Boost Organic Traffic on Your WordPress Website
The goal of a website is to be seen. It’s your digital storefront and virtual presence online where your potential customers come to find information, check your authority, and see if they want to do business with you.
You can only advertise and push paid traffic to your website for as long as your budget allows. Ideally, you’ll want to nurture and grow a steady stream of organic traffic to your WordPress Website. This is traffic that comes to you through search, indirect links, social mentions, and other ways you haven’t paid for.
But with more websites coming online yearly, competition for organic traffic results is increasingly intense. So, you need to pay attention to the details of your site and use a bit of creativity to compete for and win those coveted top Google search spots.
Benefits of Organic Traffic
Winning top search rank spots pays off enormously. But note even though you’re not paying for clicks by way of advertising, you’ll still “pay” for organic traffic through your time. Giving a boost to your organic traffic on your WordPress website takes a lot of work and maintenance but pays off in many ways:
- Free traffic
- Customers trust businesses more if they appear at the top of rankings
- Leads are stronger when they’ve researched and found you rather than clicked on an ad
- Longer-term value from content that is “evergreen” and producing clicks over the years versus one short-run campaign
Study Your Analytics
Your WordPress website contains a treasure trove of information about what is and isn’t working in your organic traffic strategy. All you need to do is check the information regularly. When you make a routine of monitoring your analytic data, you spot trends like what times of day have the most traffic, what devices your audience views you on, and more. As you learn these trends, you’ll spot opportunities to boost organic traffic on your WordPress Website.
Sometimes, analyzing your traffic data reveals surprises, like one specific type of content consistently performing better than others. In those cases, adjust your organic traffic strategy to promote more of this type of content. But also, don’t overlook underperforming content. One type of content might seem to do better, but others could be improved with tweaks to when they’re posted or how they’re shared to perform as well. Play around with your content and study as you make changes to see if there’s a fall or lift in organic traffic.
Use Social Media
Virtually every company knows they need a social media presence to be competitive. So we won’t beat that dead horse. But we will encourage you to find creative ways to use social media to help boost organic traffic on your WordPress website.
Start by including social sharing options on all your content, making it easier for your readers to share with their friends. Post often and regularly on your social media channels with quality content that’s not just blatant marketing materials. That way, your audience will trust you when you share links to articles or your webpage.
Then you can start getting creative and fun. Try hosting live Q&A sessions or quizzes to interact and engage with your audience. Think as a customer. Sure, you might click on a lone link if it sounds exciting. But you’re way more likely to check out a company that just hosted a fabulous giveaway or hosted a super-informative session.
Blog
Blogs are still one of the most effective ways to boost organic traffic on your WordPress website. When you blog consistently, you create a steady stream of regular content, allowing you to draw in unique keywords and build organic traffic. It’s also a great supplement to your main website.
You don’t want to overstuff your main WordPress website with too many keywords. It wouldn’t read naturally and could dilute your ability to rank for a specific phrase. But, your blog can supplement you here, providing an opportunity to chase after additional keywords and micro-niches your company may be targeting. And because the content is published regularly, you get a nice boost to your search rankings since Google favors freshly produced content.
Ensure Your Site’s Optimized
To build organic traffic, readers have to be able to find you. That means you need to rank higher. Most people won’t even see if you’re on the second page of search results. If you’re on the second page, rank 11; simply moving up one position to 10th will provide a 143% boost to organic traffic. But how to improve your rankings?
Over the years, Google has given hints and outright statements on what they use in their ranking algorithms. These are often shared to “encourage” people to use best practices. You can’t fight Google on search. So, it’s best to take all their suggestions to heart and ensure your website respects all the major algorithm changes.
Some areas to ensure you’ve checked:
- Mobile performance
- Site speed
- User experience
- Included SSL certificate
- Upload a sitemap
Work on Your Mobile Experience
You can’t rank well organically without a solid mobile experience. Google will devalue your search rank if your mobile experience isn’t up to their standards. If you’re unsure where you stand with Google, be sure to visit their mobile testing page here. Also, more than 60% of users will access your WordPress website on a mobile device. You don’t want to put in all the effort to get someone to visit your site only to have them immediately bounce away because they couldn’t navigate your site or had a bad experience.
At a minimum, use mobile-friendly themes or design a mobile-first WordPress website that considers the needs of mobile users before desktop visitors’ needs. Also, check your mobile image optimization to ensure fast page loading times for mobile devices.
Find Partnerships
Networking with other professionals and sites related to your industry is an excellent practice to be in anyways. It’s a fantastic bonus that it can also help improve your organic traffic on your WordPress Website. Sharing links helps both parties in a network. For example, when you share a well-written blog piece from a parallel industry, you’ll get free content with new SEO potential. And when they share your article with their network, you get exposure with their network and highly-coveted inbound links.
Find partners the old-fashioned way by searching around your industry. You’re obviously not going to reach out to direct competitors. Still, you can find vendors who might support your industry or thought leader experts within your field. Virtually every sector has trusted influencers these days. Getting them to share your content or promote your site will help provide a ton of inbound organic traffic.
Boost Your Organic Traffic
There’s no denying the power of advertising. The right paid campaign can do wonders for your business. But it’s not sustainable over the long term to rely only on paid advertising for your website’s traffic.
You cannot neglect to develop a strategy to boost organic traffic to your WordPress website. Please note that organic traffic is often a long-term strategy that pays out in clicks over months and years rather than the sudden spikes in traffic you’ll see from a paid campaign. But with a little hard work and persistence, you can experience steady results that come in year after year.
If you struggle to find the time to maintain an organic traffic strategy, reach out to professionals to help you. Experienced WordPress developers can help you implement an organic strategy that works for your business over the years, ensuring all the little details are done for you. Please reach out to us if you need any support or have any questions. Let’s work together to ensure you get the organic traffic you need.