How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Blog
Building organic traffic can be one of the most difficult tasks of building a blog. It's also by far one of the most important. Especially if you want a successful blog that continues to build a solid readership despite fluctuations in social media platforms and trends.
As an example, organic search engine traffic makes up about 59% of the traffic for my first blog. That means that over half of the success of my blog depends on organic traffic. I'd say that's a pretty important building block!
Let's examine what “organic traffic” means in the context of blog traffic, WHY it's important, and some simple but effective ways in which you can increase it.
What is Organic Traffic?
Essentially, it's counted as “organic traffic” anytime someone opens a search engine, types in a search term, and clicks on a link to your website.
For this reason, organic traffic is one of the most valuable kinds of traffic. These are the people searching for the exact information you're offering (making them your prime target audience). They are not landing on your blog purely out of curiosity or boredom (as is many times the case with catchy headlines and pretty social media images).
Your main job with organic traffic is to deliver exactly what they are expecting when they open your article. For instance, given the title of this post “How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Blog”, my goal is to give you exactly the information that someone searching that term would want.
Anyone typing that search term into Google already knows a little about what organic traffic is, and they want to know exactly how they can increase it for their own blog.
So, how do you increase organic traffic? Unfortunately, it's not something that happens overnight. It takes good ole' time and effort.
4 Simple Ways to Increase Your Organic Traffic
Fortunately, while it does take time and effort, building organic traffic doesn't have to be terribly complex. Here are the simplest key factors that I have found to increasing your organic reach:
SEO and Keywords
The SEO of your blog posts and website (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization), is the foundation of good organic reach.
If you own a blog, some of the first skills you should learn are how to do simple keyword research and how to use long tail keywords in your blog posts.
In addition to this, you should have a basic knowledge of how to optimize your website. Alternatively, you can have an SEO expert look over your site and either optimize it or make suggestions for you to make changes yourself.
Consistent and Quality Content
When it comes to blogging, consistency is key. You don't necessarily have to post every day. You may not even wish to post every week. But, you should make a plan to post regularly.
If every week is more than you can handle right now, shoot for every two weeks or every month. But generally, the more often, the better as long as…
Your posts are on-topic and quality content. For the most part, search engines like to ‘see' that you post quality content that people will find useful.
It's also helpful if your content stays within the same topic areas. The more relevant content you have for each topic on your blog, the more likely your blog will be seen as an authority on the subject.
Internal and Outbound Links
What you link to in your blog posts is another important component to seo and increasing organic reach. You should be linking to relevant content on your own blog as well as relevant content from other blogs and websites.
Make sure that each blog posts has a few links, but don't overdo it. A good rule of thumb is to do this organically. Ask yourself, do my readers need more information about this than what is in this post? If so, link them to the information they need.
Quality Backlinks
Getting quality backlinks is one of the most difficult parts of increasing your organic traffic. Backlinks are created anytime another website or blog links to yours. Ideal backlinks come from quality websites and blogs, and come from content that is relevant to your own blog.
The reason it's so difficult to acquire good backlinks is because it's not really something you can directly pursue yourself. You have no control over who links to you or why.
One way you can gain and control some backlinks is by guest posting on other blogs in your niche.
You should beware of spammy backlink exchange requests. These could actually hurt your organic reach more than help it.
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If you take the time and effort to do it properly, building organic reach could pay off for many years to come. In fact, a good strategy could be a major launch for the popularity of your blog and your ability to reach your ideal readers.
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<< Last week I discussed How to Use Long Tail Keywords Properly in Your Blog Posts.
>> Next week I'll be talking about the keys to SEO optimizing your entire blog.
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Thanks for the Advice, Vanessa!
No problem, David. Thanks for reading!
Great tips – I feel as though long tail keywords are becoming more and more important, especially with voice search. Thanks for sharing!
I agree with you 🙂
I’ve been trying to work on keywords. These posts you linked I checked out and now I’m excited to start researching keywords!
It can seem scary, but once you get the basics down it’s really quite simple and can help grow your blog so much!
Some useful points for someone who loves to blog but misses out on ‘getting out there!’ Thanks
So glad you found it useful, Wendy!
Excellent stuff, Vanessa. I was wondering if you were coming with any surprises, but you are thinking exactly as I am. So many of us have given up on SEO, focussing on other traffic sources. However, there is nothing like organic traffic.
It’s true. Organic traffic can be frustrating because it’s definitely not an overnight thing. But, it’s well worth it.