MARKETING

How to get Quality Organic Traffic for your Website

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

“I’m doing all the right things. I post and share content regarding my product everywhere, on all Social Media Platforms. I even keep updating my content from time to time. But my website is still not generating enough traffic. Why?”

If this is you, or if you have ever run across this problem in your business career, the answer to your woes lies in three sweet words- Search Engine Optimization.

From understanding the workings of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), knowing exactly how Page Rank works, to tips and tricks to generate more traffic for your website, we will cover everything here.

First off, let’s start with the basic definition.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

It is the process of strategic optimization of your content or the way you project your website to generate quality and an increased quantity of organic traffic. An SEO understands how the Search Engine works and helps to get the brand’s web properties on top of the search results.

For the convenience of explaining this topic, I will be using Google as my primary example for a Search Engine.

Which leads us to our next topic, SERP.

What is SERP?

The Search Engine Results Page is the page that immediately appears as soon as you search anything up on Google.

Once we enter a query, Google immediately comes up with the following depending on the type of query:

1. Maps- For location-based searches
2. Product Listings- For product-based searches
3. Images- Image related queries
4. Reviews- For Businesses or Services listed under Google Business Listings
5. How to..?- For queries which require a tutorial, Google lists all possible YouTube videos, forums like Quora.
6. Latest News- News articles, Twitter links
7. Google also narrows down the links provided based on your location.

Now, why is it so important to stay on top of the SERP?

It is extremely important for websites to get on the top of the Search Engine Results Page, as this pretty much guarantees a higher click rate.

To explain this point, we have to understand the demographics of users and click rates-

• 90% of users do not go beyond the 1st page after looking up their query.
• Out of the 10 results listed on the 1st page, only the top 3 results get 60% traffic.
• Out of which, the first result is clicked by 32% of the users.
• 17% of users click the second result.
• 11% of users click the third result.

Hence, if your rank slips in the SERP, you will lose a significant amount of traffic.

Understanding Google’s mechanism for deciding a website’s ranking:

We can divide this into three parts:

1. Crawling-

• Crawling is the process where Google sends bots ( also called spiders) to crawl the World Wide Web and gets a copy of the websites it visits.
• Crawlers get the website data, which is obtained through the sitemap data submitted by the webmasters, and stores it on its servers.
• Google also crawls the links which are mentioned on a particular website.

2. Indexing-

• Google has built an index of all the words it sees on all the websites and its location on the web page.
• It is very similar to the index at the beginning of the book, which shows the chapters in a book along with the page numbers.

3. Ranking and Serving-

• Google typically gets millions of results for every search query.
• The ranking is basically Google’s way of determining the factors based on which a certain website should appear higher on the results page.
• Ranking of a page is mainly dependent on factors like- the quality of content, technical robustness of the website, how many other websites refer to your website link on their page, and ease of navigation.

Factors that an SEO works on-

The following are the different points that an SEO takes into consideration while viewing a website:

1. How relevant is the website to the query?
2. Is the web page high in keyword density? As in, is the website rich in content, or is it mostly clickbait without much information.
3. How technically robust is the website.
4. Is the mobile-friendly? This is very important as most of the users use their mobiles to view a website or search up a query. There is a higher chance for the user to leave the website if it doesn’t have a mobile-compatible web page.
5. Security and privacy of the website. Is it a secure site for the users to venture into?
6. Ease of navigation on the website. How easy is it to understand the workings of the site? Is it user-friendly?
7. Are the images tagged properly?
8. Engagement of users on the website. What is the click rate? Do they stay for a long time on the site? Do the users move from one page on the website to another?

Tips and Tricks to Optimize your Website’s Content-

1. Keyword Density-

It is the number of times the query word is repeated on the page. The main focus keywords should be repeated quite a few times on the website. It also helps to use long-tail keywords, which comprise of two to three words.

2. Length of Page-

Make sure that every post is at least 2000 words long. The content should also be refreshed from time to time to make sure that the user is hooked on to your website.

3. Inter-ranking of Website-

It truly helps to have references and links to other sites on your website and vice versa. This is called Affiliate Marketing. Each time a user clicks on the link provided by your site, you get a commission. Also, if your website link is referred to on another site, it increases your website’s chances of getting recognized.

4. Privacy and Terms-

The privacy policy of the website should be present at least in the footer of the website. The terms of service must also be mentioned.

5. Cookie Policy -

Cookies are basically tags that a website puts on a visitor’s browser. It is now of utmost importance that all websites should include a cookie policy. This requires the website to disclose to the users on how your website uses cookies.

6. NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number)-

Always make sure to mention your contact details on your website, and the details must be accurate.

7. Off-page SEO-

There are some websites that have a comment box at the end of their web page. Most of the time, this feature is misused by many users. Irrelevant links are left behind in the comment section, making the ranking of the web page go below in the Search Page.

To avoid this, add a filter like <meta name=” robots” content =” no follow”>.

This ensures that Google doesn’t look at these links while Crawling the web.

8. Social Media Presence-

Give major importance to building a good social media presence. A few things which can be done by you is to create a Google+ account and advertise there as well.

Create an account with Google Business Pages. This ensures a lot of SEO traffic. Post links of your website on Social Media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, which is a great way of promoting your business.

9. Business Directories and Forums-

• List yourself in multiple online directories that are present.
• Write answers on popular forums like Quora and Reddit, answering questions related to your website content. At the end of the answer, leave your website’s link, allowing the reader to explore your website upon clicking.

Conclusion-

To conclude, Search Engine Optimization is necessary to boost the traffic to your website. Implement the tips and tricks provided to improve your page rank in the Search Engine Results Page.

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