Low Organic Traffic: How To Increase It & Use It Effectively

Organic traffic is easily one of the most challenging aspects of SEO.

Don’t use black hat tactics to obtain organic traffic as these practices are considered unethical in the SEO community due to the risk of penalizing sites.

If you’re not getting enough organic traffic on your website, read on to see why that might be happening and how you can fix it.

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Table of Contents

Who Uses SEO And Why It Matters?

SEO is a marketing strategy that helps companies to rank higher on search engine results pages.

It is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies that can help businesses to reach their target audience, generate more traffic, and increase their sales.

SEO is a great way for small business owners to compete with big brands on the internet. It doesn’t require any upfront investment and its ROI (return on investment) is usually very high.

Marketing can be used by any company – big or small, B2B or B2C, new or old – as it’s all about attracting customers through content rather than interrupting them with ads.

What Is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic is the number of visitors to a website from search engine results pages (SERPs) without any form of advertising or paid placement.

Organic traffic is the most valuable type of traffic for any website especially if you have a tight budget.

It is free hence the word “organic”, and not limited by a budget. It can be leveraged to produce a steady stream of visitors. There are other forms of traffic such as paid but that comes with its pros and cons.

Also, the more organic traffic you get, the better your rankings will be in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will result in more visitors coming to your site through natural searches.

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) has been a valuable tool in the digital marketing arsenal for many years now.

It has become even more important as search engines have evolved, and it continues to be a key driver of website visitors and conversions.

As such, SEO should be a part of every digital marketing strategy.

Causes For Low Organic Traffic (with solutions)

If you are looking to increase your low organic traffic, troubleshooting the following can help. Keep these tips in mind as you continue to grow your website.

1. Poorly Optimized Site

Poorly optimised sites are the biggest mistakes people make when trying to generate more organic traffic.

They build websites with no focus at all. They just throw up pages and pages of text without any real thought as to how visitors will find them or navigate their site.

This is why your website needs to be optimized for the user. The better a website is optimized, the more organic traffic it will receive from Google and other search engines.

Creating an optimized website will not only make it much easier to navigate but also help your visitors better understand what you’re site is about and get the information they need.

The success of having organic traffic is often dependent on how well a website performs and that the site works as efficiently as possible.

Mobile optimization is becoming increasingly important. As a result, smartphones have become so popular in society today. They can offer everything from web browsing to online shopping and ordering.

Google is now taking advantage by giving higher rankings to mobile-friendly optimized websites.

Your website should load fast, and look good on mobile devices. You would need to adjust sizing, fonts, and alignments to fit a mobile screen’s dimensions.

Focusing on all this will help to keep your website optimized for both desktop and mobile.

2. Poor Website Design

Following the first point of having an optimized website comes the design.

Your site’s design is the first thing visitors notice so if your site looks bad, it could deter visitors before they even start to read your content.

You do not need to be a tech design guru to create a beautiful, well-structured, professional-looking website.

There are plenty of themes available you can buy such as Flatsome Themeforest or Elegant Themes, depending on the type of website you create.

These website builders come with pre-prepared design templates that you can use.

Many themes use a drag-and-drop feature, meaning you can easily change elements of the design such as color, and font, to create the style you want. This is especially useful for beginners.

If you are unsure about spending money on a theme, you can always try using a free template builder like Canva or Adobe Muse to create a professional-looking website.

Having a professional-looking website will help you to establish credibility and instill trust with your visitors and search engines like Google.

3. Low-Quality Content

Content is the heart of any website. Without any content, a site would just be a blank space.

Content marketing is the backbone of any successful business. If you want people to visit your website and Google to rank your content high, then you need to have good content.

Always make sure that you have little to no spelling or grammatical errors. When you have typos, broken sentences, and run-on paragraphs, you lose credibility and rankings.

Make use of softwares such as Grammarly, which can identify your mistakes automatically for you.

Content performance greatly suffers when it’s not aligned with what your site is about and what you have titled your content to be.

For example, if your site is all about trout fishing, you wouldn’t have content on cabin buying tips. The two are unrelated.

Equally, if you have titled your article, “the top 5 types of bait to catch trout,” then it should answer and provide information about the topic in your title.

You should also write about things that interest your audience, not just what you think they’ll find interesting. You want to give them something they can use right away.

If you’re not a good writer, then you need to find other ways to improve the quality of your content by outsourcing. You could hire someone through Fiverr, Upwork, or Hirewriters.

Alternatively, if you don’t like the idea of outsourcing and you still want the thrill of creating your own content, there are AI writing assistants that will simplify the process for you.

The world’s become increasingly digital and a lot of people are using AI writing assistants including journalists, marketing teams, and content creators of all types to generate high-quality content fast, so if they use it, why not you?

Learn more by reading my Rytr review here, or head on straight to Rytr’s website.

If your site has been around for some time, consider revamping or identifying content that is not converting. This will often mean identifying what keywords are not converting well and changing up their content.

It may also mean removing content that is not converting well and creating additional content for people who have a higher intent to convert.

4. Little To No Keywords

When creating content, keywords are often used to determine what each piece is about. If you have not done keyword research for your articles, your article will not rank well or generate the organic traffic you need.

Keyword research is an important step for increasing your organic traffic. There are a lot of people who fail to do keyword research.

Researching and using long-tail keywords can increase your organic traffic. Place your keyword in the title, meta description, and throughout your content but make sure it still reads naturally and flows well.

Check out this article on SEO content writing helpful.

Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to find relevant keywords which are low competition, and high search volume that will help increase your organic traffic.

5. Low-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks for SEO are the incoming links to your website. These incoming links are links pointing to your website from another website.

The number of backlinks pointing to your website is one of the key factors Google uses when ranking websites.

The more backlinks a website has the more trust, and the better its reputation since others find it useful and recommend it to others.

Google wants to point people to pages that will give them the most value so those pages will rank higher and have more organic traffic.

It can be difficult to get backlinks if your website is new. However, if you do get your website ranked, getting backlinks will be easier. Backlinks can help your website rank higher in SERPs.

However, a higher ranking does not necessarily mean that you will make more money by getting a higher ranking. Backlinks are one of many factors Google uses to determine how well a website ranks in the SERPs.

Creating and maintaining high-quality, engaging content that others are excited to link out is the most important factor in backlinking, but it also requires dedication.

The key to getting backlinks is anticipating what people will want to link out to you.

6. No Call To Action

A call-to-action (CTA) is a great way to turn website visitors into buyers. Many people are so focused on convincing their visitors to take the action only to forget to put a CTA button, or if they do it is lost within the content.

Make sure that whatever you are promoting you have something of value on your site and relates to what your site is about.

This could be offering a free e-book if they signup to your email list, promoting a product or service you believe they need, etc.

Make sure your CTA button is visible, big, and bold, and tells them what will happen if they click it.

Always place your CTA in the middle of your content and then again at the end and in the sidebar. This way, the more clicks you get, the more increased organic traffic you will have.

This gives your visitor plenty of opportunities to click your CTA. A good example of a site with an effective call to action button is Amazon. You know that clicking the “Add To Cart” button will make you purchase the item.

Try to be creative with your CTA button but still be clear. Some examples of CTA buttons are, “Don’t miss out”, “Try It Now”, “ Book Now”, or “Find Out More”.

7. Unreliable Hosting Service

Web hosting providers make it possible for people to create a website and publish content on the internet.

Web hosting services provide space on their servers for web pages, images, and videos to be stored.

These services provide a connection from the user’s computer or mobile device to the internet so that the pages can be viewed by others on the internet.

Without a hosting provider, you can’t run a successful website because if your website goes down frequently, it will negatively affect your chances of increasing your organic traffic.

Choosing a hosting service can be a daunting task. There are plenty of options, and it is not always clear which one is best.

Find out all you need to know with my Siteground review here or go straight to Siteground’s website.

8. Slow Loading Speed

You’ve probably encountered a site that takes too long to load, interrupts your reading with a prompt or blank page, or doesn’t load at all.

These problems are terrible for anyone who wants to grow their site’s organic traffic.

To avoid this problem, make sure your website loads fast.

Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your site’s loading speed and take the necessary steps toward improving it.

If your test shows slow speed issues, a potential solution could be to use a caching service such as Cloudflare because these services can speed up your website by caching content.

Along with a caching service, try to include the use of a CDN, compression and zipping images, etc.

9. No Social Media Presence

Social media has become a crucial aspect of modern digital marketing. Even though some think social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are only used by kids, the reality is, that millions of adults use these sites every day.

Social media marketing is the center for increasing organic traffic to your website.

Simple content like testimonials, blog posts, or quick-hit product descriptions can help you cut through the noise and drive more people to your website.

Social media is a fantastic way to build your brand, provide excellent customer service and improve public perception of your company.

Leverage the power of increasing your organic traffic by taking full advantage of these social media platforms.

Place social media sharing buttons on your site so that visitors can share your content. Make sure you add these to your blog posts, images, videos, etc.

10. Not Having An Email List

As a new website, you will lack organic traffic at the start. It takes around 6 months to 2 years to build organic traffic to an optimal level that can be sustained without spending more time or money.

If your website is getting traffic but not as much as you would like, start building an email list and use email automation software.

Email marketing is a great way to get in front of more people, and you can collect data about what types of content your audience is interested in.

By sending emails to your subscribers, you can keep them updated on new blog posts, product launches, and special offers.

11. Too Many Ads

Too many ads on your website can greatly affect your website’s ranking in the search engine.

There are two possible outcomes for having too many ads on your site:
1. Google’s web crawler fails to properly index your content. This would mean you need to put a less aggressive ad strategy.
2. Creates a negative user experience so your website could lose its rankings which will reduce your organic traffic.

12. Not Using Images Or Video

If you are not adding images or videos to your blog posts, you are missing out.

Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular online because more than half of all internet users watch videos regularly.

Using videos on your site, will attract more visitors and increase organic traffic.

Google’s search engine crawlers can now detect and index images and videos faster than text to understand the content you are trying to convey.

Image and video recognition can be a significant part of the website optimization process. This is because Google can find keywords in images and videos much faster than in text.

When you are adding an image or video content to your web pages, it’s important to consider how it will be indexed by search engines and what keywords might become associated with it.

13. Poor Landing Page Designs

Landing pages are some of the most important pages on your site.

They represent your website’s digital doorstep and can be the difference between a successful campaign and an unsuccessful one.

Research has shown that people spend more time on other parts of their website- like their homepage, blog, or contact page- than they do on a landing page.

You need to use relevant keywords, good CTA, a visually appealing layout, catchy headlines, and optimized and responsive landing pages.

These will help you convert more leads and increase your organic traffic.

Conclusion

All of the potential causes will help increase your organic traffic. Some of them might be easier to solve like site speed, writing better quality content, or editing existing content while creating a social media presence and getting backlinks are more difficult to tackle.

It’s important to have patience and keep in mind that your business will take time to grow. The key is being patient, dedicated, and consistent over the long term to see your organic traffic grow.

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