One of the challenges of running a business is making sure your website is clicked first over your competitor’s. It’s a highly competitive world out there, with companies spending huge amounts of money on pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine marketing (SEM) to ensure they’re ranking number 1. But did you know, there’s much more you can do to increase your organic website traffic, and it’s all FREE?

Implementing an effective PPC/SEM strategy is important – but people often overlook the importance of organic traffic, and focus purely on paid traffic. Implementing an organic traffic strategy can be highly effective when you have budget restraints and need to direct your spending elsewhere. 

Here are 5 tips you can implement to increase your organic website traffic 

1: Increase Loading Speed

Did you know that if your website is taking too long to load Google will penalise your ranking? Google has taken this a step further, recently announcing plans to give slow websites a new badge of shame in Chrome. 

So how do you find out if your website speed is affecting your Google rankings? Well, Google has provided us with the tools. Simply paste your websites URL into developers.google.com/ and see what grade your site receives. After analysing your site, Google will give you some helpful site speed recommendations and valuable data to review. Another way to improve your website loading speeds is to make sure all of your website images are optimised. 

Optimising your website images sounds difficult but it’s fairly simple! This can be done one of two ways, either by installing a plugin that compresses all of your images like Smush or by reducing images sizes manually using Adobe software. 

If you’re using WordPress, another super effective way to decrease your loading times is by using a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. Both these plugins are free to download – and very effective. Implement the above strategies and test your site speed again – you might be surprised by the results!

2: Create Insightful Blogs

Another super effective way to increase your organic website traffic is blogging. Blogging is an incredibly effective way to increase traffic to your site organically. Writing blogs allows you to generate tailored content around your services and or products, which will make your website more visible for those who are searching for specific keywords mentioned in your blogs.

Not only does blog writing make you a credible voice in your industry – but using specific keywords associated with your products or services in your blogs will give you a better opportunity to be ranked higher in Google. The higher you rank, the more people will visit and the more that visit, the more Google will rank you higher as a credible source of information. It’s a win/win! 

3: Use Long Tail Keywords

It’s safe to say everyone in the creative and marketing industry understands what keywords are, but do you know about Long Tail Keywords? A Long Tail keyword is a specific phrase, three to four words long that describes a product or service you offer, this can be included in your website or a blog. 

When a customer searches a very specific search term, for example, ‘Red Cotton Sweater’, it is often because that is what the user is looking to purchase. These types of searches tend to convert higher than your average keyword search as they’re tailored around a buyers mentality of research, then purchase. Eventually, Google and other search engines will rank you higher as they have identified your content as relevant to your industry, which will in turn help more ideal customers and clients find your website over your competitors. 

4: Check Your Metadata

There 3 types of metadata that you should implement on your website:

Title Tags: This one would have to be the most important, as these tags have a direct impact on your search rankings. Title tags are the titles on your pages and what is displayed on the users’ browser tab. It’s very important to include title tags when writing blogs, this is the main heading users see on the Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP) like the first page of Google.

Meta Tags:  This is a snippet of copy that explains to both Google and its users what the page is about. This helps Google find the most relevant search results for users. Writing an effective Meta Tag with good keywords can attract users from the SERP to click onto your site over your competitors. And a strong Click Through Rate (CTR) improves your Google rankings.

Meta Robots Attribute: This one is a simple, but effective. Including Attributes to your site’s header indicates to search engines on how to crawl and index your website’s pages, and what to do with them. These two are the most common according to Wordstream.

• index/noindex: Including the noindex value prevents search engines from indexing a web page. The default value is index.
• follow/unfollow: Including the nofollow value prevents search engines from crawling your pages. The default value is follow. 

5: Utilise Google Search Console

Why not use Google’s free tools to increase your organic website traffic? Google Search Console is an incredibly useful tool that can give you insights on how your website is performing from Google’s point of view and helps you observe and control your Organic Google ranking.

Google Search Console helps you understand what is going right, and what areas you could improve on. The Search Console gives you the ability to submit new content for Google to crawl, remove old content that is no longer needed – gives you peace of mind that Google has full access to all your site’s content. However, it can take some time to learn and understand this tool to be able to use it at its full capability.

If you want expert help to increase your organic website traffic on your site, contact us today.