Whether you’re a B2B or B2C, blogging is likely to be one of your main digital marketing strategies. There are plenty of opportunities to improve your blog search rankings if you understand how to generate traffic to your website.
We usually say to our clients that generating organic traffic is a bit like running a marathon, it takes a lot of effort and above all a long-term goal.
In addition, to having a long-term goal, you may want to know the new rules of the game, because you can’t use a short-term approach to create a long-term result such as organic traffic generation.
Some of the strategies that worked in the past will now get you penalised. On the other hand, some strategies that formerly weren’t worth your time are now essential.
Popular ways to generate organic traffic to a website include blogging, social media, SEO and email marketing. Many of them should be used together to maximise your results.
Healthy business websites obtain a large portion of their traffic through blogging, and while we strongly recommend that you continue to create high quality content on a weekly basis, optimising your posts and promoting them via social channels and emails will definitely increase your rankings on search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Below are our 5 top tips on how to improve your blog organic search rankings
1) Stop That Obsession With Keywords
Since August 2013 when Google rolled out the Hummingbird update, it appeared clear that their goal was to move away from seeing search queries as a string of keywords and move towards appreciating the more complex environment of their use.
Google now places greater emphasis on the value of your content as a whole rather than on the single keywords it contains.
You still have to optimise your content for keywords though because the search engine still relies on keywords to understand the relevance of your content, but the days of “keyword stuffing” are long gone. Google wants to see quality content that helps your audience gain useful information.
2) Share Your Content On Social Media
In order to rank high on search engines, you need to get your content out into cyberspace, and obviously the best and quickest way to do so is by gaining brand visibility through social media.
Share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, do it every week, keep yourself accountable. The winning strategy is having your content featured on more than one social channel, ideally tailoring your sharing to each of them.
Your social media fans and followers might not be ready to purchase your products or services yet, but they are interested in reading new content on your blog.
The idea is that your content creation strategy will ultimately improve the user experience of your fans who will start visiting your website more often, increasing the level of engagement on your social media. Good content, along with a social media presence will increase your brand’s visibility and you’ll generally notice more links.
3) Optimise Your Website For Mobile
Mobile optimisation is no longer an optional extra. With increasing numbers of people surfing the net on their smartphones, more potential clients are looking at your website from their mobile devices (phones & tablets). Mobile has essentially taken over, as we forecasted in our SEO predictions 2016 blog back in December 2015.
We strongly recommend that you optimise your website for mobiles. Our three top tips for mobile optimisation are:
Content: Discover which content generates more traction with mobile visitors to your website and use this information to your advantage.
Layout: Ensure that your pages, menus and posts are optimised for mobile.
Behaviours: Use tools such as Crazy Egg to help you assess the behaviours of mobile vs desktop users, then address your landing page strategy accordingly. You might have to create specific landing pages for mobile.
4) Quality Versus Quantity Links
In the old days, content marketing experts used to say the more links to a website, the better…Well not anymore. Since the Google Penguin update in 2012, there are agencies out there who will buy hundreds of links for you, but be careful, because this is black hat SEO and could lead to a penalty from Google and potentially ruin your brand.
What matters most these days is the quality of your inbound links, rather than the quantity. Any impact that you get from link building works on the idea that these links provide real value to users who might click them.
“Earn” Links while promoting your content
You won’t get reciprocal links by magic. If you are keen on to enhancing your brand awareness, then you will have to work hard on promoting your content. This is something we do everyday at Cariad Marketing for our clients and for our own website.
If you don’t have an inbound marketing strategy, then it will be hard to build an adequate amount of organic traffic. If that is the case, just drop us a line, our team of experts will be more than happy to help.
The most important element when trying to earn links, is to figure out who your audience is and which problems all these prospects have in common that your business could solve.
Your core content topics should directly address these needs, and your social media posts should reinforce that content on a regular basis.
“Earned Links” reflect the value that you deliver to your market. When another credible source in your industry links to the content on your website, then you have earned a link. As you have probably gauged by now, there are no shortcut strategies to increase the number of earned links to your site, apart from creating good quality content on a regular basis.
An increasing number of good quality earned links will ultimately resonate with a larger audience, attracting more people to your website, and as a consequence increasing your organic traffic.
Looking for SEO/Content Marketing advice for your website? If you would like to speak to an expert get in touch by calling us on 01992 582824 or complete our contact form and a member of the team will be in touch.
