people who would tell you that it’s next to impossible to generate decent organic traffic. The good news for us is that they are wrong.
There are people who would tell you that it’s next to impossible to generate decent organic traffic. The good news for us is that they are wrong.
The fact is, we all rely on traffic from search engines to an extent. Maximizing this traffic is a tricky, but achievable goal.
One of the best ways to increase your organic traffic is by using content marketing techniques. Content marketing is the creation of content, made with the goal of attracting a target audience and gaining leads.
Let’s take a look at some of the techniques you can use to bring an audience to your site.
Refine Your Niche:
If you’re into content marketing, I know you’ve already heard this one before. That being said, I can’t emphasize enough just how important defining and refining your niche is. Let’s take a closer look at this.
Say you have a blog on fitness. Great, you’ve successfully defined a niche to work in. However, just because you’ve chosen a niche doesn’t mean the work stops there. You need to dig deeper into this niche and carve out a profitable spot just for you.
A good example of refining this niche would be to focus on at-home-workouts or natural weight loss. You get the idea– you’re under the greater umbrella of fitness but now you’ve narrowed it down a bit.
So how do you do this? The answer lies with research. Like so much that comes with successful content marketing, research is going to be the key to refining your niche into something unique, yet profitable.
A great niche will ensure that you’re working with less competition but still have access to a solid target audience. The best way to go about this is by conducting thorough keyword research to find topics with the right amount of traffic that aren’t totally saturated.
You’ll find that with the proper niche, your target audience will come to you, and better yet, they’re more likely to engage with your content at a higher rate.
All of this means that people who are seeking this niche content will be drawn to your site, and that equals more organic traffic.
Now that we’re on the topic of your target audience, let’s get a better understanding of what that means.
Understand Your Target Audience:
This is a big one. Understanding who your target audience is and what they’re searching for is crucial to getting more organic traffic.
When you consider the fact your target audience is who we’re referring to when it comes to traffic, this comes as no surprise.
The first step you want to take is to understand who your audience is. That means audience demographics.
What geographic locations are they coming from, what is the age range, and does gender play a role? You can use Google Analytics to get real data in order to answer these questions.
The other important factor here is understanding what your audience wants. This knowledge should guide you when creating content. Since this is all about content marketing, you can see why this step is so critical.
One free way to get an idea of user questions is a free website called Quora. Quora is a popular website where users can ask and answer questions from other users.
You can use the site to find popular questions related to your keywords. Here’s how you do it:
- Make a free account on Quora
- Type your keyword into the search bar
- Check out the questions related to the keyword
- Take note of the questions with the most responses
- Use this information to guide your keyword research
Now that you have an idea of some common questions asked by your target audience you can use a keyword tool to find out even more common questions. Plug these questions into your favorite digital marketing tools and take a look at related suggestions.
Use this research to create content that implements your keywords and addresses the questions you’ve found.
By doing this you can really target that ideal audience and answer real questions with your content.
Do Content the Right Way
When it comes to using content marketing to get more organic traffic, there are three rules to follow:
- Post regularly: You probably hear this one all time, but you may be wondering why it’s so important.
The reason posting on a schedule is important is the same reason you tune into the 9 o’clock news every morning- you can rely on it.
In other words, your audience is more likely to return to your blog if they know you post new content on a regular basis.
- Post great content: posting regularly is only a piece of the content puzzle. The quality of your content plays a huge role in gaining organic traffic.
Overly general or half-hearted content isn’t going to draw people in and it isn’t going to build a loyal audience.
You need to create genuine content that dives deep into problem-solving and teaching. Comprehensive guides and tutorials are a great way to go.
- Research the competition: If you really want to gain traffic, you need to provide content that fills the gap in your competition.
It’s true that you want to answer commonly asked questions, but you also want to provide a new perspective on the topic.
Take a look at what the competition is doing. If they’re focused on infographics, you should focus on step by step tutorials. Find your angle and run with it.
Create a Keyword Strategy
There is a lot that goes into creating a word strategy. For the sake of brevity, let’s focus on two factors: long-tail keywords and meta titles. These two factors can have a big impact on your organic traffic.
Long-tail keywords: when people think of keywords, they often think of one or two words. When it comes to generating organic traffic it’s best to focus on long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are actually phrases containing 3-4 words related to the topic.
Remember those audience questions we talked about earlier? You want to incorporate those phrases into your content to attract the right audience.
For example, focusing on “cotton sheets” as your keyword will have far less impact than incorporating “best 100 percent cotton sheets” into your content.
People who are searching these phrases have a higher likelihood of purchasing a product and engaging with your content. That leads us to the other factor: meta titles.
Meta titles: A meta title is what the audience sees on the search engine results page. As you can imagine, this is pretty important for catching the attention of the audience.
This is where you let your research shine. Choose a title that answers an important question, and incorporates that long-tail keyword.
This is how you attract attention and get more organic traffic to your content.
Earn Backlinks
Gaining backlinks is a great way to increase your organic traffic. If you’re wondering what backlinks are, essentially these are links that websites include in their content that link back to your site.
Backlinks can increase your traffic from the right audience and improve your overall ranking on Google.
Google views backlinks as votes towards your site. Increased ranking equals more organic traffic but you also get traffic from the blog that linked to you.
That’s why it’s important for your backlinks to come from blogs in a similar niche to yours. Keep in mind, backlinks only benefit your site if they’re from relevant sites with some domain authority.
There are some ways to build links to your website to be precise. But the prominent one is by using Haro. Haro is a website that connects media reporters and journalists to experts.
Because you run a niche blog, you can use your expertise in your area to respond to relevant reporter queries. If you’re featured in their piece, you get an opportunity to include a link to your site and increase your traffic.
Another way to gain more backlinks is by simply reaching out to other blogs in your niche for collaboration. Guest posts not only give you an opportunity to link back to your blog, but it also boosts your authority in your field.
Network
Last on this list we have networking. It’s true that this is more of a long-term strategy but it’s one of the best ways to get more organic traffic.
Successful networking puts you at the forefront when people think of your niche. You want your website to be the link they choose when they see the results page.
Aside from that, being an active person within your niche gives you greater visibility. Interacting with other blogs and content related to your own brings you to the attention of other content creators.
Now when they want to reference something in your niche, they may turn to your content. You can also use discussion forums to answer questions as an expert in your niche.
As long as you’re getting yourself out there and making your name known in a positive way, you’re on the right track.
Final Thoughts:
With these techniques in your marketing toolkit, you have what you need to generate more organic traffic.
Remember to focus on creating excellent content that caters to your audience. Let them know what you’re offering with strategic meta titles.
Make a space for yourself in your niche by networking and earning backlinks. Invest time into these techniques and you will see your organic traffic begin to grow.
