SEO hacks to increase organic website traffic
User Experience and on-page SEO
Get your foundations correct otherwise all other SEO efforts will be lost.
Google is smart. As end users we’re thankful for the ease of its search algorithms, but as business owners we must take a different perspective. Directing Google searches to a business’ website is successful when we investigate what our users want – and search for – not necessarily what WE want them to want.
In 2021 Google adopted a mobile first approach. This means your mobile site is prioritized over desktop or laptop. Think speed, stability and interactivity.
What you can do:
- Design Mobile friendly first - remove all non-essential elements and focus on the most important aspects of your company.
- Run Google PageSpeed insights to check your current site.
- Learn tips for improving loading speed
- Nitropack (WordPress) is also a useful plugin and often used as a “quick-fix”
- Use Lazy load for ads and content below the first screen (also known as “below the fold”)
- Schema markup - Yoast is a great tool for this so you don’t have to manually add heaps of code. Also see Voice Search below.
- On-page SEO
→ Quality content (always!) and make sure that content is the same on desktop, tablet and mobile
→ Keyword density - include your target keyword in your title and a few times in your content
→ Use a short and descriptive URL slug (include same keywords if possible)
→ Write a good meta description (include same keywords if possible)
→ Optimize your images (including compressing and writing alt-texts)
Internal linking
Have useful content or offerings that never seems to be seen? Help people find it by simply linking it in your content. Be it blogs, podcast show notes, related articles, products or services, keep people on your site by encouraging them to click around. It's insane how many sites don't have footers with multiple links, a call to action or a related offering.
Adding internal linking is really as easy as adding a few hyperlinks and it can be a huge opportunity for SEO. Even if you don’t update your content, internal links can improve your ranking significantly. It gives Google a chance to better understand context through clickable text in a hyperlink. And this will help them evaluate the value of your page.
More Videos
Apparently few people actually want to read anymore. Video is responsible for a whopping 157% increase in organic traffic from a Search Engine Results Page - meaning, people come to your site via the videos on your site.
You can repurpose blogs as videos and/or prioritize video content over blogs. (This also goes for your social - videos and Reels over static content). If you are using YouTube, Vimeo, Wista, etc. add SEO info as it may appear in rich or featured snippets on Google Search.
And it’s suggested to update content in general but that doesn’t mean simply changing the publishing date on your old blog post. It’s all about relevant content. So, when revamping dated articles, spend the effort to do the keyword research, find the most up-to-date and relevant content.
Voice Search
Voice search isn’t far off to replace traditional search. 71% of people say they prefer to use voice assistance for search queries rather than typing in the search themselves. And according to Statista, 75% of US households will have a smart speaker by 2025 and 55% of UK households owned a smart speaker in 2021.
We’ve been taught how to type search queries into google, ie. “Moon effect on Business” but if we were to speak, we’d say, “How does the moon affect my business?” or “Courses on harnessing the power of the moon in business” >> It’s more conversational. People are likely to ask natural-sounding questions which contain long-tail keywords rather than target keywords. You can dive into schema markup but to keep it simple, the meta data for each page, alt text and captions used for videos and images should all have a more conversational tone to them. Part of our Accessibility packages include Voice Search optimization.
Keyword intent
Keyword intent is essentially guessing what people are typing in as they search for something. However, you don't just guess because there are tools that can tell you. Simply type in the keyword you're targeting into the search bar and see what Google comes up with. Based on the types of results you see in the dropdown, you’ll see what Google deems the most relevant search intent for this term. You can also...
- Use a tool like Semrush.
- Use a free tool like Google Trends. Google Trends can highlight event-triggered spikes in search volume or be used for comparative keyword research. It’s also great to find related queries, topics, and demographic insight to better understand trends in your marketplace.
Then you can Run a Content Gap Analysis.
This might sound tricky but it doesn’t have to be and it’s a great hack for uncovering common keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you're not. It also helps to discover new topic ideas for your video blogs.
Sign up for Ahrefs, enter the domains of your competitors, and they will scan your competitors’ entire websites and seed out all keywords that have a potential for your website. Saves you a bunch of hassle and it can be bevy of new content ideas.