By OLIVER ANDREWS
The Ultimate Guide on How to Grow Your Website Organically
This is a full guide on how to grow your website organically. In this guide, we will cover what organic traffic actually is, why it’s important for your website and most importantly, how you can start getting organic traffic to your website!
If you are a website owner and/or had a business and you’re struggling to understand the different ways you can get traffic to your site this article will answer that.
You might be confused with all the marketing buzzwords out there and the different ways people have told you to get traffic to your site. In this article, we make it super simple for you to understand and by the end of it, you’ll know what your next step is!
What we will cover in this article
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic is mostly considered unpaid traffic. Meaning it’s found its way to your site through ways other than paid ads.
The most well-known type of organic traffic would be the type that comes from search engines such as Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. This does not include the ads that you will often find at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP’s). The organic listing usually appears below them. They are there naturally because Google sees that page as the best and most relevant page to your search query.
Organic traffic can also come from other places such as social media, referrals from other websites, word of mouth, and people just knowing your brand.
Having organic traffic as opposed to finding your website through an ad, people generally have more trust in your site by the time they land on it.
Organic traffic is essentially free traffic. It won’t cost you every time someone lands on your site. However, the time, effort and resources it takes to get your site organic traffic might cost you if you paid someone to do it for you, buy tools to help you, courses to learn how to do it and you put a price on your own time.
Why is organic traffic important?
Organic traffic is important because it builds credibility for your site. If someone finds your site naturally it’s because you have normally put in quite a lot of time and effort to make your site appear in front of them naturally. This subconsciously makes people trust you more.
How many times do you scroll straight past the ads at the top of Google and to the natural listings? How much more do you prefer to click on something you have found organically than an ad that’s been plonked right in front of your face?
Don’t get me wrong, paid ads do work and there’s nothing wrong with having them as your traffic strategy. However, building organic traffic is more of a long-term strategy and solidifies your place in the market better than paid ads will.
How to grow your websites organic traffic in 2022
There are several ways you can grow your website organically in the coming year 2022 and beyond. Growing your site organically is generally a long process and takes a lot of time, effort and consistency. You don’t just do this for a couple of months and think you’re done. If you’re serious about your website and your business, you need to dedicate years to it. One thing you can be sure of is growing your site organically is a rewarding process.
Let’s get into the different ways you can do this!
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO is optimising your website, so it appears in the search results for a keyword related to your products and services. It’s ensuring you’re on page 1 of search engines such as Google and Bing so people click on your website listing and you can provide them with what they are looking for.
To rank higher on Google and other search engines you will need to focus on providing a good user experience, creating high-quality content and then promoting that content by building backlinks. This will then increase googles trust in your site and done consistently over time you will move up Googles ranks and hopefully onto page 1.
Search intent is extremely important in any SEO strategy. This is the reason why people search for what they do. For example, if some is searching for ‘how to fit a boiler’ they are most likely looking for a how-to guide. They are not looking for someone to do it for them. On the other hand, if they search ‘boiler fitters London’ they are specifying they want a particular service in a particular location. Each page’s content should tend to these different types of needs.
Keyword research is one of the first and most important steps of SEO. You need to find as we just discussed the keywords with the right intent and keywords you can realistically win.
Finding the right keywords requires a lot of research. There are different types of keywords you should know about and target. The main two types of keywords are longtail and short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific keywords. An example might be something like ‘how to lose weight 50-year-old male’. On the other hand, a short tail keyword might simply be ‘how to lose weight’.
The long tail keyword is likely to have less traffic but it’s more targeted so would likely convert more. Whereas the shorttail keyword would likely have a lot more search volume as it’s more general and could have multiple search intents.
If your website doesn’t have much or any organic traffic from search engines yet, a good strategy is to target long-tail low competition keywords first to gain traction and authority quicker.
An extremely underrated part of SEO is making use of internal linking. You want your organic traffic to stay on your site as long as possible and explore and also enjoy your content as much as possible. That’s why internal linking is so important. Not only that but it helps search engines crawl your site better a faster.
Creating content that targets the right keywords is one thing but promoting it is another! That’s where backlinks come in. Once you have created your content your need to tell google you have the best content on the web. How can you do that? No, you don’t phone up Google and tell them! You gain links back to your site from other relevant sites. With every link back to your site it’s like a vote of confidence to your site and signalling to Google that it should trust you more and therefore rank you higher.
Social Media
Aside from search engines, social media is one of the biggest and most effective places to gain more organic traffic from. The first step is to choose the right platforms. Where does your audience hang out? Where can you get the most traction? Alternatively, you could also think about where does your audience hang out that is the least saturated by other people in your niche. Start by building the smallest viable audience.
Optimise your profile. Social media platforms are search engines themselves. If someone types architect into LinkedIn, you need to come up for that search. Write a good quality bio telling people how you help them and making sure to include the relevant keywords.
Show up regularly and consistently. Commit to posting a set number of times per week so your audience comes to expect when to hear from you. There’s no point in posting 3 times 1 month, 10 the next and once the following month. How can anyone rely on you if your posting is so unreliable?
Know your audience and create content they want to hear about. Post things that will help them and not content that is just about you, what you do and why you’re so wonderful.
Remember we’re trying to appeal to the smallest viable audience to start with. Keep it within your niche. If you’re a resin flooring specialist that’s what most of your posts should be focused on. Not flooring in general as that could be too broad!
Engage and build a community. Don’t post and ghost and don’t ignore other creators. To build a community ask your audience questions, encourage them to comment on your post and always reply trying to have a conversation like you would with a friend. If you see any other creators post something you’re interested in, comment and add value to their post. This will build a sense of community on your social media pages, and also by commenting on someone else’s post who already have your target audience following them, people will notice you and start following you too!
Email Marketing
Growing your organic traffic through social media and search engines is one way to get people organically to your site but ensuring they come back is something else. One way you can do this is by building an email list. An email list is a list of emails where people have given you consent to email them in the future. They would likely have only given you their email in exchange for something of value. Rarely is the promise of a regular newsletter just enough for people to sign up. Usually, you have to give someone something of value such as a free guide, lists and information presented in a certain way.
Email marketing allows you to email people who are interested in your products or services and ensure you’re always staying top of mind. When the time is right, these people will likely return to your site because they need what you’re offering.
The type of content you can send can vary from newsflashes, promotions, case studies etc. Just always make sure it’s highly valuable to them and you’re not always trying to sell! Always put their interest first.
Public Relations (PR)
Public relations (PR) is managing and spreading information about a particular person or organisation. PR raises awareness of who you are and what you value in the way you want it to.
For example, news hacking is where you latch onto a new story that’s related to your business and create sharable content about it.
Or you could also do something like putting together a unique story by using industry data that news outlets would want to cover. It could be coming up with publicity stunts that raise awareness of your business.
PR can bring to light issues people weren’t previously aware of and potion your organisation as the one who brought this to light. This all attracts good organic traffic to your site.
Lastly, there are always journalists looking for experts within industries to interview to build news stories with. This can be done on sites like HARO, Cision, Sourcebottle and you can find many journalists requesting experts on Twitter.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way of attracting organic traffic to your site. Much like social media your should aim to give away high-quality information regularly whilst trying to build up a community.
The advantage of blogging is it’s your own platform. It’s your own site and therefore your own rules. Unlike social media where you’re posting on someone else’s, platform and therefore need to adhere to their rules.
Blogging also ties in with SEO quite well. To get the most out of your blog you should aim to target at least one keyword per article. This means later down the line when you rank for that keyword people will always find your article when they search Google.
Once you post your article share it over every platform you’re on to try to make as many people as possible aware of your content.
As discussed previously try to capture your audiences emails so you can add them to your email list. That way you can notify them every time you write a new article!
Lastly, blogging is a great way to really show your expertise within your industry. If you consistently post high quality, in-depth articles you will quickly build authority and awareness within your niche. Be sure to internal link your articles so your visitors can keep going deeper into your blog and find more and more useful articles you’ve written, solidifying you as the expert even more!
Podcast
Podcasts are an excellent way to build an audience. With busy people having less time to sit down and read, podcasts are a great way to keep up with news and find out the latest information in your industry.
The good thing about a podcast is you can interview other experts. By doing this you also position yourself as an expert! You’re effectively using other peoples knowledge to create a highly valuable podcast.
You can either start your own podcast or look for opportunities to be a guest on a podcast. Many podcasts have resident guests, which is a way to get yourself in front of someone else’s audience.
Video content
Video content is huge, and only going to get bigger. It’s an easy and effective way to consume information. YouTube is probably the biggest opportunity when it comes to video content but there are other options such as DailyMotion, Vimeo, Twitch, and many more!
Like blogging and social media create high-quality valuable information for your target audience. Be consistent, create freebies and offers that will tempt people over to your site so they explore your website and sign up to your mailing list.
Another option with video is live videos or webinars. You don’t need a huge audience for this, just a handful of people who love hearing what you have to say. Webinars and live videos allow you to engage with people better so they trust you more so you can then see if they are interested in your offering.
Content syndication
Content syndication is taking one piece of content, turning it into multiple types of content and then distributing it across the internet across different platforms.
This is an extremely effective way of getting as much as possible out of one piece of content. Generally, you would start off with your main piece of content. This could be for example a seminar you did. That can then be turned into a blog article, smaller video clips, an eBook, infographic, a podcast, a slide deck and any other way your audience consumes content.
This gets as many people seeing your content as possible which all points back to the original source, raising awareness for your business and generating more organic traffic for your site.
Another great benefit of content syndication is it’s more likely to get found and featured on someone else’s site. This means more backlinks for your site which will benefit your SEO.
Collaborate and contribute
Sharing is caring. Share your knowledge with other people within the same or similar industries by collaborating with them on projects or contributing to theirs in some way.
One of the first ways we will discuss is guest posts. Many bloggers accept a guest post from other experts within the same or related industries that can add something of value to their blog. This could be a difference of options, a new idea or just simply your experience. Search for blogs you think will be suitable and then reach out to them explaining and demonstrating why you’re a good fit for their blog.
Answer questions on Quora. This is a site specifically built to answer people questions in almost every niche or industry you can think of. The idea is someone asks a question and everyone chimes in with their answers. By giving your advice and answers within your niche people will start to recognise you and then subsequently find their way to your site.
Similar to Quora, you also have Reddit. Again, people are forever asking questions and looking for advice. Reddit is more of a place where people have discussions (and sometimes some juicy and entertaining arguments). From your knowledge and experience give your opinion and as people start noticing you, they can check out your profile and venture over to your website to find out more about you.
And again, like the previous two, you can also contribute to any relevant forums or places of discussion that are unique to your industry/niche.
Appearing on podcasts is a great way to get more organic traffic to your site. By appearing as a guest or resident guest on someone else’s podcast you’re getting in front of someone else’s ready-made audience. You would only ever be invited onto a podcast if the podcast host thinks you have something of value to give to their audience to grow the podcast. So you’re not stealing their audience you’re earning the trust of their audience.
Conducting your own interviews is a great way to position yourself as an expert whilst interviewing other experts. How you choose to interview experts within your industry is up to you. You could interview them in front of the camera, microphone, over email, through a questionnaire etc. You then share this interview on the relevant platforms.
Similar to Reddit, Quora and forums, making yourself heard in the comment sections of various platforms is a good way to pick up some attention that could result in more organic traffic. This could be on people’s social media posts, their blog posts, forums etc.
Collaborating with other brands is another way to build organic traffic. Collaborate with other brands that have the same target audience as you. You can collaborate with a brand that’s are in the same niche as you if you can come to some sort of agreement or collaborate with a brand that offers complementary services/products to you.
Other top tips on how to grow your website organically
Let’s go through some other ways that you can grow your website. It’s important to note that all the following strategies can be applied to much of the strategies we’ve already spoken about.
Influencer outreach is where you identify people with influence within your industry or niche and reach out to them to see if they would consider putting you out in front of their audience. You would normally need to come to some sort of deal with the influencer often being money or freebies.
Create memorable content. Stop creating mediocre content that no one remembers. Spend more time on one piece of content than trying to produce tons of content. One word of warning. It’s about finding the balance between creating high-quality content and not being too much of a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist will just lead to procrastination and you won’t get much done at all! This can be in the form of video, helpful tools, writing, images etc.
Research your competition to find what’s working for them. Research competitors that are ahead of you but not too far ahead. What I mean by this is if you base your research around much bigger and advanced competition the chances are their strategies will be different to yours are their circumstances are different to yours.
Attend in-person conferences and networking events. One of the most obvious but overlooked ways to get your name out there and get more organic traffic is to actually get off your backside and go to places to meet new people and make new connections!
Look through your old content, whether this is on your websites blog or social media and update old content. Blog content might need rewriting and optimising better for keywords and social media content would simply need reposting or redesigning/writing and then posting again!
A simple yet effective way to gain extra organic attention is to simply write better headlines. Even if you’re getting in front of people if your headlines aren’t good enough it’s unlikely they will be enticed into your website. Spend some time just thinking about how you can create irresistible headlines.
Lastly, holding a contest is an effective yet (in my opinion) underused way to get organic traffic. By having a good competition or giveaway, paid or free you can build momentum through your current audiences and get in front of new people. My only advice would be don’t run competitions too often or it could start making you look desperate or like your products or services aren’t worth much.
How do bloggers get organic traffic?
Bloggers are no different to any other website owner. They get traffic in the same ways! They get traffic through social media, SEO, collaborating, emailing, paid ads, video content you name it they need to get themselves out there as much as possible in the places their audience hangs out!
Conclusion: How to grow your website organically
So there sure was a lot to cover in this article on how to grow your website organically! Because there are so many possibilities. And each of those strategies could be an article in themselves!
Organic traffic is unpaid traffic. Anyone can obtain it for their website through consistency and hard work.
The main ways website owners go about this is search engine optimisation (SEO), social media, email marketing, public relations (PR), blogging, podcast, video content, content syndication and collaborating and contributing.
These main strategies can be even more effective with the use of influencer marketing, creating memorable content, writing great headlines, researching competitors, attending conferences, networking, updating old content, and holding contests!
You can combine these techniques and strategies to come up with your own unique marketing strategies that work for you. Or you can simply start with one and double down on it.
A word of advice is not to try and do too much at once. You could for example just focus on SEO to start with and then start focusing on increasing your social media presence later down the line. This means you put a good amount of effort into one or two things so you can do your best work.
Many of you I would expect are busy business owners with a business that needs running. Therefore, instead of trying to be a jack of all trades, you can simply hire someone to implement these strategies for you.
If you need help with gaining organic traffic to your website, get in touch with me today for a free consultation.
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