There are three ways in which new leads can come to your website, making it a valuable lead generation tool for independent business owners.
- Referrals from other websites
- Direct clicks from social postings or emails
- Organic traffic, which comes from people clicking on a link in Google’s search results
There are steps you can follow in order to increase your organic traffic and improve your website’s visibility in Google’s search results. To achieve a high ranking, Google needs to comprehend the purpose of your website and the content it contains.
How to Optimize Your Website for Google Search
1. Identify important keywords
In order for your website to show up in Google search results, it is necessary to utilize appropriate keywords in all of your written content. This process may require some research, but it is not a difficult task. Utilizing tools like Google’s keyword planner, you can enter search terms and view their average monthly search volume, which will aid you in identifying and selecting the appropriate keywords that align with your content.
In order to use Google keyword planner, input all the potential search terms you can consider, whether as individual words or phrases, and assess their corresponding search volume. For instance, if you provide proposal management services, it is recommended to check the keyword volume for phrases like “proposal management,” “outsourcing proposal management,” “proposal experts,” “how to find a proposal management expert,” and so on.
When selecting keywords, it is advisable to begin with basic and broad terms before moving on to more precise and lengthier phrases. If the general terms you come across have a search volume of over 10,000 per month, it might be challenging to compete with larger websites and rank on the initial pages of a Google search.
By following a systematic approach, rephrase the passage above without changing its meaning, while specifically focusing on keywords that have a search volume ranging from 1,000 to 10,000. Additionally, consider generating content that caters to even more specific keywords with only around 100 searches. If the keywords you are concentrating on have a monthly search volume of up to 1,000, it indicates that you are operating in a specialized market where you can potentially contend for those terms.
2. Look at your competitors
When analyzing your competitors, it is advisable to examine the keywords they utilize. Visit their websites and observe the words employed in their page titles and content. Additionally, you can input search terms into Google to observe which websites appear. Take note of the phrases used by companies providing comparable services.
When optimizing your website for search engines, it is important to consistently include keywords in various areas such as page titles, page URLs, the initial paragraph of content, SEO titles, meta descriptions, primary headings, image names, and image descriptions. However, if you already have a published URL for a page, avoid changing it to include keywords. Instead, focus on incorporating keywords into newly published URLs.
How to Get More Organic Visitors to Your Site
1. Create content people are already searching for
The second step involves producing content that addresses the search queries of your intended audience. By optimizing your content for the chosen keywords, your website will appear in Google search results when users search using those specific keywords. To illustrate, if you are aware that your target clients are inquiring about the effectiveness of proposal management writers in securing bids, you could create an article or blog post on this subject.
2. Improve your SEO titles
No matter which platform you choose for your website, you can always find a method to generate SEO titles. SEO titles are the titles that appear in search results, usually seen as the blue links on Google. It is important for the SEO title to be concise, incorporating keywords and being attractive. By receiving clicks on your link in search results, your rankings will receive a boost.
When considering the sequence of thoughts, rephrase the given text without altering the meaning or adding/removing any information. Please note that SEO titles and page titles have distinct purposes. While page titles are visible at the top of a webpage, SEO titles serve the purpose of attracting users to the page. For instance, one of your page titles might be “Proposal Management Services,” while your SEO title could be “Searching for a proposal negotiator or strategist?”
3. Optimize your page descriptions
An appealing meta description is just as crucial as a great SEO title. It is a brief overview of your page’s content (usually displayed as grey text below the SEO title on Google). Your meta description should incorporate keywords, while keeping it within 160 characters. Be concise and provide the necessary information for users to click your link. Begin the description with action verbs like “Learn”, “Discover”, or “Understand” to tempt readers into clicking. Showcase the value of your content. Keep in mind that the higher your click-through rate, the better your ranking.
Like any objective, it is important to monitor your progress. Most website platforms have their own analytics tool, or you can utilize Google Analytics. It is crucial to have patience as SEO is a gradual process, but you should start seeing results in three months or less. With practice and fine-tuning, your organic traffic will start to grow.
4. Share on Social Media
Although sharing material on social media sites is a great content marketing strategy, it is necessary to be forceful. One way to do this is by taking part in Twitter conversations using the appropriate hashtags. It is also important to respond to comments and queries on your Facebook page in order to interact with visitors. Additionally, you could publish your information on popular, highly trafficked websites such as Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Slack, Quora, and Reddit. However, before promoting your material, it is essential to establish rapport with the community and earn their trust. It is crucial to ensure that the group allows promotion, as anything different might appear spammy. Engaging with your fans on social media platforms is also important as it helps establish rapport and trust over time. By doing so, they will be more likely to spread your content among their friends.
5. Create awesome visuals
In order to illustrate concepts, visualize data, and recreate charts in your branding, you can utilize design tools such as Canva. By having other sites use your images, they will include a link back to your site. Additionally, Google now displays a higher number of images in regular Search results, providing you with more chances to rank and enhance the attractiveness of your result, ultimately leading to an increased click-through rate.
6. Incorporate video
Text-based content is satisfactory, but video has the potential to attract a larger number of visitors and maintain their engagement. The following are several methods to increase website traffic by utilizing video:
- Embed videos into your blog posts so they can appear in video search results
- Do YouTube SEO to rank higher on YouTube, then add links to your website in the video description.
- Add call to action buttons directly in your video that send people to your site.
7. Have a resource center
In addition to videos and blog posts, it is important to create other types of content such as infographics, downloadable guides, templates, webinars, and more, in order to educate your audience and establish trust. When you create these lead magnets and utilize them in various platforms, it is recommended to gather them on a resources page. By creating a library of diverse content, you will be able to attract visitors to your site who will keep coming back.
8. Optimize your SERP appearance
To ensure maximum organic clicks and improve their appeal on the search engine results page (SERP), it is not sufficient to only include the keyword in your meta description and meta title. It is imperative to optimize these critical components.
- Meta description: Keep this between 155-165 characters, indicate the value the reader will get out of the post, and make it actionable.
- Meta title: Make this 60 characters or less value, with the keyword close to the beginning, and indicate some sort of value or benefit.
9. Link internally
When you create and publish content, make sure to include at least 1-3 links to other pages on your site. Adding these links not only helps increase traffic to those pages, but also keeps visitors engaged on your site for longer periods of time, encourages them to explore more pages, and enables them to derive more value from your site. These factors collectively enhance your ranking and drive additional traffic to your website.
10. Improve your page speed
Have you ever experienced the frustration of waiting for a webpage to load for thirty seconds? I haven’t. However, if your website takes an excessive amount of time to load, it will result in a high bounce rate. Speed has always played a role in website rankings, and it is even more significant after the page experience update. To ensure optimal performance, focus on technical optimizations such as reducing image file sizes, improving page structure, and optimizing third-party plugins. The quicker your website loads, the more advantageous it is.
Take advantage of Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will evaluate your site’s performance and offer recommendations for enhancing your Core Web Vitals and other aspects.
11. Make your site responsive
In today’s scenario, mobile devices experience more traffic compared to desktops. Hence, if you force your visitors to zoom in and scroll extensively on your website, you are indirectly directing them to visit other websites. It is essential to ensure that even if you have a simple website, it should be easily accessible and comfortably viewed on various devices, including smaller smartphones.
If you want to make every aspect of your website as efficient as possible, take a look at our Ultimate Website Audit Checklist, which includes a comprehensive 6-Tab Google Sheet.
12. Implement Schema markup
Implementing Schema markup, or another microdata format, does not guarantee an increase in website traffic. However, it does facilitate the discovery and indexing of web pages by search engine bots. Using schema for SEO also yields the advantage of enhancing rich site snippets, thereby potentially improving click-through rates.
13. Regularly refresh your content
Content freshness is an important factor in ranking, as even timeless content can become less appealing over time. Refreshing your content can have a powerful impact, even if your post is already ranking well on Google’s first page. Adding a new publish date on the search engine results page (SERP) can greatly boost click-through rates (CTR) and elevate your position, resulting in a significant increase in traffic.
Do not attempt to simply make minor edits and then update the publish date on your post, as Google can distinguish this. Google is knowledgeable in this area, so it is important to implement effective strategies to increase traffic from evergreen content. These strategies were previously shared in my post.
- Update and/or add new information and stats.
- Replace outdated visuals and/or create new ones to illustrate concepts.
- Add new links to more recent resources.
- Fix broken links and images.
- Add new keywords from the query report in Search Console (more on that later).
- Tweak your meta title and meta description.
14. Get backlinks
The quantity and quality of links to your website is one of the most significant factors that affect Google rankings. By obtaining links from reputable websites with a high Domain Authority, you can enhance your own Domain Authority. Consequently, your rank and traffic will also increase, including any traffic acquired through the link.
Here are just a few link building strategies that work, although there are several others.
- Reach out to credible sites and offer to write a guest post where you can link to your site in the body or your author bio.
- Use an SEO tool to find broken links on other websites and offer yours as a replacement.
- Create original, high-quality content that just begs to be linked to.
15. Research the competition
If you have not utilized software such as BuzzSumo to investigate your competitors’ activities, you are in a less favorable position. These platforms combine the social engagement of certain websites and content to offer you a quick view of the subjects that are capturing readers’ attention and, importantly, gaining popularity on social media. Discover the materials that people are reading and discussing, and replicate that type of content to attract visitors to your website.
16. Post at the right time
If you want to dive deeper, you can analyze your social media analytics to discover the specific times of day and week when your audience engages the most. You can then schedule your blog post links to be shared during those times. Initially, focus on the general optimal times and gradually analyze the data to improve your strategy.
