6 SEO Techniques That Will Increase Organic Traffic and Drive Sales
The goal of effective SEO is to drive organic traffic and generate leads. Let’s examine some of the most effective SEO techniques used in digital marketing.
One of the biggest challenges of running a business is attracting customers on a regular basis. And, unfortunately, if you don’t attract customers regularly, you’ll fail to bring in adequate revenue, causing your business to go under.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to ensure a consistent flow of customers. Namely, you can pursue SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
Wondering how to pursue SEO so that your website receives as much organic traffic as possible? Then read on. Here are 6 SEO techniques for you to utilize.
Table of Contents
- Do Keyword Research
- Write Guest Posts
- Publish High-quality Content
- Be Active on Social Media
- Pay Attention to the Technical Aspects of Your Website
- Optimize the Speed of Your Website
1. Do Keyword Research
First and foremost, you need to do keyword research. This involves using a keyword research tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs and using it to find keywords that are relevant to your niche.
Let’s say you run a plumbing company. If so, you would want to find keywords that relate to the field of plumbing, for instance, “plumbing services”, “plumbing repair”, and “pipe replacement”.
A keyword research tool will not only inform you of the existence of these keywords but will also provide you with metrics on them. This way, you can see how often they’re searched, how many other sites are trying to rank for them, and more.
Note, a good strategy starting out is to use long-tail keywords. These are typically longer and length and greater in complexity. They don’t attract as many searches but have less competition, and are therefore easier to rank for.
Using our plumbing example, a long-tail keyword would be something like “emergency plumbing repair in Seattle”. Use keywords like these on website pages and blog posts, and you should start ranking for relevant searches fairly soon.
2. Write Guest Posts
If you want to rank at the top of the search engine rankings, you have to get other websites to link to your website. These links are known as backlinks and they’re integral to online marketing success.
The question is: how do you get backlinks? After all, you can’t just force other websites to post links to your website.
While there are a number of options to pursue, one of the easiest is to write guest posts. This entails contacting the managers of other websites, offering to write posts for their blogs, and then dropping links to your website within the blog posts.
In some cases, you’ll have to pay to get a guest posting opportunity. If the website has enough authority online, this is worth your while. Otherwise, you should only write guest posts for free.
3. Publish High-quality Content
SEO isn’t all strategy. If you really want to rank well, you have to deliver excellent content. Not only will excellent content catch the attention of the search engine but it will also appeal to real-life web users, causing them to go to your website, spend time there, and maybe even click through to other pages.
Search engines will gauge user behavior on your website. The longer users stick around, and the more they click through to other pages, the more credibility the search engines will assign to the website.
If your page lacks high-quality content, users aren’t going to stick around. In fact, they’re more likely to click out of your website as quickly as possible. In the long run, that would actually hurt your SEO.
4. Be Active on Social Media
Social media usage isn’t directly tied to SEO success. However, the more you engage with other social media users, the more visitors you’ll have to your website, and the more trustworthy it will become with search engines over time. There’s also a chance of social media users sharing your blog posts, thus widening your reach.
For this reason, you’re advised to be active on social media as much as possible. Posting 3 to 5 times a week can make a world of difference. Be sure to share all of your blog posts and content marketing materials, and be sure to engage with commenters as well.
5. Pay Attention to the Technical Aspects of Your Website
While backlinks and content are perhaps the two most important aspects of SEO, they’re not the only aspects you should pay attention to. You also need to put effort into the technical aspects of your website. This entails quite a bit.
For one, make sure that it’s easily navigable. Ensure that it’s simple for users to get to where they need to go. Put a navigation menu at the top of the page and place clickable buttons throughout the page below.
For two, make sure there are no 404 errors. These are horrible for SEO and will cause your rankings to plummet. Remedy them by replacing them with 301 redirects.
It’s also necessary to focus on metadata such as image alt tags, meta descriptions, meta titles, and the like. Optimize these with relevant keywords so as to indicate the purpose of your website.
6. Optimize the Speed of Your Website
An important ranking metric for SEO purposes is page speed. The faster your website loads, the more credibility it will have with search engines. Generally speaking, you want your website to take a maximum of 3 seconds to load.
Now, how do you speed up your website? For one, you could minimize the size of its images. For two, you could minify its underlying code. For three, you could cache user data.
In truth, there are all sorts of things you can do. So, put the effort in and optimize your load speed as much as possible.
Need Help Putting These SEO Techniques Into Action?
And there they are, 6 SEO techniques to help your business make more sales. Put these techniques into action, and soon enough, you’ll have a steady and consistent customer base from which to draw.
Need help launching an SEO campaign? If so, we here at Four Winds Agency have you covered. We’re well-versed in all things digital marketing and can help launch a full-scale digital marketing campaign for your business.
Contact us today to get the ball rolling!