Investing your time to increase organic (free) web traffic can create long-lasting results.
This post launches a series about how to increase organic traffic to your site.
Developing a website is pretty exciting. A lot of work goes into planning and building the site, and many website owners mistakenly think that once their site is up and running, people will start flocking to it. If only that were the case! The “if you build it, they will come” concept should really read, “if you build it the right way, they will come.” So, during this blog series, “How to Increase Organic Traffic,” I will share things you can do – even tactics you can implement immediately – that can generate web traffic, both quickly and long-term.
Understanding the two main types of traffic
Website traffic comes from a variety of sources, but they can all pretty much be categorized into two types: Free and Paid.
Paid traffic is driven to your site or blog through advertising. You or someone on your staff develops an ad campaign for a specific product or service you want to promote, and when people browsing the Internet run across those ads and are enticed by them, they click on the ad and are taken to your site. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s the basic concept.
Free, or organic, traffic, comes when people choose to visit your site because they’ve seen a content snippet with a link that piqued their interest. Where do site visitors find snippets of your content? From search engine results pages (SERPs), social media posts, and references to your site on other people’s blogs and websites (referrals). Offline sources, such as business cards and brochures, can invite people to visit your site, which also brings free traffic.
Busting myths about how to increase organic traffic
There is no secret sauce, magic formula, or ninja trick on how to increase organic traffic. But there are plenty of useful, inexpensive, and even free ways to build your website traffic. And the good part is, rather than hoping for the Internet powers that be to align in a specific manner, you can control the destiny of your website’s success.
You may have run across eBooks, eCourses, and ads for products that promote some special formula to bring free traffic to your site. Most of those are hype, but there is one key component to all websites that have a good amount of organic traffic – Quality.
If you’re wanting to know how to increase organic traffic to your blog or website, develop a high-quality site with high-quality content. Period.
How quality plays a role in improving your site’s organic traffic
Organic traffic can be serendipitous. I’ve had posts bring a lot of traffic to some of my websites that were never written with the intent of increasing traffic. If I found a tactic that worked well for me, I figured it would likely help someone else out there, so I wrote a blog post about it.
Although it wasn’t planned, I used two pillars of high-quality content in those posts: Usefulness and Relevance. The content was helpful to others, as it had been for me, and it was relevant to my audience. So, not only did people read the post they came to read, they stayed on the site and consumed more content.
That is one of the huge benefits of organic traffic.
But, and this is the good part, improving organic traffic to your site doesn’t have to be accidental. It can (and should) be a planned part of your overall business strategy. And that strategic planning to improve free traffic is what you’ll learn in the remaining posts in this series on how to increase organic traffic.