SEO: How to Boost Your Website’s Organic Traffic

Customers and business owners face a similar problem -- an overwhelming amount of choice.

So how can you fight through a search engine’s algorithm to gain one of the front-page spots and increase your sales? 

Make Your Website Device Friendly

If your website hasn’t been updated recently, it’s probably time to think about doing so. Mobile internet usage has increased steadily over the past decade while we have seen desktop usage decline. These trends will continue -- phones are becoming faster, smarter, and more user-friendly every year. It’s essential to have a website that’s accessible on smartphones, tablets, and computers to keep your audience engaged. Our professionals can help you optimize your brand’s website for all devices and break out of the traditional computer bubble. 

Build an Online Presence Through Social Media

Using location-based social media like Yelp or Angie’s List is essential in generating new organic traffic. Establishing a page on these websites can generate high-value links to your own website. This makes it easier to find and can boost your SEO ranking. Consumers tend to prefer “tried and true” services and products. The science of familiarity extends into the realm of business. If you have a service or a product that works, make it easier for your customers to get the word out. New patrons will follow previous ones -- they tend to trust what other clients like themselves say more than they trust the business owner.

Make Your Website Easy to Share 

Adding buttons to make your website shareable can boost engagement rates and increase traffic to your site. Although sharing does not play a direct role in SEO rankings, it has a lot of correlated benefits. The use of an email, message, or a copy link button helps current users send your website to others -- it can act as a digital word of mouth and can follow the “ripple effect”. Social shares also work to improve user engagement on the website. When more people see it, more people interact.

Design for the User -- Know your Audience

When designing your website ask yourself: 

Who is visiting? 

Why? 

From where? 

The answer to these questions can inform your color scheme, word choice, and images to make it more appealing to the user. A website for a Florida-based landscaping company should look very different from a website for a New York clothing boutique.

Be Concise

Think back to the stereotyped long-winded story-blog that comes before a recipe. The user is on the page for the ingredients and the directions, not 5 pages on the inspiration, motivation, and dreams of its creator. 

As Michael Scott once said: keep it simple, stupid. Many people attempt to fit too much into their websites. Inundating your customers with information irrelevant to their search and wordy language can push your site further down in Google’s rankings. Take your business back to the essentials by asking yourself “what does a customer need to know?”. The rest can go in a FAQ section. Keep it relevant and readable.

Know Your Keywords and How to Use Them

Keywords are what a user types into a search engine.

An important step in boosting your search engine optimization is to identify what keywords are relevant to your customers -- what are they looking for? Identifying a collection of keywords is essential to boosting your SEO; you want them to be varied and applicable to your business. Because search engine algorithms will punish overuse and unnatural phrasing, you need them to work with the natural flow of your website. Keyword placement should be on high-attention areas, some of the most common placements are:

• The website’s URL and title
• The website’s meta description
• Headings
• Image captions, descriptions, and files
• Body content

Remember that these work best with moderate usage -- unnatural verbiage or keyword stuffing can do more harm than good.

User Experience is Vital

Is your website slow? Glitchy? Difficult to navigate? All of these and more can drive away potential traffic and lower your ranking. Users and the way they interact with your page play a huge role in determining how well your site performs. The amount of time they spend on your page, what they click on, shares, and returns to the site are important factors in generating future organic traffic. If a search engine’s algorithm detects that a user seems to enjoy a site, it’s reflected in the rankings. 

Create a Website Blog

Building a blog can help to establish you as an authority in your field and demonstrate your expertise. By anticipating and answering your customer’s questions, comments, and general interests you can often convert online queries into sales. Through a blog, current customers stay engaged with your business by reading about what you have to offer; potential customers can benefit from your knowledge and gain confidence in your brand. Sharing what you do and why you do it through a blog helps to build trust between your business and customers (and in turn, often generates more sales). 

Grow a Network of Backlinks 

One of the best ways to establish and steadily grow your search engine optimization efforts is to create a large network of sites with backlinks to your site under relevant keyword anchors. Backlinks act as a vote from one site to another, which shows search engines that your site is recommended for the anchor that your do-follow link is under. Using services, such as our link building service, help your site rank by creating websites on top level domains that seamlessly link back to your own site’s relevant pages. Through your growing portfolio of site backlinks, you will steadily climb the rankings for valuable keywords that bring value to your business.

Increase Your Authority

Domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) are two ways of ranking your website’s “reputation”. They predict how well your domain or a certain page on your domain will rank compared to other similar sites. Your site’s authority is determined, in part, by how many backlinks it has and the value of those backlinks. Some of the most valuable backlinks come from high-value DA’s such as .edu and .gov. 

For example: 

You published a blog on natural pesticides to boost your fumigation companies SEO. A page with a high DA links to your blog on their website. Because this website linked back to yours, they lent some of their reputation to you -- boosting your authority in the eyes of the search algorithms.

Our guest post service can help you obtain naturally embedded links on high-traffic or high DA websites. Our team reaches out to enterprise-level sites and partners to obtain high-quality links which can boost visitors to your website.

Overall...

It’s important to remember that your website is not only a reflection of your business, but also a reflection of you. When considering your online presence, it’s vital to represent your values, goals, and standards. A well-built website that reflects these will see a boost in rankings and valuable traffic. Customers value their online experience with you as much as they value their in-person interactions. 

To stand out amongst the competition and increase sales, you need a well-designed website. If you’re ready to offer the best online experience for your customers and make the best digital first-impression possible, contact us and we can build something that works for you and your customers.