Traffic is the lifeblood for any profitable website. Unfortunately most beginners don’t know how to optimize their web pages for search engines. And they give up when they don’t see any traffic growth on their sites.
Organic traffic can grow your efforts into something authoritative, BIGGER and most often profitable. But what SEO tactics should you use? Where do you actually begin?
Let's take a look at a few effective SEO tips to increase your overall search traffic.
1. Craft Clickable Headlines
Brian Clark from Copyblogger says, 8 out of 10 people read headlines before clicking on your links.
Search engines, social media sites, blogging forums or wherever you promote your posts, headlines is the first thing most people see. If they’re not compelling, no one is going to click! It’s as simple as that.
You need to spend quality time in crafting powerful headlines. Here are few effective tips that help you write great headlines.
- Find a list of top blogs in your niche. Check out the headlines of their popular posts. Analyze them (are they list posts, how-to guides or a combination of two). Notice the pattern and tweak your headlines according to them.
- Include a number in your headlines (list posts are evergreen, most online people prefer clicking on list posts).
- Use powerful headline adjectives. Check out this post by Jon Morrow on writing powerful words on your posts.
Important Note: Make sure to use SEO plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast, and use your primary keywords in your headlines and meta description to bring more visitors from search engines.
2. Perform SEO Audit
Did you know that by conducting an SEO audit of your websites you can double or even triple your search traffic?
SEO audit is the process of knowing how your website performs in search results. Here are few important factors to perform while conducting a SEO audit for your sites to drive more organic traffic.
- Make sure your site is both mobile and search engine friendly
- Optimize your website's loading times
- Improve your on-page and off-page SEO factors
- Optimize your URL structure
- Make sure you have an XML sitemap for your sites
- Find and fix broken links
- Make sure to no-index your tags and categories from Google search results
Once you know your website is showing up on Google perfectly, your site performs really well and you’ll attract more visitors from search engines.
3. Spy on Your Competition
Finding the keywords your competition use is the simplest way to increase your website search traffic.
Analyze all the keywords your competitors are using. You don’t have to use the exact similar keywords to bring traffic to your sites, but make a list of keyword ideas that are really profitable.
You can use tools like Moz, SpyFu, SEMRush etc to find the most profitable keywords your competitors are using to increase their traffic. You can also use the same tools to figure out how many backlinks they have to rank higher in search results.
Here's a webinar from SEMRush to show you how to use their Competitor Keyword Research for SEO Toolset:
4. Improve Your Page Load Speed
Did you know that 40% of people abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?
You can use Google’s page insights tool to find out the performance of your website. You can also use Pingdom tool to analyze your website loading times. Here are few effective ways to speed up your WordPress websites.
Use less plugins: Less plugins means less usage of resources. That means your site loads really faster as your site speed mostly depend upon the plugins you use. Avoid using heavy loading plugins.
Use a better hosting service: The web hosting you use affects your site loading time. Avoid using cheap WordPress hosting services if you’re really serious about making money online.
Install a cache plugin: By clearing your cache every time you install/disable a plugin, you will save a lot of space on your hosting service. This improves your overall website loading time and performance. Install cache plugins like to W3 total cache to clear your website’s cache.
Note: Don’t play with CSS files on your websites to tweak your design unless you know about coding. Most beginners affect their site loading time by changing their CSS files randomly.
5. Keyword Research is the KEY
If you’re not optimizing your blog posts or web pages for the search engines, you are not going to get any traffic from search engines.
The key to increase your organic traffic is to write keyword rich contents that are perfectly optimized both for readers and search engines. Don’t stuff keywords though, use your primary keywords in your headlines, meta description, images and links.
Performing keyword research is not a rocket science, here are few simple tips to do it right.
- Use keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Market Samurai or Long Tail Pro to find keyword suggestions.
- Select the keywords that have low competition and more chances of getting high rankings.
- Focus on using long tail keywords like “SEO beginner tips” instead of short tail keywords like “SEO”. Short tail keywords are often competitive, and if you’ve a new website, it’s literally impossible to bring traffic from search engines. So always focus on searching for long tail keywords.
Once you’re done with the keyword research, write long and detailed articles. And use your keywords throughout your pages to get more visibility from search engines.
Also make sure to build links for the pages you want to rank for. You can use methods like guest blogging, blog commenting, outreach etc to build quality links to your sites. Backlinks are the backbone for any successful website that pulls massive traffic from search engines.
In a nutshell: Getting search engine traffic takes time and serious efforts. Avoid focusing on quick results rather spend your time on building natural links that improve your traffic in the long run. If you have a proper SEO strategy, by writing valuable contents, you bring more traffic and quality links from other sites.
Do you have any more SEO tips to increase website search traffic? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Hi Anil,
Good to see you on BBT. You have explained all the five important points clearly.
These will be very helpful for newbies.
Umapathy
Hi Umapathy,
Thanks for the comment and keep visiting BBT for more guest posts!
Can’t agree more with all of these. Especially the last one.
Just recently did I realize the importance of keywords and the fact that the ones I have in mind when posting something new may be completely different from what potential readers are typing in Google.
Now another thing I do before publishing a new post is researching Google’s Keyword Planner for the best option for the URL.
Thanks for sharing.
Keyword research is perhaps only best way to increase your organic traffic. Although you might not get the BEST keywords, but once you master keyword research skills, you’ll definitely find out the keywords that drive more traffic.
Thanks for the comment.
I do agree too about keyword research and Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the best tools there is.
Hi Anil,
I like the idea of spying on the competition. It really helps in improving yourselves. We also get to learn valuable information that helps us in our own business. Almost, all the top companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft spy on their competitors.
Page load is also an important part. Google now considers it a factor for search engine rankings.
Thanks for sharing these tips.
Page speed of a website is one of the crucial factors as I said in the article, Brian. Google gives top priority to the sites that load quicker.
Also make sure to tools like Spyfu, SEMRush to easily find and analyze the keywords your competitors are using.
Thanks for sharing your views.
These 5 Seo Tips are fantastic Anil! A big one for me is other’s websites taking too long to load. Speed is super important. You have only a few seconds to catch someone’s eye and if it takes too long for me, I’m outta there. All great tips. Thanks so much for sharing such valuable content to help others.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the appreciation. Yea, no one likes to read on the sites that take ages to load. If a website is making me yawn, I’ll probably never visit it again.
Thanks for stopping by! Do share the post 🙂
Anil these SEO tips are going to be very useful as without proper SEO a blogger won’t be able to get success.
The first point which you have mentioned is Crafty headlines. According to me, everyone may not be able to write amazing headlines as it is a skill which one gains with time. One needs to read a lot and think a lot as then only he will be able to come out with best headlines for different blog posts.
SEO Audit is important as then only we will be able to know the SEO mistakes which he may be making.
The last point which is keyword research is the most important one. A blogger will be able to get good traffic to his blog only by targeting the right keywords. Analyzing the rankings of different keywords regularly is also very important as then only one will be able to know that he needs to work out on which keywords.
Anil hope to see you at my blog too. Keep writing about SEO and other related stuff.
Hi Mohit,
SEO is the lifeblood for any successful website and proper keyword research is definitely the key. You can check out Jon Morrow’s blog freebie “52 headline hacks” if you want to craft great headlines Mohit.
Let me know your thoughts after reading it! And do share this post if you find it helpful.
What’s the best way to spy on the Competition? Any additional page or serviceyou can recommend?
Hi,
You can use Spyfu, SEMRush for spying on the competitors keywords!
Hi, anil
Whenever I read your articles, I get something new about blogging and seo. It is very helpful for my blogging experience,really enjoyed your article. I learned and many great insights here.
Excellent tips, Anil! I know I need to work on my keyword research skills, as it’s fairly new to me. I’ve always known to do it, but I’m finally putting it into practice.
Also, I’ve read many articles talking about de-indexing tags and categories. Some had reasons for de-indexing, while others said you should keep them. Is there any definitive resource?
Thanks,
-Gabe
Hi Gabe,
You can check the keyword research post which I interlinked in this very article. That’s a great start for beginners to find and analyze great keywords for any niche.
Regarding de-indexing tags and categories, I think you should first consider your niche. I don’t think it’s required for niches like tech, entertainment, news etc. But if you’re into SEO, blogging, marketing.. you should consider de-indexing as you don’t want to replicate the same copy again and again on search results.
Let me know your thoughts.
Anil, great information here. I didn’t know about that 3sec page load speed! Would that increase the bounce rate of websites too?
Interesting and very detailed techniques to do clean seo for our websites. However, I feel that it is starting to become an unfair competition between blogs, as some use black hat techniques and manipulate the result. I am struggling to come up with the best content possible, but sometimes Big G doesn’t repay that.
Big G always reward the sites that have natural backlinks and user engaging content. Most beginners don’t focus on writing keyword rich contents, that’s why they lack of search traffic!
Hey Anil,
These are simple but yet powerful tips regarding how to incorporate SEO on your blog posts. I practice these and it does make a difference.
One little tidbit I will add is to make sure that you keywords are in your headline title and on the first sentence of your blog post, and in your meta description. A great way to make sure this is done is installing plugins like All in one SEO, and look at the settings for each post you that’s done.
Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a great weekend!
Hi Sherman,
SEO is undoubtedly the number one reason most websites succeed or fail! I personally think WordPress SEO by Yoast is better than All in One SEO, I’ve used both of them.
There’s some great ideas here Anil, thanks for sharing. Now I just need to free up some time optimise my content…
Its great to see on basicblogtips. Your 5 tips are the killer tips i would say. For me SEO Audit is one of the toughest task
Hi Anil, its a great post. I want to know if it will be better to hire a professional for SEO audit than do it myself?
I’m agree with all these tips and I’ll going to fix this issue on my blog related to Page load speed.Alexa shows my blog very slow and also other page speed checker tools.
Now I realize that page speed affects my ranking on Google.
Hi Vinayak,
Page speed is one of the crucial factors that is counted by Google ranking factors. Always make sure to keep an eye of your speed and reduce the plugin usage to improve your site speed.
Yeah, you’re right, Page Speed Matters.
I like “spying on the competition” way. i use cognitiveseo tool to spy my competitors. it is the best tool i ever used
I am personally using SEMRush to spy on the competitors. One should focus on social factors too to get the traffic.
N. 5 is the golden key! I’ve been using Adwords KW planner + Long Tail Pro. It’s probably the best combination you can get. Some say they had good success with Wordtracker.
A lot has been written about keyword research, but this might help you: http://bestkeywordtool.info
Hi Jeff,
Yea, that true! LTP and KW planner are two golden tools for keyword research. You will not only find the traffic estimation but also golden keywords that increase organic traffic. Thanks for sharing your suggestion, I’ll check it out soon.
Nice Article..
For speed test, i usually use Pingdom…What do you think, is it a good tool??
Hi Anil,
You’ve beautifully lighten up the points for SEO and keyword research but in term of getting traffic you ignored the most important factor of sharing in Social Media.
Social media is playing a crucial role in getting high rank in SERP after google hummingbird update.
Yea Hafeez, that’s a great point! Social media is SEO, and getting more social shares on your posts can definitely increase your search rankings. Thanks for the tip.
Wonderful post Anil,
You’ve shared some really great seo tips. During these days I’m not taking care of seo as few of blogs are penalized. I guess I’m gonna have to start over.
Thanks
Thanks Anil for such an informative post
i wonder does this SEO tips are applicable with my Article Directory ?
Well, this is my first visit to your blog. We are a group of volunteers and starting a new initiative in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us valuable information to work on. You have done a marvelous job for us. Thanks
Now I have spotted the issue. Actually I was just focussing on keyword research it’s actually a big mistake without recognizing good competition. Thanks this will help me improve.
Great Tips on SEO. I personally like SE Cockpit for my KW research. With that said, long tail keywords are definitely worth writing around then one word KW’s IMO.
hi Anil,
As always doing good guest bloging on big blogs like shoutmeloud, bloggingtips etc. Just wanna encourage you on your usefull tips on seo, guest posting. thanks
Hi Anil
You are so right about keyword research. It is essential to learn the keywords and sprinkle them in your posts. I must admit, I am sometimes lazy with this. Thanks for the reminder. I need to pay more attention to keywords, especially LSI keywords.
Neil
Hi Neil,
Without keyword research and adding primary keywords to your articles, I think you’re wasting time on publishing new posts. So make keyword research a habit while publishing new posts!
Thanks for the article! W3 plugin for wordpress really did miracles on my website speed, I’m just so curious to see how it improves my rankings 🙂
Thank you for your tip about choosing long tail keyword, at the beginning I research keyword with my ambitious I always choose for short keyword with hundreds thousand people search, at the end I have no visitor from that keyword . Now I decide to research long tail keyword.
Once again thank you for your tips
Hi Budi,
Long tail keywords bring you more traffic and most qualified visitors from search engines. So start using them on your future posts if you want to get more organic traffic. Thanks for stopping by!
I need to work on keyword research now.Thanks for this awesome information.
For loading time,I think theme also plays a crucial role.Always try to use Clean coded and responsive theme..!!
Thank you Anil Agarwal for such valuable Seo effective tips and hope to follow these one which gonna help me to increase my blog traffics
Hi Anil,
It’s nice to see your post on basicblogtips. You have provided handy and useful seo tips. Especially, performing seo audit, which is often avoided by many bloggers. I think everyone has to carry out seo audit regularly and maintain their blog’s health accordingly.
Thanks for sharing tips with us.
Thank you Anil for these valuable tips. These would help much for the company in which I am associated. We are just creating a digital marketing team. It would help us build a strong base in SEO
Wow! Awesome article on seo! Thanks ANIL, We want more and killer seo tips and tricks from you. Bookmarked!
good post Anil !!! though if you look at current situation more n more spammy blogs are ranking up in SERPS just due to crap SEO or black hat seo tactics and it is really really bad for those legit bloggers anyway i don’t wanna offend peace !!!
This is a real good post, valuable information. I also tried to get my page speed down do 1.5s , and got it with W3 Total Cache and disabled some javascript that i didnt need.
SEO is the real king for the traffic from the Search Engines and Content should be SEO enriched but also there should never be keyword stuffing otherwise one have to cry later on.
Very Good SEO Tips t T drive traffic to websites.I agree with the point that Page Load Speed is very important to drive traffic to your website.
Great tips, thank you for sharing! I can’t wait to try SemRush and Moz to try and find out the keywords my competitors are using 🙂
SEO is the real king for the traffic from the Search Engines and Content should be SEO enriched but also there should never be keyword stuffing otherwise one have to cry later on.
We need to do SEO in a more aggressive way as there are lots of things chaged and the way Google has headed in filtering sites from their SERP