If anyone tries to tell you building organic traffic is easy, don’t listen to them. If you’re looking for a quick fix, I’m afraid you’re not going to find it here. Building organic traffic is the hardest work you’ll ever put on your website. With that being said, it’s also the greatest investment of time and effort you can make.

In the days of Facebook promoted posts and Google AdWords, the instant gratification of shelling out a few bucks for immediate traffic is highly appealing. But it’s not sustainable. You’ll get traffic now, but what happens when you stop paying? Will your content ever be found again?

Organic traffic means the content you put on your website today will drive traffic tomorrow, next month, next year, and probably even several years from now. That’s why it’s worth the effort. You don’t see that kind of ROI from paid traffic.

When it comes to getting more organic traffic there are good ways and there are better ways. There are also some downright awful ways that should be avoided at all costs. I will touch on all of these in more detail. If you’re ready to put the work in and increase your organic traffic the right way, these are the things you need to start doing.

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Everyone wants to rank for those broad two or three-word key phrases because they tend to have high search volumes. The problem with these broad key phrases is they are highly competitive. So competitive that you may not stand a chance of ranking for them unless you devote months of your time to it. Instead of spending your time going after something that may not even be attainable, go after the low-hanging fruit of long-tail key phrases.

For example, if you’re an SEO agency don’t bother trying to rank for the term “SEO agency.” Chances are you’ll never knock out the heavyweights that already rank for that term. Instead, narrow it down a bit more. Be more specific by including the area you serve. For example: “SEO agency in Albuquerque NM“.

You could get even more specific by narrowing it down to a customer base. Is there a specific group of clients you tend to serve? Try including that in your long-tail key phrase. For example: “SEO agency for non-profits in Albuquerque NM.” That’s a key phrase you’re a lot more likely to rank for. Not to mention it will also attract way more targeted, organic traffic than a broad key phrase like “SEO agency.”

Long-tail key phrases more closely resemble what an actual user would type into a search engine. As users perform searches more like they would verbalise a question, studies have shown long-tail key phrases are driving results due to greater relevancy and less competition.

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

Guest blogging purely for inbound links is a flawed strategy because the value of those links is going down. However, guest blogging for traffic is still an incredibly viable strategy. While that inbound link you get at the end of a guest post doesn’t have as much SEO value as it used to, it still has the value of exposing your content to a new audience.

It also has the value of the traffic that comes from being published on a high authority site. Having said that, there are some best practices to keep in mind when guest posting:

Don’t spread yourself too thin. Aim for authoritative websites with high-quality content and decent traffic numbers.

Guest blog on websites within your own niche. Guest posting on popular websites means little if you’re not reaching your ideal audience.

Promote your guest posts as you would your own posts. This shows the other website you really value the opportunity to post on their blog.

Check back regularly and respond to comments. Ideally, you want their visitors to become your visitors. Responding to comments is a great way to get that relationship started.

Speaking of Matt Cutts and Google, this leads me to my next point…

Don’t Anger Google

Making Google angry is like biting the hand that feeds you. Unfortunately, some SEOs still like to test the limits of what they can and can’t get away with. Increasing organic traffic should always be done ethically, or you will get hit with a Google penalty sooner or later.

Here are some tips for avoiding those penalties:

  • Don’t build cheap links.
  • Don’t ever, ever pay for inbound links.
  • Don’t use exact-match anchor text.
  • Don’t publish low quality, scraped, or stolen content.

Like I said at the beginning, building organic traffic is hard. Anything that promises a shortcut to an avalanche of traffic will more than likely lead to a penalty down the road. Embrace the daily grind of creating great content that helps users and provides a solution to what they’re looking for. In the end that will drive more organic traffic than any shortcut ever will.

Contact Us

We partner with many UK businesses helping them get more leads and sales from the internet, be our latest client.

Let's talk