Driving Organic Traffic and Increasing Conversions

“The longer you make the mouse wait for the cheese, the lesser are the chances of it camping at your den. It has been running around all day searching for nourishment’s and if you just give it some food with ease, it is going to come back tomorrow and maybe tell others about your generosity as well.”

This same law applies to humans as well. Humans have had an unending quest for knowledge from the beginning of civilization and it is in our nature to reach out and find shelter at those places which make sustenance simple. With that being said, the ideal organic traffic driving strategies would normally incorporate elements like – Value, Keyword Research, Earning Backlinks and Niche Hotness Quotient!

Let’s take an example of a ‘model persona’ of your business. Say you are a Cosmetic Firm and I am a person suffering from proactive hair fall due to bad products that I used in the past. I need to save myself from the horror of pattern baldness and how would you help me?

From my perspective –

“I may just be another potential customer for your business who has approached your website to seek information. I am standing just behind the fence, asking to be convinced, looking for solutions to my problems, trying to find examples of your past expertise.

The sooner you are able to give me the information (cheese), that I am here for – the more valuable your website is going to be for me. If you beat around the bush and make me work the last brain cell, I am going to get frustrated soon and scurry off to another website that clearly expresses the solutions to my awful problem.

There are a few things to consider here, since the situation is completely hypothetical:

How did I reach your website in the first place?

 

1. You did proper keyword research around your business which deals in organic cosmetics that are helpful for skin and hair. So when I entered the phrase “hair fall treatment” in Google, I was able to find a direct link to your domain as a page on your website is ranking for the word “hair fall treatment.”

OR

2. I got your reference from a friend or an acquaintance in Social Media who had endless praises for the effectiveness of your products. Still to be extra sure, I dropped by to check the value in your website.

OR

3. I came across an offline or online very captivating advertisement of your brand that had a strong message for people to avoid chemical cosmetics and their harmful effects. Since, the campaign was somewhere related to my sentiments; I instantly connected to your brand and thought it would be wise to check your website.

OR

4. I was reading an interesting blog post around my problems and all of a sudden, there was a link (backlink) suggesting your website for organic hair and skin care treatments.

OR

5. There are many other possibilities and I don’t want this post to become a “Definitive Guide on How I Reached Your Website 101.” So you get my idea right?

NOW, I am already at your website – “I am standing behind the fence. A bit dicey about your products, since I have been overly exploited by – Get Your Hair Back in a Week Schemes. How do I convince myself or how do you convince me that I won’t be cheated again?

By delivering valuable content of course.

Let’s take a look at the key ingredients of a valuable content:

1. Content that you think will be worth my time. (Remember I am representing a ‘Model Persona’ of your business). Keyword research is important, but content that is filled with keywords only to rank your website is not going to drive any conversions for your business.

Remember, driving organic traffic is not about driving 1 Million people to your business, but it is about driving quality traffic to your website and converting them into followers of your brand ideology.

2. Content that you think will be worth putting up on your website. There is no point in writing a crystal clear and precise copy for Vacuum Cleaners on a cosmetic website, is there? So, make every piece of content that you post on your website, shine around your niche. Don’t just write for your company, write for your ‘category’ and write around customer problems and give them information that they should feel like bookmarking, or sharing with others.

There is no magic trick to this. It requires a lot of research and understanding of the potential requirements of your customers and delivering it to them.

 

3. Update or post fresh content on regular intervals. I come across with many bloggers in the IM-world who whine about less traffic in their blogs in spite of writing valuable content. But I know from the instant that there is something terribly wrong in their approach and they are not able to fix all the pieces in the puzzle, thus missing out on organic traffic.

After digging in, I find that the last time they posted on their blog was 2 weeks ago and the last time they updated any of their previous articles was ‘NEVER.’

 

This is not rocket science or any voodoo magic we are doing here. There are millions of bloggers who are ten times more hardworking and committed than you. If you want that piece of the pie, you gotta work for it, or hire people to do it for you. But you cannot avoid it.

4. People want fresh content, give it to them. It is always a good idea to revive your old content from time to time and give it a new look and publish it on your blog. But it is always better to give your audience fresh content that is unique or a latest trend in the news around your niche. Mostly all newspapers will have a separate column for your niche – Keep a watch for anything interesting and valuable and share your message around the same topic in your website or blog.

I see a lot of people just picking up and re-styling content from other websites. The only one time I will consider that stuff valuable is if I see that you have taken the pain to dig in deeper and compile a lot of solutions from various sources. That works a charm at times, but I still recommend writing unique and new content. This makes the content all the more valuable.

5. Include case studies, examples, past accomplishments where ever possible. But do not, cover the cheese and hard coat it with your medals. I was reading a very popular blog recently and they had done a case study on some of the most visited blog posts in leading blogs of 2014.

It was clear from the case study itself that, out of the 5 blogs they surveyed, all of them had an average of Three Top Posts that received organic traffic even after 7 months of publishing. And as you guessed it right – These three blogs had unique case studies on the A/B testing, Problem Solutions, Results of their Past Campaigns etc. You get the idea right?

I cannot stress the importance of including a case study enough. All I can say is adding a legitimate and real life case study to your website is going to triple its value from the buyer’s perspective. And websites that offer their past case studies to their audience have 26% higher chances of converting than websites without it.

 

SO, do not waste my time with publicity, fluff and big-fancy words that ooze of excellent copywriting skills – JUST GIVE ME THE CHESSE!

SHOW ME CLEARLY HOW I AS A CUSTOMER WILL BENEFIT FROM YOUR BRAND OR SERVICE BY ACCEPTING YOUR OFFER. GIVE ME A GOOD REASON TO SAY YES!

Somewhere in our subconscious mind, we all know the key to driving organic traffic but we suffer from some problems too many. If you ever come across people like the ones I mention below, tell them to take action or delete the word organic traffic or conversion from their dictionaries.

1. Paralysis by analysis – “I am the kind of person who spends too much time on the internet trying to reach perfection, but when it comes to taking actions I am just too confused because I read too much I think.”

2. Virtue in Ignorance – “I know it all – Keyword Research, Valuable Content (mindless content jargon). I am just too lazy to move my !%$ and I would just continue doing whatever I am.

DRUM ROLL Please for this fantastic creature. He knows what to do, but would choose to ignore everything. Can anyone remind me why we are here again?

3. Clueless Homosapien – “I have no clue what I am doing and I just lack the necessary knowhow, can someone please guide me?”

Ask these people to look up Google for their solutions. Google probably has answers to everything, unless you are not looking for How to make an Atom Bomb (or something closely related to the destruction of the world), of course. Maybe, they have it and they just don’t share it for everyone’s welfare. Who knows?

4. My hands are tied – “I have read all about driving organic traffic and writing valuable content that gets shared but I seem to have a hole in my pocket or my brain.”

There are lots of people who either lack the necessary knowhow or do not have the funds that go into research and development to create the ideal atmosphere for driving organic traffic. All I have to say is, hard luck surviving the Internet to these people. There is no point in being a part of this rat race if you do not have even one of these key characteristics.

Everyone keeps saying do this and do that but in the end it is all too confusing. If you were a newbie, my suggestion would be to take parts of my advice and act on it, instead of trying to enact the whole thing at once. If you are a seasoned pro, you are already spinning the money and maybe you could just brush up your skills through this post. Do remember to share your views in the end or spread it to people who may need this small piece of motivation.

With everything said and done, the only reason that keeps you reading this ruthless jargon on proactive organic reach and how to become a Google guru is engaging content and the only way this content reaches you or you reach the content is ‘virality.’

Moving on, let us keep aside everything I mentioned until now and concentrate on – “HOW TO REACH THE TRAFFIC THAT’S LOOKING FOR MY BUSINESS?”

Apart from the value your content provides (which I am assuming it does), there are three more ‘elements,’ to your content that need to be asynchronous in order to drive more traffic to your online delegation:

1. Proper Keyword Research – I will go into this in a while.
2. Lots of Backlinks – These are the best and ratio-wise the most converting ways of reaching out to the people who are looking for you. The more blogs and websites and users on the internet that are talking about your business. The more you are disposed to reaching your business milestones and converting visitors who reach your website.
3. Hotness quotient! – The hotness quotient of your niche or category of your business (whichever way you say it) plays an important role in the amount of organic traffic that comes to your business.

For example: If your business revolves around skin care and beauty treatments – This is an evergreen niche and you can expect to receive huge amounts of organic traffic all throughout the year.

BUT

If your business is based on seasonal deals then you may not get as much traffic as you would get during or before a holiday season.

You get the point right? Read on and I will clear any doubts you have about this. And I alone do ‘not vouch for this – you can check out various other sources on the internet and experts who have the same opinion as I do. For example – Hubspot.com, QuickSprout.com, Inc.com and SocialTriggers.com

Now, getting back to square one – Let’s take a look at how to analyze your content strategy and tweak it to create valuable content that kills your competitors –

Like I mentioned before, I will repeat myself sorry – Valuable Content will get more likes, the more people who like your content, the more they will share it. The more shares your content will get, the more references on the Internet will vouch for your products or services and All this compiled together will create an IMBALANCED BACKLINK WHEEL – that should have your competitors regret your existence.

If you read a lot of Internet Marketing blogs, you must have already come across the saying “You are crazy if your business don’t own a blog space to your website!” In addition, I will second this opinion. How do you aim to drive traffic to your website with only static pages and no dynamic content?

This is my way of planning a content strategy for my blog. (Shameless Self Promotion Here)

1. DOING THE KEYWORD RESEARCH – According to statistics, reaching the first page on Google does make businesses successful, but you will be surprised to know that actually the first link in the SERPs is able to steal more than 49% of the search traffic and the rest 9 links get only a single digit percent of the remaining traffic. Needless to say that even a small percentage of Global Traffic is actually a huge amount of the cake that you could keep on your plate.

This is only possible through extensive keyword research. I will not tell you how to conduct an in-depth keyword research here but you could always take help from the experts in the Engage community.

Keyword research forms the basic framework of any online establishment. The sooner you understand the importance of this the better it will be for your business.

What really makes it such a critical aspect to consider is that both Search Engines and Users depend on it.

Choosing the right keywords is an art and once you have your website optimized for a particular keyword. You can be sure to reach out to that audience who is searching for “your keywords” in the search engines. This will enable your brand to be present at the right place and the right time, which is the essence of driving organic traffic to your website.

2. WRITING CONTENT FOR THE LONG TERM STRATEGY – Instead of trying to write content that will rank for probably a day or two – try to focus your mind and effort on content that is going to be hot, forever and ever.

This is what I meant by Hotness Quotient of your niche.  By writing content that will only be searched for periodically, you will limit yourself to visitors only at those times of the year when there is a demand for it.

There will also be a chance of not ranking for it at all, as the more active blogs and websites which are already ranking high and giving HOT Content to the readers will cover that topic at the right time.

Anything that is Evergreen and may never get old, in terms of SEO and Value to the reader is known as evergreen content.

For example – If you make a website around an event that will be hosted in 2014. You may be receiving stable traffic this year, but unless and until there is a follow up of that event the next year, you can very well except zero to negligible traffic. You cannot expect people to vouch for or like content that is old. Can you? 

BUT 

If you had a website covering symptoms of Pregnancy, Precautions, Medications, Accessories, Diets etc (basically everything around the niche – It is an evergreen niche and traffic source for such niches will never die at any time of the year.

Let’s take a look at some more examples of Evergreen Niches:

• Relationships and Depression
• Love
• Parenting
• Pet Care
• Finance
• Etc..

AND

Look at these examples of Niches that are not evergreen:

• Articles relating to current fashion trends
• Current Pop Culture
• News Articles
• Etc..

3. SHARING YOUR CONTENT AND EARNING BACKLINKS – If you are aware of the prevalent SEO practices, you will already know that manual link building is a gradually dying trend. Not only is it painstakingly complicated and time consuming, but it is also losing its luster as content strategies become more progressive.

 

IF YOU HAVE DONE THE KEYWORD RESREACHING AND WRITTEN A VALUABLE PIECE OF CONTENT, GENERATING BACKLINKS FOR IT IS NOT GOING TO BE MUCH OF A PROBLEM. JUST FOLLOW MY LEAD here,

 

• Power of SOCIAL MEDIA – If you have a good social media presence, you can always share your content with your fans and following and they in return will share and like your content, if there is value in it for them. Some might even share your posts with others out of sheer goodwill. That’s how easy it is to get backlinks pointing to your website, if you have a compact community of your own.
• Clean Website Interface – Your website interface plays a crucial role in deterring or encouraging people to share the content that you have published. According to statistics (just take my word for it), majority of the content that goes viral on social media is from websites that offer clean and clutter free interface.

 

If you offer an enhanced user experience at your website, a visitor will more likely feel comfortable in sharing your ‘helpful’ and ‘valuable’ content with others.NOT only this, but it also has a very positive impact in diminishing the bounce rate of your website. Lesser the bounce rate, higher the chances of traffic converting into your brand followers or users.

 

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FINAL WORDS

To sum it up, the key to driving organic traffic is Valuable Content, powered by effective keyword research, social sharing and earning backlinks along with writing on topics around your niche or category that is evergreen and  always looked for.Don’t forget to share your views below and if you liked this read, then go ahead and click the Social Media Buttons Below – they do magic. 😉