Tips to Boost Organic Traffic on Your Website in 2021

If you are here, you are likely looking for tips to improve your website’s organic traffic. If you are not content with the current number of sessions, you indeed have reached the right page. Without further ado, let us give you a few tips that are tried and tested by top digital marketing agencies that are sure to boost the organic traffic to your website without breaking the bank.

Improve User Experience

Before we can tell you how you can improve user experience, let us explain Google’s goal as a search engine. Much like any other search engine, Google’s sole objective is to find the best result for a person’s query. If Google fails to do this, it is likely that people will move on to another search engine. That said, we all know Google is the number one choice for most browsers since it does one helluva job when it comes to delivering information to a user. Listed below are a few ways on how you can improve the user experience.

It is not uncommon for companies to target similar key phrases via multiple pages on their website. However, what they fail to realize is that by doing so, they cause keyword cannibalization. In other words, this happens when one of the website’s pages eats the organic traffic of the other page, as all the pages on your website compete against each other by ranking for a similar search. In order to check if any of your website pages are eating up the traffic of another page, you can perform a simple search: “site: yourwebsite.com keyword”. You could also use other tools such as Ahrefs. Once you are sure that certain pages cannibalize others, you can either delete the one that is performing lower than the other or merge their content. However, be sure to add a 301 redirect if you plan on merging content so as not to lose any backlinks on those pages. You may also create a spreadsheet and document all the URLs of your website and the focus keywords used on them. It would help if you also kept your eyes open for duplicate values. If you do not want to merge the pages or delete one, you can change the context, focus keyword, and anchor text on either one of the pages. If you wish to keep the page but still want to avoid eating up traffic from other sites, you could de-index the pages. It will ensure that the page remains on your site but will no longer rank on SERPs.

Easy to Read Posts: It is imperative to format the content on your site for the web. To stand a good chance at improving your organic ranking, you must optimize the content on your site for readability. It brings us to the question, how to do so? Read on for a few formatting tips that are sure to increase the readability of your content.

• Write Quality Content: The first step is for you to write quality content. If the content on your website is not up to par, formatting it will do little good. If you cannot write yourself, find someone who can write compelling content for your site that is error-free with respect to spelling and grammar.
• Use Short Paragraphs: The key to writing good content is to use short paragraphs. Try and limit each paragraph to no more than 4-5 sentences. You may use one-liners but do so sparingly, lest your site is bound to look like a chore list. Make sure that your group-related sentences support an idea you are trying to get across to your audience. Splitting the paragraph without paying attention can make your idea fragmented and awkward.
• Use Mixed Sentence Lengths: In today’s world, most people read content on handheld devices. Therefore, avoid using very long sentences. You can mix it up with shorter sentences for ease of reading.
• Use Subheadings: An average person spends no more than 37 seconds reading on a mobile device. If you think smart, you can boost that time significantly to your benefit by including subheadings that will help your reader get a better understanding of your post. Experts concede that subheads make a post more informative.
• Bullet Points: Using bullet points is a great way to categorize facts, stats, and examples that may look stuffed when presented in a paragraph. Bullets make it easier to read. Use bullets if you have to list three or more items.
• Incorporate White Space: Too much content is bound to annoy some visitors, and this can lead to an increase in your bounce rate. However, you can easily prevent this by breaking up large chunks of content using photos, graphs, and other relevant supporting media such as videos, in addition to the use of subheadings and bullet points.
• Use Images and Screenshots: As mentioned in the earlier point, images can break up content. However, it is essential to use relevant images that illustrate your idea. If your idea is very complex, use more images to make it easy for your reader to comprehend your idea. It is important not just to insert a bunch of images with no text, as this will render your website much like a comic strip.
• Include Bucket Brigades to Create a Flow: In writing, a bucket brigade is a series of words that bridges one idea to the next in order to keep the flow. And when you keep the flow, you keep your reader’s interest. Often the bridging phrase is followed by a colon. Colons, question marks, and exclamation signs can engage a reader and make him curious about what is to follow. It is a great way to hold the attention of your reader from start to finish.
• Follow the Inverted Pyramid Style: While this may sound like a complicated technique, it is quite straight forward. This style of writing is generally taught in journalism school and for a good reason. As per this technique, list the most valuable information at the top of your page with the lesser important points listed below. Most readers seldom reach the bottom of the page; hence, using this writing method will give them the details they need as soon as they land on your website.

Improve User Experience

Most web experts will agree that high bounce rates result mainly from the awkward and poor user experience. UX problems can vary from site to site. It is therefore important to pinpoint the problem and rectify it to boost organic traffic to your website. Listed below are three easy ways to use testing tools that tell you how people are interacting with your company website. These sites also give you tips and insights on how to improve user experience.

• Crazy Egg: This is a simple to use site that is both intuitive and clever. It helps you rate and breaks down user experience rating using visual aids such as scroll maps, heat maps, and confetti maps. These graphical representations will help you understand how many users have clicked on your site, how far the user scrolls before they leave, and the referral sources that resulted in the maximum number of clicks. The data generated from this tool also pinpoint design flaws that need to be fixed.
• Optimizely: This is yet another cool tool that specializes in A/B testing. This tool can test websites for engagement and usability levels. The site allows you to view multiple web pages and compare them to the current website. It also allows you to analyze the effect of the tiny changes. It prompts you on changes that can create a positive impact and hence is a convenient website for business owners who wish to boost organic traffic to their websites without breaking the bank. Using this site, you can make small changes, resulting in a massive boost in conversion rates.
• Google Optimize: Much like Optimizely, Google Optimize assists marketers to boost engagement and conversions. Though this is a paid tool, users can use the free version that allows marketers to use advanced modeling to improve their website so as to reach out to a targeted audience whilst improving user engagement. This site allows marketers to leverage their existing resources toward boosting traffic.

Increase Website Speed

Unbeknownst to most users, increasing website speed can help boost the ranking of a website. Website speed can make or break a site’s performance and affect its ranking in Google’s search results. Thankfully, there are numerous SEO tools that can help improve website speed.

A decade ago, Google realized that performance elements like site speed were essential for users, and thus added it as a ranking factor — site speed can now make or break your site’s performance in Google’s search results. Once you get your page speed boosted, your website’s organic performance will improve. Studies suggest that over 65% of consumers state that page speed is an important factor in determining their willingness to buy from a particular site. Here are a few ways to improve page load speed and increase conversions.

• Minimizing unnecessary code on your page
• Reducing server response time
• Enabling browser caching
• Choosing the right hosting
• Enabling compression
• Compressing pictures by 30%
• Deferring JavaScript loading

Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

More and more people now own a smart device and rely on voice search as opposed to keying in a search. It is predicted that about 55% of the US population will use voice search by 2022. It is therefore essential to factor voice search into your website’s SEO strategy. While optimizing your website for voice search, remember that voice search is different from text search. While a person using text search to find a pet store would use ‘dog diet,’ a voice search may be long and detailed, for instance, ‘where can I get good dog food.’ Likewise, voice search is likely to be more locally based. It means you will have to use long-tail keywords to make your website voice search optimized.

Design for Mobile

It is needless to point out that your website must be mobile-friendly. People are moving away from desktops and laptops and are relying on their mobile devices to make purchases while on the go. It means if your website does not have a mobile-friendly version, your conversion rates will likely dip. Focus on creating a UI that is both desktop and mobile-friendly.

Create Backlinks

Creating a diverse backlink portfolio can be monumental in boosting organic traffic on your website. However, while creating backlinks, remember that quality matters. A spam link could hurt your website more than you anticipate. Links from older and well-established sites can pass more value than those from newer websites.

Target Local Searchers

While optimizing your website, it is essential to remember that most consumers are looking for local businesses for their needs. Users tend to search for local shops, their opening hours, addresses, and contact details. So, if you own a brick & mortar shop, it is quintessential that you do not overlook local SEO and listings. Make sure your company information is up to date on every listing that you may have created. Also, be sure to build more directory listing by enlisting the help of local data aggregators.

SEO is vital for any website to rank in Google. Therefore, you need to find an SEO company in Atlanta that knows the ins and outs of search engine optimization. Hughes Media Inc. is one such company with years of experience in SEO and can help boost organic traffic to your website. Call us today at (404) 848-0487 for an obligation free consultation.

About the Author:

Deedra Hughes

Experienced President with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Digital Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Integrated Marketing, Advertising, and Pay Per Click (PPC). Strong business development professional with a Bachelor’s Degree focused in Communications from Ohio University.