Your website is probably your biggest asset when it comes to marketing your business. In order for a website to be effective, people need to be able to find it. A great way to make that happen is through search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is what will push your content higher in search engine rankings and, as a result, drive more traffic to your website. Organic SEO is the term used to describe the processes used to obtain natural placement on the search engine results pages.

To learn more about how you can start your website off on the right foot with SEO, start with our earlier post ‘5 SIMPLE SEO TIPS FOR A NEW WEBSITE’. 

How to encourage organic traffic to help grow your business…

1. Content

No surprise here – a high ranking on search engines is highly dependent on your content. You can’t have strong SEO without strong content. Luckily, great content can be free or relatively inexpensive. Focus on quality content that is informative and SEO will naturally follow. This will boost your ranking and drive traffic to your website.

For the best results, your content should come in a variety of forms. Try including multimedia such as images, videos, and interactive media.  

The more variety you have in your content, the more benefits you’ll see. Regardless of the form, compelling content will capture the attention of your audience. They, in turn, will listen, learn, and share.

Types of content to add to your site:

• Infographics – Create and share graphics that present helpful information in a visually appealing way.
• Memes – Share funny or inspirational phrases and quotes.
• Guides – Write a ‘How-To-Guide’ specific to your niche.
• E-books – Write an e-book sharing your knowledge and expertise in your industry.  
• Interviews – Conduct an interview with a notable person in your field.  
• Podcasts – Start a podcast and discuss topics that your audience will find interesting and useful.  
• Videos – Create and share videos on Youtube (or other video platforms) and embed them to your website.
• Book and Product Reviews – Review industry relevant books or products and provide feedback that will be helpful to your audience.
• Testimonials – Share raving reviews and top testimonials from past clients with potential future clients to gain trust and credibility.

2. Keywords

Keywords are the different words and phrases you use in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. Adding relevant keywords to your website will help search engines understand what your website can offer a user who is searching for answers to a question. Search engines want to provide clear answers quickly. It’s important to understand your audience in order to understand the questions they will be asking. Before writing and adding content, carefully research and consider the keywords you will use.

Relevant keywords should be used throughout the text content on your site and in a variety of ways, including both broad and long tail keywords.

Ways to incorporate keywords:

• Page Titles – Other than the body text, the page title (or title tag) is the first place search engines will review.  When you add a page to your website, the page title should contain your most important keywords. It should be an accurate and concise description of the content on the page.
• URLs – URLs and permalinks essentially work as a digital address for your website pages and posts. Your URL should contain top keywords relevant to the content on the page. Keep them short, clear and readable. When a person looks at a URL they should have a pretty good idea of what they can expect to find on the web page.
• Categories – Organizing and labeling your content into clear and relevant categories is great for SEO. This will also help your readers navigate your website and find relevant content more easily.
• Image optimization – Image optimization will give search engines information about the images you are sharing on your site. Including an image tag, or label that you assign to your image, allows the search engines to ‘read’ the image. Label the image with a title that makes sense and uses keywords appropriately. 

3. Linking

To have a top-ranked site you will need top-quality links. Link-building, specifically gaining back-links, is tricky and doing it right takes time. If you go about it the wrong way, you’ll end up doing more harm than good. Be sure to take the time to research and get informed.

• Internal linking structure – Keep visitors on your blog or website by including internal links to other relevant posts on your blog. When you write a new post, be sure to mention other ‘related posts’ on your blog that your readers may find helpful. This is great for SEO and increasing visit duration, conversion rates, and referrals.
• Backlinks – These are incoming or inbound links to your site from another website. The most beneficial backlinks will come from websites that are already known on the internet for their accuracy and high rankings. The more quality backlinks your site has, the more of a boost you will see in your rankings. That said, definitely focus on quality over quantity. There are a variety of ways to go about getting back-links but the best way is to create and share quality content. For other ideas, Backlinko has shared a solid list of 17 backlink sources.

[Tweet ““The time spent building a solid foundation will pay for itself ten-fold.” -Darren Varndell, Seo SOS: Search Engine Optimization First Aid Guide”]

In order to obtain organic SEO it’s important to have a cohesive and consistent digital marketing strategy. That begins with a website that is fast, well-structured and responsive. Once you have a quality website, focus on quality content, keywords, and links. Follow these tips and focus on creating a website and content for your audience, not for the search engines. Organic SEO will follow naturally and without a lot of additional leg work.

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