you want. So how do you do that?
Spending tons of money promoting your site to draw traffic to it is one very effective way. Paid marketing efforts tend to be effective at building traffic only as long as they last. That means, once your spend is depleted, most of the people who came to see you as a result of the campaign will have taken a look and moved on.
Improving your organic search ranking, on the other hand, is a more long term solution to attracting traffic to your site. While the strategy admittedly takes longer to implement, it builds upon itself over time and will continue to grow without the high overheads of paid marketing.
Here are the strategies that you need to bring in organic search traffic to your site and increase your Google ranking;
- Content is King and great for SEO
- Optimise your pages
- On page optimisation – Is the practice of optimising the individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in the search engines. It refers to all the things that you can do ON your website to help you rank higher.
- Optimising page titles – One of the most important SEO factors is your page title. A unique title with the main keywords must be included on your pages and your posts. Depending on the topic you are writing, you should include your main keyword that is relevant to your topic within your post title. For example, you can write a blog which is about Water Parks in your area. It is vitally important that you include “Water Park” within your post title, or you added a tagline perhaps “Top 5 most awesome Water Parks” and many other similar unique titles. You can also use a long tail keyword that includes your target location.
- Work on your meta description – Meta descriptions are little snippets of text (about 155 characters) that appear in search engine results and with links shared on social media and bookmarking sites. With the rise of social media, meta description has become more valuable than ever. It is vitally important for communicating your brand message and for conversions (getting people to click your link).
- Optimise your URL for SEO – A clear and concise URL structure that makes sense to a human will be more trustworthy and easier to use. In a perfect world, every URL would be perfectly optimised from day one, but unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. By improving your URL structure, you are helping what’s coming up and offer trust that the result they see in Google is an accurate reflection of where they’re going to end up. Better navigation and orientation to your user straight away is the result of having a clear URL.
- Image SEO – What makes your website more interesting and attractive is your images. And they play a valuable role on your site’s SEO. Make your images a part of your SEO strategy by paying careful attention to the keywords you associate with those images. Naming and tagging your images is just as important as incorporating a keyword on your URL and body of content. So it is very essential to rename every image before you put it on your page or blog.
- LinkedIn and Facebook marketing
- Make a goal to share two to three pieces of your content per week on Facebook.
- Use hashtags at the end of your post to link it to the relevant subject area
- Join Facebook community groups that are relevant to your business and start sharing your contents. You can optimise these by joining certain groups in your target area.
- Re-share your posts to make sure they get seen.
- Publish native content to boost your search visibility. Keep the title short, use an eye-catching image and express a strong point of view.
- Target the right audience and create multiple ads for each campaign
- Join a group or community relevant to your business
- Share contents to the groups regularly
- Engage with other group members’ posted content
- Mobile First Web Design
- Work on your backlinks
Including a constant stream of fresh content in the form of articles or blogs is essential for you if are serious about organic growth. You can outrank others with better metrics by having contents that are updated more frequently. Google has a ‘freshness’ factor built into its rankings equation so the more content you write and post the better your ranking and more relevant Google will see you to their customers.
Google tends to rank a site with fresh content that interests real people. And real people means those who appreciate fresh and unique content.
Content marketing was once considered a dying art, but now it’s the driving force for every company in every industry.
You will achieve little visibility unless you give people what they want. To start crafting the right level of content, you’ll need a content creation strategy. Also, understand that you cannot benefit from social media without investing in quality content.
Optimising your web pages including your blog posts will make your website more visible for people who are searching for a product or service related to your business via search engines like Google. That’s why engine optimisation is very important for marketers.
Google is looking in ever more sophisticated ways to promote sites with relevant, valuable and engaging, blog content and it becomes a primary asset for SEO success.
Here are the things that you need to optimise your web pages;
Facebook and Linkedin are great places to market your business whether you’re B2B or B2C.. With an increasing number of consumers using and spending time on social media, effective advertising opportunities become more attractive to companies in search of customers to connect with.
In order to grow a social media network, a company should participate and engage with communities of interest. There are over 500 million active users on Facebook, but interestingly, only 50% of active users log on in any given day. Each average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month.
Linkedin, on the other hand, offers a wider audience when you post content. It offers a higher chance of organic search ranking, drives traffic to your own digital property and it’s optimised for mobile. This is “the” B2B social network and with nearly 90 million members in over 200 countries, presents new territory for social network advertising. New members are joining every second and all executives from all Fortune 500 companies according to Linkedin.
Here are the things that you can do to maximise your reach on Facebook and LinkedIn:
Related Article: 5 ways to increase Facebook engagement
These days, the majority of people use mobile devices to browse the internet, more so than PC desktop users. With this change came forth a new strategy: cater to mobile users first. This is the reason why responsive designs for business websites have rapidly developed. Normally, people are redirected to the mobile version of the site which is a separate web site every time they visit certain sites using their mobile devices.
If a user lands on your mobile website and it’s broken on their end, There’s a greater chance that they will leave immediately and go to another website that has the same product or services like yours.
As technology continues to progress, the number of mobile and tablet users all over the world also increases. With responsive web designs, It has never been more important for website owners who wanted to improve their online content and increase their website visitors.
By implementing this on your website, you will be able to reach more mobile and tablet users because your company website will be compatible with their devices.
Related Article: Importance of a good website for business
For a long time now, backlink strategies have been an important part of online marketing. If you want to achieve the goal of a chance at free and efficient advertising, you have to work on your site’s backlinks.
How can backlinks help you rank in Google? The more backlinks you get, the more it tells Google that you’re a legitimate website that people enjoy visiting. As Google only trusts websites that have more backlinks, they tend to rank these sites higher on search listings.
By implementing some or all of these SEO improvement tips you can increase your business organic search rankings. You don’t need to pay exorbitant fees for SEO, just start with one of these ideas and then over time start implementing more.
