Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most valued skills in marketing. Using the right tools and methodology to make sure your website ranks highly on search engine result pages (SERPs) is the best way to increase organic traffic on your WordPress website. Out of all the different approaches to online marketing, 53% of website traffic comes from organic search. This means that while other methods may give you results, none of them are as cost-effective or consistent as organic SEO.
The internet is saturated with information on how to increase organic traffic on your website. Before developing a marketing strategy, you should analyze your website and determine who your target audience is. Based on this, you can decide which strategies for increasing organic traffic will be most effective for your website. Here we will dive into four methods that will yield the best results and are easy to implement.
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Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Be sure that you are structuring your title tags and meta descriptions so that they are optimized for search engines. In order to bring more organic traffic to your website, you have to structure your website so that it will be ranked highly by search engine crawlers and prove its usefulness to customers.
Title Tag
The title tag is part of the HTML code of the website, indicating the name of a webpage. The title tag will appear in search engine results, browser tabs, and social media posts. It is basically your website’s first impression to the world (no pressure). In order to optimize the title tag, you must make sure to include keywords in it. Many experts recommend including the keyword near the beginning of the title tag, since Google only shows the first 600 pixels (around 60 characters). In other words, this isn’t the time to debut an elaborate name for your webpage. Be concise. This is a great way to increase organic traffic, and your website’s performance is counting on it.
Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML tag that you can add to your website as a short summary of the page. Part of it will show up as a website preview on the SERP, so think of it like an elevator pitch for your website. Meta descriptions do not have as much of an impact on SEO as title tags, but they do on the click-through rate (CTR). Increasing organic traffic on your website means having a high CTR. You have already captured the customer’s attention with your title tag, so use the meta description to give them a little more information and encourage them to click on your website. Optimized meta descriptions should be about 150 to 160 characters and include keywords.
Implement Link Building
Link building is a very effective part of increasing organic traffic and building website credibility. Google’s search engine crawlers use links to determine how much domain authority (i.e. relevance) a web page has. Responsible for 59.2% of all web traffic, Google search is the best way to reach a wider audience and bring more organic traffic to your website. The two main methods of link building are using links internally and through backlinks.
Internal Links
This method is great for building domain authority within your own website. Internal linking is when you include a link to another webpage on your website. For example, if you are a flower company writing a blog about how to create the perfect bouquet, you can include a link to your order form at the end to encourage customers to use your services. Below is an example of how we have used link building on our CT website. All the words and phrases that you see in blue are links to other pages on our website. Increasing domain authority will improve your website’s ranking on SERPs and increase the flow of organic traffic.
Backlinking
Backlinking is when another site has a link to yours. While getting a backlink from a high authority domain is the goal, links from lower authority domains still carry value. Acquiring a quality backlink has a positive impact on your domain, and it also works to bring in referral traffic, which also helps your domain’s performance. You can build backlinks by having reliable and unique information on your webpage that is useful to high-authority websites. You want to create quality assets that will attract people to your website. Some strategies on how to increase organic traffic with backlinks include:
- Resource Page Link Building: Create a page on your website with curated links (resources). The purpose of this is to create a convenient outlet for additional information related to your business.
- Broken Link Building: Look for broken links on other websites within your industry or niche. Reach out to the organization and suggest directing the broken page to your website instead.
- Skyscraper Technique: The goal of this strategy is to become the tallest skyscraper in your industry. To do this, find a top website that has seen lots of success and do your own research on that topic. Then, create your own webpage that does an even better job of conveying that information. Once you have done this, promote your content to people who linked the original website.
Source: Kinsta
Set Up A Sitemap
Sitemaps will bring more organic traffic to your website by helping search engine crawlers better understand it. Think of them as the crawler’s map through the amazing world of your web pages. Building a sitemap will also give you access to more data about your website, which you can use to understand how to further increase organic traffic.
An XML Sitemap is a list of URLs within your website that you want to be publicly available. It helps search engine crawlers better understand your website by giving them a breakdown of your content. Once you have your sitemap, be sure to submit to the Google Search Console. This will directly give your sitemap to Google search engine crawlers and give you even more data about your website and its performance. If you want to be really thorough, you can also submit your sitemap to Bing and Yahoo webmasters.
Make Your Website Accessible
Making your website accessible to a wider range of people, be it people with disabilities or individuals who are using a mobile device, is a surefire way to increase organic traffic. Two great ways to improve your website’s accessibility are making it mobile-friendly and including alt text for images and other visual elements.
Mobile-Friendly
Making your website mobile-friendly is a great way to increase organic traffic. The larger the pool of people who have access to your website, the higher the rate of visitors will become. It’s as simple as that.
In fact, mobile searches account for 58% of all Google searches. WordPress has tools that help you make your website more mobile-friendly. The main thing to focus on is creating a website layout that will still look good on a smaller screen. That means avoiding pop-up windows, shortening titles, and adjusting image dimensions. After this, be sure to check if your website is mobile-responsive using Google’s mobile-friendly tool. This will give you feedback and recommendations on how to increase organic traffic by improving your site.
Alt Text
Including alt text on website images makes your website accessible to blind and visually impaired people and optimizes it for search engine crawlers. Alt text is an HTML attribute that provides a description or images or other visual elements on the page. Visually impaired people often use page readers when using the internet. These page readers will read the alt text to describe the image to them. Thus, you are making your website accessible to a larger audience which will increase organic traffic.
Alt text also tells search engine crawlers what the image is. Since bots can’t technically “see” the image, they cannot understand what it is showing, beyond its file name. Including keywords in the alt text gives you another opportunity to signal to Google what your page is about.
Growing Organically
Understanding how to increase organic traffic is the best way to grow your WordPress website. There are several reliable ways to improve performance. Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions is a great way to show search engine crawlers what your website is about and create a strong first impression on potential visitors. Implementing link-building strategies builds domain authority and improves your website’s reputation within the industry. Setting up a sitemap is a great way to give search engine crawlers a guide to your website. Once they can better analyze it, your ranking on SERPs should increase significantly. Improving accessibility by making your website mobile friendly and including alt text will also increase organic traffic by opening up your site to a larger audience.
Though these tips can help individuals at all skill levels increase organic traffic, the task can still be overwhelming. Reach out to the SEO professionals at Coalition Technologies to help you improve your strategy. Contact us to start increasing your WordPress website’s organic traffic today!
