How to Increase Web Traffic: An Organic SEO Services Case Study
Published March 4, 2024
Congratulations on exploring how to make your website stronger with organic SEO services! You've entered an exciting world for business owners: search engine optimization. Search engine optimization can feel confusing and technical to people -- and it doesn't help that digital marketing agencies almost universally claim that they "do" SEO but they don't necessarily define what pieces of search engine optimization they handle.
Some do link building, some don't. Some take care of HTML and every meta element, some don't. It can make the return on investment for search engine optimization unclear.
So if you're one of the many pages on the World Wide Web that has been around for awhile but has never found its market -- even after using a blog like everyone said to! -- what can you do?
Here are some tips for best practice I used to take a website with trivial organic traffic, mostly appearing on the search engine results page for unrelated terms, to page 1 of Google with 4 keywords and a 5% clickthrough rate within 3 months (at the time of writing!).
I hope you find them helpful when auditing and refreshing your own web design, whether you're doing it yourself or outsourcing to an SEO company.
Some do link building, some don't. Some take care of HTML and every meta element, some don't. It can make the return on investment for search engine optimization unclear.
So if you're one of the many pages on the World Wide Web that has been around for awhile but has never found its market -- even after using a blog like everyone said to! -- what can you do?
Here are some tips for best practice I used to take a website with trivial organic traffic, mostly appearing on the search engine results page for unrelated terms, to page 1 of Google with 4 keywords and a 5% clickthrough rate within 3 months (at the time of writing!).
I hope you find them helpful when auditing and refreshing your own web design, whether you're doing it yourself or outsourcing to an SEO company.
Nurture Your Community with Local Organic SEO Services
Perhaps the best and easiest win for search engine optimization is local SEO.
Of the keywords this website is ranking for (40), a full 19 are local search terms.
You absolutely cannot underestimate the value of local SEO services in your overall strategy.
First of all, you build your reputation in your community. Local search serves to benefit both you and your area, online and offline. You can be the area thought leader on your industry through a good content strategy and savvy public relations.
Second of all, local terms are simply easier to rank for in the algorithm. There are fewer people in your competition locally versus nationally, so you can really build brand awareness to capture your market share of your local target audience.
Of the keywords this website is ranking for (40), a full 19 are local search terms.
You absolutely cannot underestimate the value of local SEO services in your overall strategy.
First of all, you build your reputation in your community. Local search serves to benefit both you and your area, online and offline. You can be the area thought leader on your industry through a good content strategy and savvy public relations.
Second of all, local terms are simply easier to rank for in the algorithm. There are fewer people in your competition locally versus nationally, so you can really build brand awareness to capture your market share of your local target audience.
Invest in Organic SEO Services for Your Google Business Profile
A lot of businesses can overlook the value of every Google tool available.
You want to track your keyword strategy using Google Search Console.
You want to track your entire web traffic journey with Google Analytics 4.
Google Keyword Planner (or a tool that uses this database) is essential for determining the right content strategy for keyword research.
But Google also offers you a business profile, and that's an amazing investment. Even if you aren't a local, brick and mortar retail store, you can benefit from this technology.
Of all the clicks attained in this case study, more than 50% come from the profile. Much like real estate, it's all about location location location: the business profiles dominate the top of the search results.
(Yes, Google's competitors like Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo use a similar feature generated from your website copy -- so make those websites useful!)
The more information you can put there as a 'mini website,' the more customer behavior shows they'll click it -- rather than any of the websites on the search results page (SERP).
You can read about the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile (<- click!) as its own marketing channel in Birdeye's recent report.
You want to track your keyword strategy using Google Search Console.
You want to track your entire web traffic journey with Google Analytics 4.
Google Keyword Planner (or a tool that uses this database) is essential for determining the right content strategy for keyword research.
But Google also offers you a business profile, and that's an amazing investment. Even if you aren't a local, brick and mortar retail store, you can benefit from this technology.
Of all the clicks attained in this case study, more than 50% come from the profile. Much like real estate, it's all about location location location: the business profiles dominate the top of the search results.
(Yes, Google's competitors like Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo use a similar feature generated from your website copy -- so make those websites useful!)
The more information you can put there as a 'mini website,' the more customer behavior shows they'll click it -- rather than any of the websites on the search results page (SERP).
You can read about the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile (<- click!) as its own marketing channel in Birdeye's recent report.
The Wins of Technical Organic SEO Services
What's your website's speed? Is the metadata description filled out? HTML clean? Navigation easy? Customer experience effortless? Do you have any accessibility warnings? Is it fast on the mobile web?
You don't have to be an expert in code to have a good website, but understanding the issues that matter makes a huge difference on the experience of both the web crawler (Google bot) and the customer.
In the case study, one webpage originally had content that was entirely hosted elsewhere and the code was embedded into wordpress to display.
What that means in simple terms is that when someone visited the page, Wordpress then had to talk to another website to get the content needed. This is not the ideal case, except in certain cases: the web page itself should have the content it needs for fast loading.
In short, it made the web page rife with technical issues. PageSpeed Insights -- a website that scores pages -- showed the page's performance in red (bad). It's now at 78/100 -- much better!
No wonder it's getting more impressions with a desired keyword!
Here are some questions you can ask when examining your website's usability.
You don't have to be an expert in code to have a good website, but understanding the issues that matter makes a huge difference on the experience of both the web crawler (Google bot) and the customer.
In the case study, one webpage originally had content that was entirely hosted elsewhere and the code was embedded into wordpress to display.
What that means in simple terms is that when someone visited the page, Wordpress then had to talk to another website to get the content needed. This is not the ideal case, except in certain cases: the web page itself should have the content it needs for fast loading.
In short, it made the web page rife with technical issues. PageSpeed Insights -- a website that scores pages -- showed the page's performance in red (bad). It's now at 78/100 -- much better!
No wonder it's getting more impressions with a desired keyword!
Here are some questions you can ask when examining your website's usability.
Time for an SEO Audit
If you want to get to page 1 of Google in 8 weeks or less, you have to have the right marketing strategy.
Part of that strategy needs to be smart moves for quick wins that will increase your reputation and visibility -- without resorting to unethical black hat spamdexing. It might appeal with a low cost for a small budget company, but it's going to cost you in the long run when Google catches the spamming. Don't underestimate the intelligence of the search algorithm.
If you want to perform an audit yourself to see how things stand, here's a webinar to provide some best practice knowledge to get started.
If you'd rather an SEO expert take a look to give you insights, you can schedule a complimentary call with me. We'll review your business goals and whether working together might make sense. We care about the health of your website and the quality rather than the quantity of the work. If white hat content creation and management sounds like who you want for your organic SEO agency, I'd love to hear from you.
Part of that strategy needs to be smart moves for quick wins that will increase your reputation and visibility -- without resorting to unethical black hat spamdexing. It might appeal with a low cost for a small budget company, but it's going to cost you in the long run when Google catches the spamming. Don't underestimate the intelligence of the search algorithm.
If you want to perform an audit yourself to see how things stand, here's a webinar to provide some best practice knowledge to get started.
If you'd rather an SEO expert take a look to give you insights, you can schedule a complimentary call with me. We'll review your business goals and whether working together might make sense. We care about the health of your website and the quality rather than the quantity of the work. If white hat content creation and management sounds like who you want for your organic SEO agency, I'd love to hear from you.
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