Generating Organic Website Traffic: Optimization Strategy

In the age of social media, some might mistakenly downplay the importance of a well-run website. No matter how many digital channels you might be reaching an audience through, however, a central digital location will always be vital.

Previously, we highlighted the importance of website ownership. In that blog, we uncovered the true nature of popular drag-and-drop website development platforms. We won’t reiterate the importance of security, transferability, and responsiveness, but that remains a priority in building your website.

Let’s say you have a website, but your analytics are poor. You aren’t getting the organic traffic you need to generate leads and contacts. There are several considerations to make in strategizing your next step. Here, we’ll break down the methods of increasing organic traffic to your website.

Why Organic Traffic Matters

You might read about the shaky ground organic traffic can put you on, like in this blog from Ahrefs, and be tempted to focus solely on paid traffic. Organic traffic, however, has long-lasting benefits for companies that utilize it right. 

Compared to paid ads, where visibility hinges on how long you pay, organic traffic compounds over time, without ongoing costs. Additionally, organic traffic comes with users who are typically more engaged and actively searching for the services your business offers.

Ad targeting is improving, meaning paid ads are being pushed in front of increasingly relevant audiences, but only organic traffic guarantees you an audience specifically seeking a solution to their needs.

Website Design

Of course, website design is always the first place to check for potential pitfalls in your current digital strategy. 

Ensuring your website is properly designed is a key part of optimizing it in search engines. Responsive web design is important for providing your audience with a professional experience, but it also has an impact on your SEO. Coursera has a very insightful article on responsive web design that illustrates the importance and meaning.

This encompasses the concept of UX (or user experience) design. This entails the design elements and construction as users will experience them when they click on your website. Does your website have a consistent feel across pages? Is it easy to navigate and interact with?

How a website feels for users impacts bounce rates, pages per session, and conversion rates: key metrics in SEO. Google’s search engine, in particular, considers these metrics when ranking similarly relevant content.

If you’re interested in building or overhauling your website with the best practices, contact us at Media Rebel to learn how we can help you.

Content Strategy

Effective content strategy is absolutely critical to increasing your organic traffic. Generating consistent, high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience and services you provide is key to getting seen by the right people. This content can come in several forms: from blog posts to interactive tools. 

It’s not just about keywords; content strategy is meant to fulfill a need with your target audience. Whether it’s answering a question consumers have or establishing your industry expertise, this content should engage your audience.

One of the key pillars of organic content is that it is “evergreen.” This means that its relevance won’t expire with time. More timely content might be wiser to hinge on paid boosting, as it will lose relevance by the time you stop. With organic traffic, you want the content to drive traffic over time.

Search Engine Optimization

Of course, the key to unpaid website traffic is SEO. Search engine optimization is improving your website’s visibility through search engine results.

This heavily connects with your content strategy, as that content is what your audience will be looking for when they use a search engine. Keyword research is an integral part of performance in search engines, but so is content relevance. Does your content provide value to your target audience or are you just trying to capitalize on trending topics?

As we’ll always stress, optimization is the most important step in digital strategy. But optimization entails all processes of improving your website’s performance. Improving speed, content quality, and design may not directly affect your rankings in google, but they impact other factors that lead to increased traffic.

With drag-and-drop website building platforms, like Squarespace, you’re hosting your website on their servers. This seems efficient, but the security risks and instability can damage your SEO. With your own website, you are able to get technical improvements and security updates as needed.

Our commitment at Media Rebel to being your experts for all things digital extends to this. We don’t want you feeling like you have to pull together ten different teams to handle digital strategy.

Social Media

Digital strategy is never a single-channel solution. Taking a multi-faceted approach to increasing your digital presence is a key part of seeing results. Although search engines are currently the primary avenue of organic traffic, unpaid social posts can be just as impactful.

Organic social traffic, unfortunately, has become much more challenging to see results from. We recommend a combination of paid and unpaid social media content, bolstering your digital presence.

We recommend you read this blog from Medium, where they outline the current state of organic reach and how to create engaging content to overcome those challenges. It’s important to acknowledge that posting organic social content is not all about the direct return on investment.

I want to highlight the importance of developing your online presence. Some businesses neglect their digital strategy because the immediate ROI seems like a loss. Depending on your industry, it can take a while for you to generate leads.

Digital strategy is an interconnected web that takes patience to build. If you’re too focused on the immediate payoff, you’ll neglect the work that is necessary to reach long term goals.

You can read more about social media strategy in our blog here.

How a Digital Agency Can Do This For You

If all of this sounds like a big headache, that’s where a digital agency can help. We know the ins and outs of the digital landscape. Everything we’ve previously discussed about increasing website traffic is something we specialize in as a digital agency. 

Optimization, for example, is a vital step in understanding what needs to be improved and how. A digital agency will not only monitor your website’s performance but also optimize your strategy over time. With a digital agency, we can help you connect the many facets of your digital strategy to function harmoniously.

At Media Rebel, we emphasize the importance of building a relationship with clients. We do this because we need to understand your brand, audience, and goals in order to develop and execute the most effective digital strategy.

Conclusion

There are no shortcuts to increasing organic traffic. Time, effort, and an all-encompassing strategy are required to gradually build it over time.

Here at Media Rebel, digital strategy is our passion. Whether your website needs a complete overhaul or your content strategy needs that extra boost, we can help your business reach its goals.

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