Anyone with a product or service-based website knows that organic search traffic – which attracts non-paid customers to your website in a natural way – is essential for business success. This is also true for portfolio websites, which are now considered an integral way for creatives and professionals to showcase their work and build brand awareness. Organic marketing is generally perceived by people as more genuine, authentic and trustworthy than paid alternatives, and is integral to an overall strategy to effectively engage with your target audience.
While increasing organic search traffic and engagement may seem daunting, there are a number of key strategies that can help you achieve this goal, including:
- incorporating relevant blogs and content on your website,
- developing collaborations,
- promoting content on social media through unpaid posts,
- leveraging your email list,
- leaning into search engine optimisation (SEO), and
- reviewing and using data and metrics to shape your organic marketing.
Read on for some of the powerful strategies used by the best search engine optimisation consultants to increase organic search traffic to a website.
Creating Relevant Blogs and Content for Your Website to Attract Organic Search Traffic
Publishing high-quality blogs that are relevant to your industry niche and business offering is an essential component of growing organic search traffic to your website. Build meaningful relationships with your ideal audience by creating compelling content that is focused on what your ideal customer wants: show that you understand their interests, passions, desires, frustrations or fears, and deliver clear and helpful information that highlights your solutions to the problem they are trying to solve.
To help stay organised and on track, SEO experts recommend developing a content plan by working through some of the following steps:
- identifying the needs, interests and pain-points of your target audience and the information they are looking for or problem they wish to solve,
- developing blog post ideas around these central themes,
- incorporating long-tail keywords into your website copy that will help boost search engine rankings,
- creating helpful and high quality content which brings new ideas or unique perspectives to a topic or issue, and
- ensuring that you post consistently to establish your authority, build brand awareness and strengthen your relationship with your ideal customers.
Organic marketing through the development of tailored and engaging website content does not necessarily yield immediate results, but should be approached as a long-term strategy to attract and retain a loyal customer following who love what you do. Remember that adding share buttons will make it easier for visitors to disseminate your content within their own networks via a range of social media channels, further increasing your reach.
Collaborations with Other Brands to Tap into Their Audiences to Increase Organic Search Traffic
Another key strategy to increase organic search traffic to your product, service or portfolio website is collaborations with other brands. This can be done in several ways, such as cross-promotions, co-branded content, or even simply linking to each other’s products or services on your respective websites.
By tapping into another brand’s audience, you can significantly increase the reach of your own marketing efforts and organic search traffic. Of course, it’s crucial to choose collaborators wisely. Make sure that the other brands you’re working with are reputable and have a similar target audience to your own, otherwise you could end up doing more harm than good.
But if you collaborate with the right brands, you can see a significant increase in organic web traffic – and ultimately, more customers and sales for your business. If you’re looking for ways to increase organic traffic to your website, don’t forget the power of collaboration.
Promoting Content on Social Media to Drive Organic Traffic to Your Website
Actively promoting your business through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn is a powerful organic marketing strategy that will allow more potential customers to become aware of your website and get to know your products or services.
Joining relevant community and interest groups, for example through Facebook groups, can be one particularly powerful way to connect with potential customers who are likely to enjoy and benefit from your offering. Increase organic traffic to your website by sharing helpful information in existing groups, or build your own community by starting a bespoke group around your specific offering.
Directly connecting with people with a particular interest can be very effective because it is targeted and allows you to position yourself as an expert and build your business profile by providing advice. Engagement with online groups can also help you research your target audience and understand key pain-points, which will allow you to create original, innovative content and solutions for existing and potential customers.
Creating engaging content to share via social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter is another key strategy that can be effectively utilised to increase organic traffic to your product or service-based website. It is important to focus on developing a tailored content strategy that is targeted and aligns with your audience interests. Your posts should demonstrate that you understand the problem your ideal customer is trying to solve and showcases the transformation and benefits that your business can deliver.
There are a few key components that make up highly engaging social media content that is likely to get people interested in your message and service:
- Interesting: The content must be interesting enough to get people to click on it and/or read it.
- Well designed: The design of the content must be eye-catching and professional in order to get people to take it seriously.
- Shareable: Content that people will want to share with their friends and followers.
If you can create content that meets all of these criteria, you will stand a good chance of increasing your organic traffic to your website. Make sure that you capitalise on audience interest in your posts by actively encourage viewers to visit your website. An effective social media strategy will ensure that a post includes clear and relevant calls to action, links and tags work correctly, and navigation takes a user to the specific webpage which will be of interest to them (rather than leaving them stranded on your homepage).
While many associate Pinterest with planning dream home renovations or holidays, it can also be a formidable content discovery tool that can offer an excellent platform for connecting with your ideal audience, growing your brand visibility and directing traffic to your website. You can create a free Pinterest business account to get started and enjoy a range of helpful features like Pinterest analytics, to track how your pins perform.
Once you are set up, you can create your public profile and get insights into Pinterest trends to ensure your content is tailored to your target customer interests. Similar to your business website, Pinterest content should be optimised for SEO by including keywords in descriptions, boards and hashtags when you pin new content.
When developing your Pinterest strategy, it is good to remember that this platform lends itself particularly well to aspirational content, with many users building boards around ideas, inspiration and how-to guides for their interests and hobbies. Drive traffic back to your website by creating and sharing high quality and relevant visual content such as video tutorials, image carousels and brand boards designed to engage, inspire and educate.
It is important to understand the particular strengths, benefits and audience of different social media networks to ensure you are engaging on the ones which are most relevant to your business niche. While it can be tempting to jump in and establish a presence on all the platforms, a focused and well thought through approach on the most relevant sites for your business will likely yield better results.
Leveraging Your Email List for Increased Organic Search Traffic and Conversions
A strong email list is a powerful tool for building strong ongoing relationships with your target audience and converting subscribers into customers as you build trust and familiarity with your business over time. Use your website to collect contact information from people who visit your website and introduce them to your glorious business through a welcome email flow that highlights relevant solutions and benefits your business can deliver. Keep your audience engaged with campaigns that offer a great experience for the reader with relevant, informative content that tells your brand story, mission, values and what sets you apart from the crowd.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful organic marketing tools available to small businesses. Unlike social media accounts which are owned by Meta et al, and can be shut down without notice, your email list is an incredibly valuable business asset which is owned and controlled by you. It is therefore well-worth your time and effort to invest in developing email marketing as a centrepiece of your overall organic marketing strategy.
One way to engage website visitors and encourage them to sign up for your newsletter is to offer an incentive, such as an informative e-book or discount on their first purchase. This gives your visitors something of value in exchange for their contact information, which you can then use to nurture the relationship and eventually convert them into paying customers.
As you are building an email list, it is essential to understand your ideal customer and what they’re looking for. You can segment your customer email lists so that you’re sending tailored, personalised and relevant information to specific groups (e.g. existing customers or those who have not yet made a purchase), to help build your website traffic and improve your overall engagement and conversions.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): The Backbone of Driving Organic Search Traffic to Your Website
Another way to increase organic traffic is through search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO is the process of optimising web pages for better visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). By improving the search engine positioning (i.e. ranking) of a website, more people are likely to find it when they search for relevant keywords.
Many factors go into good SEO, but some simple things to keep in mind are understanding your target audience, using relevant keywords in web page headings and throughout your website content, providing valuable and informative content, and creating links to and from high-quality websites. It is also important to keep your website copy fresh and engaging, with new content added regularly to give your audience a reason to keep coming back for more insights and inspiration.
Attract more people to your website by using these key SEO strategies to increase organic search traffic. You can read more about some of our most powerful SEO strategies to take your business to the next level here.
Use Data and Metrics to Understand Audience Behaviour and Optimise Organic Search Traffic and Business Results
The internet is a vast and ever-changing landscape, and as such, it can be challenging to know which web design strategies are effective and which ones aren’t. However, by analysing data and metrics related to your website, you can make informed decisions about what is working well, or may need improvement, to increase your organic traffic. There are a range of tools that can assist, including Google Analytics and Open Web Analytics, to help leverage growth by providing you with additional data to help achieve your business outcomes.
Drawing people to your website is only one consideration when analysing key metrics, with the level of visitor engagement once they have arrived also integral to overall success. Metrics such as page views, bounce rates and average session duration can provide important feedback on audience engagement with your site once they arrive. Low figures could indicate a disconnect between visitor expectations and the experience delivered or issues with website performance which may be frustrating for those who land on your site (for example, slow page loading times). Through monitoring, understanding and engaging with this valuable audience behaviour information, you can optimise your business outcomes by identifying and implementing trends and patterns that yield the highest conversion rates.
Data and metrics can tell you a lot about how users interact with your website and what kind of content they’re looking for. By understanding this data, you can make changes to your website that will improve the user experience and, as a result, increase organic search in SEO traffic and conversions.
Final reflections
Organic search traffic is the lifeblood of any product, service-based or portfolio website. By following the key strategies outlined in this article for effective website design, you can ensure that your site receives the traffic it needs to thrive. With a bit of effort and some patience, you can see a significant increase in your organic search traffic. Just remember to focus on creating quality content and building a strong web presence, and you’ll be well on your way to success. Need more ideas? Read on here for further digital marketing ideas to optimise your business website design to help you stand out in a crowded marketplace, as well as broader strategies to increase organic traffic to your website.
Summer Days Digital is a leader in the field when it comes to web creation and SEO services that help you implement organic marketing strategies to increase your website traffic and conversions. Reach out and book a discovery call to discuss your digital marketing needs and find out how a tailored, creative approach to website design for small business and local SEO services can help elevate your brand and online presence.
