Traffic is the lifeblood of your online business.
With qualified traffic you can build a long-term profitable business and experience meteoric growths in and around your website. But how do you go about generating consistent traffic?
Despite the frightening competitions online, I believe that there is a better way to achieve tremendous success online. It may not be instant, and I don’t expect or promise unrealistic results, but if you properly position your website, Google will send you some rich and targeted traffic.
I run a white hat SEO company and I helped clients with SEO for more than 10 years now, small or large, and it seems that the most ones follow the same principles: research the target market well, then address their concerns and needs with great content and then build backlinks to their sites. And here are 4 quick and effective ways to increase organic traffic to your site. You have to keep working at it until results come. Don’t give up too soon – your target audience is waiting for you.
Study the Market Properly
Market research takes a deep review into the minds of your target audience. There is a group of people for you. Every person is not meant to visit your site and use the products and services you offer.
You’ve got to know who this person is. A deep knowledge about the ‘one’ person who would benefit from your website is the best way to penetrate and target a handful of others.
That means you’ve to select one person at random from the target audience and conduct an intensive demographic and geographic research. Find out what this person likes. Where the person hangs out and what type of content the person reads. Rather than researching 1000 people in your niche, pick one active person and scale it up.
This is a practical guide. It’s the naked marketing strategy used by multinational and consumer-related companies. Once you can pinpoint what a particular person wants, without the guess work or assumption, you can easily win the hearts of thousands consumers.
Address One Person in Your Content
Do you want your content to produce more traffic?
The best way to position your website and increase organic traffic is to write to one person at a time. A good headline that is catchy is necessary, but it’s just the first puzzle. When a reader clicks your article headline and discovers it’s generic and nothing spectacular, he or she would click the back button and leave.
The audience you’re targeting isn’t going to read your content at once. It’s a personal task. When you write to address one person and the problem he or she is facing, it’ll create an emotional nexus between you and the rest of the world.
We know that people make buying decisions based on emotions and justify by logic. So, spare them the generic information and speak the language they understand. When you write to address one person’s problem, you would increase conversion rate and breed much engagement.
Target Keywords On The Introduction
There are two vantage positions to place keywords when writing content for your website. They’re: the headline and the introduction. Keywords are important as they are food for search engine spiders.
A lot of people out of sheer anger had neglected keyword research. And without directing search engine spiders properly, the likelihood of ranking on Google first page is low. The fact that Google Penguin and Panda affected websites stuffed with keywords doesn’t mean you should stop using keywords on your content.
Note: The Penguin and Panda updates didn’t forbid or ban keyword research and placements. What you should avoid is keyword stuffing. As long as Google stays at the forefront of search marketing, keywords and key phrases will continue to be relevant to search ranking.
And, as I said earlier, try to add your keyword in the headline. But always remember, persuasive headlines are far more important from a conversion point of view than having keywords inserted in the headline. SEO should come secondary to conversions when it comes to headlines.
Pro Tip: if you have some budget, test headlines with AdWords, using A/B/n testing and once you’ve indentified the winner use it as your headline in your copy.
The introduction is the next section search spiders read after the headline (usually a H1 or H2 HTML element). If you neglect to place the target keyword there, you’ll miss out a bit on SEO. Keywords are guides for search engines. It helps in crawling and indexing fresh content. Use them naturally. Focus on engaging the reader. It’s the key point.
For More Traffic Reap the Benefits of Links
Google and other search engines respect links because they depict relevancy and in-depth marketing insights. Links act like votes: page A is linking to page B, therefore page A vouches for page B.
Use keyword-rich anchor text to interlink pages on your site by building hero pages (pages that target competitive keywords) and link to such pages from supporting pages (pages that target long tail keywords) using a variety of anchor texts.
But the back links (links from other sites) are the most important. You need external such links to improve search engine rankings. However, what you should aim for is authority links. I’m talking about links from authority, sites that are the best in your industry or sites like .edu and .gov.
But you have to be creative when linking from authority sites. Create epic content before linking out.
Takeaway
As you begin to drive organic traffic, map out strategies to engage and convert the visitors. At this point, email marketing should be your #1 priority – capture, convince and convert your traffic.
See you at the top of the traffic charts!
Hey Traian,
Im trying to interlink my pages, but I dont have very many atm so its a little difficult. Each post I publish is now SEO and has had keywords researched propely. Just got to work on converting my visitors a bit more. Nice share.
Hey Simmeon. I guess I have the best article for you at my blog! Read the article linked in this comment! All the best 🙂
Simmeon, you actually need only 2 pages to interlink them. Within your article you don’t need to link to another 100 pieces. When you write something that is related to the subject matter of another article, just link to it.
Hey Traian, a question for you – If our blog/business is in a high competition niche, how much should we expect from it? Or should we just continue following the rules and wait for the result?
Raaj, it really depends on how competitive the niche is and the intensity of your efforts. But as you already know, onsite optimization is just a part of the whole. And actually it’s not the most important part of it. Backlinks matter the most and it seems like you’re also doing it. Just keep on doing it.
Of course, the more competitive the Niche is, the longer it will take to get the site to where you want it to be in the rankings. Stick with it, keep building those links, and make sure that the CONTENT is A1!!
Hi Traian,
Your post really sets it straight and gives us a sense of understanding because with all the different changes Google made (Penguin and Panda) it has got people so nervous they are not sure on what’s right.
Just like anything else in life, everything in moderation. Too much of anything is not good. Too many key words is not good. Now key word stuffing your content is a dangerous thing to do. Keeping it natural is key.
Also good information about links and letting us all realize that building a list is also very important.
Thanks for sharing this with us Traian. Keep on keeping on,
Terry Conti
Thanks, Terry. You’ve nailed it too, “Keeping it natural is key” – that’s exactly we should do.
Lovely post !! sometimes I just thinking on how to increase or generating organic visitor to my blog after all the SEO work are done. I do backlinking, implementing SEO method both for on page and off page SEO, active for some forums etc and when I saw my traffic is still flat (I really wanna a jump traffic statistic) I have to think out of the box in order to increase my organic traffic and Your post is very inspiring me Ileane….
Terima Kasih (Thank You so much)
Sorry to burst the bubble Hendarto, but this post is not written by Ileane. It is a guest post by Traian and you may want to appreciate his contribution.
Oh My God !! I’m so sorry for my careless, I thought this article is written by Ileane but the truth is Mr. Traian and of course I have to put my highly apreciation to Mr. Traian and many thanks for this valuable post.
Hendarto, don’t worry. I know it was unintended mistake 🙂 Thanks for the kind words.
Thanks Traian for the great article. I never thought about strategically pinpointing one person out the group to collect intel on. I’m going to try with this state of mind. Thanks again.
Hi Traian,
Focus on engaging and converting above all else. I like it, because at times our content becomes a bit confusing and muddled if obsessed with SEO.
Even if you avoid keyword stuffing or blackhat tactics you can dilute your message by obsessing with SEO. As you note, write a persuasive title if you want to convert. Leave keywords in or take out if necessary. Remember, people buy your products, not search engines. Write for people first. Factor in SEO later. Create free flowing, natural sounding content. Read posts out loud. Do they pass the test? Sound natural?
Pepper keywords throughout your content but make your posts sound natural and free flowing before doing anything else. Communicate with search engines but maintain the focus on writing engaging, helpful content which converts readers as you build your list. Nobody will care much about your content if it doesn’t speak to them…understand what I mean?
Thanks Traian!
Ryan
Ryan,
I totally understand. One of my passions is conversion rate optimization, and as SEO practitioner I always have to balance these two components. Here’s how I do it usually: let’s say I am targeting some keywords for a page which is not ranking in top 10 (almost no organic traffic nor page views). Initially, I am perfecting the on page SEO by creating the best document outline (headings structure) and everything else on the page, to get the maximum (and possibly a boost) with on page SEO. At the same time I start building links to the page. Once the page has enough supporting backlinks to get and maintain top results, I switch the on page copy to persuade humans rather than search engine bots.
Cheers!
Hi Traian,
Thanks so much for the highly informative post and especially for this detailed comment on how you go about writing for both SEO ranking and for your reader. My husband and I are fairly new at blogging and sometimes get confused as to where we should be focussing…SEO or the reader. Your balanced approach makes a lot of sense. And I love the writing to one person advice!
Nice to read a post from a fellow Canadian too!
All the best,
Pat
I wish you good luck with blogging, Pat.
Studding the arket properly is a very important step most of the new bloggers are loosing their worth at.They must not pounce in the populate niches.
Hello Traian,
Addressing one person to our content can be useful to reduce bounce rate, but I don’t think that it can be helpful in getting organic traffic. And yes adding targeted keyword in headlines is really great and Google will easily index those pages. Thanks for the tips anyway.
Hi Eshan,
Addressing one person (or persona if you will) it’s meant to convert traffic better. But, at the same time, it will help pinpoint that specific persona’s needs. Once you identified their needs, you will try to understand what kind of questions would they ask to address them. If you know the questions, you will then build your content around them to attract and convert. Of course, you should not probably target just one persona, but few.
Thanks for such a detailed and comprehensive post Traian. You are so right about creating internal links, and using a persuasive title with keywords.
Happy to know lots of people liked the article.
Superb article Traian,
I never do any keyword research whenever I publish a post.
I always go with whatever line comes in my mind. I think that;s the only reason I don’t see more organic traffic on my blog.
Anyway, great article. Thanks 🙂
Arbaz,
If you know your target market very well, probably your mind is focused on identifying and solving their needs, and your content will pursuit the same. But, believe me, addressing your target market at different buying stages with the right content it’s much easier if you would do some keyword research first. At minimum, do the keyword research for the title of the post 😉
Ileane,
Thanks so much for this article…very specific and easy to understand!!
I was going to ask a quick question if I might about keywords. Is it better to have only 1 or 2 keywords in a post and focus on them or is it better to have a number of them and try to integrate them into your post….or does it matter?
Thanks for the help!! 🙂
Scott
Hi Scott,
I will reply to your question (Ileane was kind enough to let me write this guest post :)). I would say you can target 2-3 keywords on a page, given that they are variances of the same keyword and each keyword is not too competitive. For example, you can’t target “car washing robots” and “vegetable choppers” on the same page, but you could target “car washing robots” and “robotics and car washing”.
every business must do a good work in terms of SEO, or else they do not stand a chance to compete, also people should look to localize their SEO attempts for better results
Yes that is a true, I am using local place + keyword to get btr SEO advantage
When you say don’t give up too soon how many week or months are you referring to? I’ve seen a slight drop of traffic on one of my sites and have been adding more content since. Wondering how long it may take. I know it’s not as long as Google used to be “scrapping” the web. Interesting about email marketing. I’ve been separating our list into buckets and must work on getting some out. Thanks!
Lisa, I would say that you have to keep adding content on your site, not only to recover the drop in traffic, but to steadily increase it. Usually my blog posts are indexed within minutes, but it depends on the site authority. So, keep adding good content, don’t worry when it’s going to be indexed.
“Research the target market well” is my downfall. I know a bit about my target market, but not a lot. I have to do a better job at this. Thanks Traian.
I realise this is not what the point you are making with ‘Target Keywords on The Introduction’, but I find it quite valuable to to target the ‘low-hanging’ fruit keywords on markets that are in the introduction phases and do not present show high volumes of traffic in Google. Do you practice the same with your search engine optimisation clients? I know this somewhat a tangent of your initial point, but not of the posts primary topic. I appreciate your thoughts on this.
I would say 90% of the clients I work(ed) with came with very clear demands and researched keywords. Most of them want to rank for head terms (money terms) which are not way close to low-hanging. There are cases where clients ask me to research their keywords, but again they want to go with head terms. And some of them use a mixed strategy: I rank them for the money term, and they do their part at ranking the long tail by creating the needed content.
Great post Traian, and yes it’s true that our first priority should be email marketing.
You can’t go wrong with that one, also giveaways are good ways to attract nice amount of traffic.
thanks for sharing
Great tips for attracting organic traffics to our blog. Backlinks are very important for driving organic traffic.
Thanks for sharing it………
Very, very informative post here & you’ve broken it down in a plain & simple way that makes a lot of sense. Do some research, study & learn who your target market is, what problems, concerns or questions they have & provide a solution to them…you can’t loose when you do it this way even though it may take time to get to this point this is definitely the thing to keep in mind if you really want to be successful!
Thanks for sharing this one:)
Wonderful article! One of the ways to get traffic is to comment on the blogs with good recognition and page rank. This helps a lot to expose you to the community.
Hi Traian,
I have read many times to research your audience, their likes & dislikes and so on. But I’m sure how to do it properly. In this post you mentioned to focus on one person… but how would you research his activity?? Are their any tools to do it perfectly?? Please let me know.
Hi Asma,
Probably a better word for “person” would actually be “persona”. I did not wanted to use the term as it may not be familiar to many. So, a persona groups together individuals who share a common profile within your target market. Unfortunately creating a buyer profile means a lot of research process can’t be automated with tools. You have to dig really deep to answer questions such as: What are this persona’s most important job responsibilities and activities? Which ones relate most closely with your products?, How does this persona measure success? Do any of your services have the ability to help them achieve that? What is the person’s level of education? What is the person’s age? and so on.
I know how hard it is to create this profile since there is no hands-on advice on the Internet on how to do it. It took me 2 months to complete the profile, but at the end of the process I become very conscious of my target market issues and needs.
It is not easier to get organic traffic to our site or blogs. But this post really helps to attract organic visitors to our blogs. It is important to study the market properly. You should know what readers or audience wants from your blogs. Titles must be eye catching that attract readers to visits our blogs. Unique and good quality content also matters.
Hello! Finding the right keywords that is relevant to the public is the key. If you found the right keywords, invest time in researching about it and make it very informative and appealing to the public. It must have a solid content and very educational.
Hi Traian,
The four habits you’ve mentioned are quite a good overview of a great guide most webmasters can use to gain more traffic to their website. Though I think one other key area is the design of a website. This is key if you want to attract users to a specific page or guide them through a sales funnel to convert to a sale. This is one of the area’s you can either get recommendations or bad worth of mouth – pending on the UI (user interface) and the experience offered to the user. With the importance of Social Sharing, it is also a key attribute to a well-designed and optimized website.
Yes, you are right. Landing pages are a great factor for conversion and should also be addressed properly. Landing page testing and conversion rate optimization are part science, part art. The look and feel of the site/page is important, but I’ve seen cases where ugly (from my pov) converted much better than modern design. And that has also to do with the target market.
Thanks for commenting.
a great post must say this post is not only talking about SEO stuff but gave me knowledge on marketing too. the first two point which Traian you made is helped me realize my mistake ,but still i am in one doubt my niche is photography right which mean i have to write very little on it (main part only pictures) so how can i address that post for only person?
Rohit, one person-type, or let’s call it persona, can be nature photographers, others can be portrait photographers. And there’s so much content about photography that one can write. Here’s just an example http://lifehacker.com/5712982/how-to-take-great-portrait-photos
hi,
thank you traian for your reply now i understand little bit but still in some little doubt if person now concentrated on one person category then don’t you thing he/she might miss other opportunity, i guess we have to make a balance between our category like on moday have to target this catergory then on tuesday other.
and thank you for this wonderful example will try to write more on every post from now on
Rohit, try to focus on one persona at a time. At least when you research them. Trying to profile 5 personas at the same time it’s an incredibly difficult task, believe me. Define one persona cleary, then the content strategy for it, slowly start writing the content to address it’s need, and then move to the next one. I would not go with more than 3-4 personas .
hmmm oki will try to do this from now then will contact you with my result.
take care
Keyword research is fundamental to ensuring that you get the right traffic to your site. It is definitely worth the upfront effort to ensure that you are focussing on the right keywords.
I also like the idea of using adwords to test out various heading options. I have used adwords previously to hone in on the key long tail keywords that I want to target through my SEO.
I totally agree with your tips. It is essential to place the keywords several times throughout the content, but we should keep it at a decent level. On teh other hand, we should create link-able content and focus on the needs of our target readers.
Nice sharing. I am a regular visitor of your blog. But one question for you. How to increase Specific “Keyword Ranking”?
i always place the keywords at the two lines of introduction because search engine spider crawls first two links of the article. After sometime they will crawl the whole post.
Yes, you are right. Landing pages are a great factor for conversion and should also be addressed properly. Landing page testing and conversion rate optimization are part science, part art. The look and feel of the site/page is important, but I’ve seen cases where ugly (from my pov) converted much better than modern design. And that has also to do with the target market.
Nice. I need to focus more on creating habits that will lead to my own success. That way I will have to think about my actions less and hopefully just get more into a flow.
Great tips here, Traian, especially on focusing on one person when you write your blog post. The Internet has a wide reach, but the communication and connection between a blog post and a reader is on a one-to-one level. Every decision that the potential reader does is his or her own decision, and not a collective one.
We’re trying to attract as much organic traffic as possible. By having a chat box on the website we’ve been able to engage with visitors a bit more which keeps our Bounce Rate really low. This way, in case Google do or do not have it in their algorithm we’ve got it covered.