The thought of traffic typically brings to mind the idea of moving vehicles. Depending on the number of cars on a highway, traffic levels would vary and the same goes for websites. No matter what purpose your website serves, it needs web traffic to maintain visibility. Besides, if all seems to be going well and you then experience a sudden drop in website traffic, it is crucial that you take remedial measures quickly.
The need for visibility drives website owners to seek various methods to fix a sudden drop in organic traffic. However, not all endeavors are equally rewarding. Just as some highways experience lower vehicular movement than others, there are websites that suffer because of low web traffic. Making sure the right audience visits and interacts with your website is as important, failing which it will not serve its intended purpose. The role that organic traffic plays in this regard is vital.
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What Is Organic Web Traffic?
Of all the types of online traffic, organic web traffic demands your utmost attention. This type of traffic refers to the volume of visitors your website receives through a search engine results page (SERP). This excludes paid advertisements, external links from other websites, and visitors who directly type your website URL into their browsers.
When users type web queries into search engines like Google, they get links to various websites as their search results. If they click on a link that leads to your website, they make up for your organic web traffic.
Unfortunately, several websites focus on paid ads and other marketing strategies, and often neglect organic traffic. Interestingly, organic searches account for more web traffic than paid ads, and users are far more likely to visit your website through a search engine results page than paid media.
Benefits of Organic Web Traffic
If your website has suffered a sudden organic traffic drop, it is important to ensure that it starts receiving an adequate number of visitors from search engines again. This is because of the various benefits on offer.
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Requires No Prior Advertising
Unlike other types of web traffic, organic traffic relies on SEO rankings rather than advertising. Consequently, it can attract visitors who may never have heard of your business or website.
Attracts More Users Than Other Methods
Organic web traffic accounts for a significant percentage of your website’s overall volume of visitors. If you’re wondering what percentage of traffic should be organic, consider these statistics collated by Outreach Monks. It indicates that of the 39% of all global eCommerce traffic that originates from online searches, 35% is organic, and paid search ads account for only 4%.
Wider Coverage
While other web traffic sources like social media and paid ads target a particular demographic or location, organic web traffic has worldwide coverage. As long as users search for queries that are relevant to your website, it can show up in search results anywhere in the world.
Improves Credibility
Many digital marketers opine that the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of search results. This is because most web users restrict their searches to the first page. Favorable rankings on SERPs give rise to healthy organic web traffic. When your website is one of the first to appear in a search, it conveys credibility to users and may even help edge out competitors by minimizing their online presence, given that it can lower their websites’ positions on SERPs.
How Can I Improve My Organic Traffic?
If you have experienced a sudden drop in website traffic, you should consider paying more attention to your organic sources. This is because a drop in organic search traffic will undoubtedly affect your overall visibility. Here are five ways to increase organic web traffic and maintain positive results over the long term.
1. Monitor Website Traffic
The best place to start if you wish to increase organic website traffic after a drop is to identify the source of the problem. Tracking your website metrics is the ideal way to go because it keeps you updated on factors that could affect your web traffic. Based on your website’s demands, you can run checks monthly, weekly, or daily.
Free tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs simplify checking website traffic and you may also use them to track website metrics. They provide comprehensive information about your website and are crucial for understanding website performance.
Likewise, there are paid tools that offer similar services for a fee. The difference is that paid tools like Semrush Pro offer more functionality. Most experts recommend using at least two website checkers, and you may consider using free and paid tools for more comprehensive results.
With a better understanding of your website’s performance, you may then proceed with the necessary steps to improve your website’s rankings and ultimately, your organic web traffic. Note that sudden surges or drops occur in visitor metrics. However, these occasional extremes may not reflect your website’s actual performance. As a result, your actions should rely on data collated over time.
2. Research Target Audience
The point of investing in web development is to attract online traffic. The target audience is the principal concern of any website. It comprises the visitors you hope to attract and your final consumers. Consequently, it is important to understand how best to get their attention. For instance, if your target market is looking for apples, it would be counterproductive to stock up on grapes.
Essentially, you should know your target audience and its specific needs and then tailor your website to meet those requirements. This also includes understanding your audience’s online behavior like how it structures web queries and other related patterns. Audience research helps you personalize your website for potential visitors. When your web content is audience-centered, it sets you apart from the multitude and establishes your brand as precisely what users need.
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Create profiles for your target readers, have a strong idea of their personas, and know their search intent. Is it navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional? This is how you can successfully align your services with your target audience. Additionally, identify and leverage the variables in their web queries. Know the different possible ways your audience could search the web and structure your website to meet these variations.
3. Improve SEO Practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) covers a wide range of practices aimed at driving organic traffic to your website. Typically, web users make their way to your website through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing when its ranking is high. SEO is crucial to making sure that your website appears on the first page when users conduct relevant online searches. Consequently, you need to focus on SEO to ensure that your website is visible to and ranked by search engines.
While implementing suitable SEO strategies is not difficult, it requires time, effort, and knowledge about the process. If you lack any, you might consider using the services of an SEO agency.
Content Research
Once you’ve identified your audience, determine what type of content it will find relevant. Research relevant topics and create quality content around them. While other parts of your website like the design and interface are important, know that no serious user will choose aesthetics over content.
If your website suffers from low organic traffic, know that this is one possible reason. After all, subpar content is one of the easiest ways to discourage traffic. Users feel disrespected when offered shoddy content and it reduces your website’s value. This, in turn, has a negative effect on its search engine ranking.
Optimized Keywords
Keywords refer to those vital words that align your audience’s interests with your content. When a potential visitor searches for something on a platform like Google and if your website contains relevant information to the search, Google suggests it to them. This “relevant information” often comes in the form of keywords.
However, you can’t just fill your website with keywords amid random content without a sense of relevance to your target audience.
Keyword optimization is streamlining your web content to fit relevant search engine queries. Search engines then rank your website based on this relevance. Additionally, keywords can also be phrases, which the industry refers to as long-tail keywords. These key phrases have more potential to increase organic web traffic because they’re usually more specific than shorter keywords.
Blogging
One relatively easy way to increase organic web traffic is to give your website’s users access to a blog that you update regularly. If your website has a blog where you post informational content that its visitors find relevant and beneficial, it improves your chances of getting more organic traffic. This also creates another avenue for spiking organic traffic in the form of internal links. These redirect users to other pages of your website.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Another effective way to fix a sudden drop in organic traffic is to add an FAQ section to your website. This doubles your chances of visibility because while the optimized content helps drive traffic, you also provide answers to possible questions visitors might have.
Revise Outdated Content
A highly effective organic way of driving traffic to a brand site is to revamp or do away with outdated content or content that has lost its relevance. From the SEO perspective, content that is no longer relevant can be harmful to your website’s performance. In any such instance, there is a possibility that search engines could send your site to the dreaded page two of search results or even farther away from potential visitors.
If you wish to keep attracting affordable web traffic from search engines, you need to take inventory of your content occasionally and let go of some while you give others a facelift. If you have great content that could still be relevant with some minor touches, revise it and bring it up to date.
4. Consider Web Redesign
If your website traffic dropped suddenly and you discover that old content is not the only thing that needs a facelift, you might consider redesigning your website. Bear in mind that if you are not satisfied with your web traffic or your online presence in general, then a complete or partial website overhaul might be the solution. In addition to improving a website’s credibility, outstanding web design also augments the user experience (UX).
Improving your web design can increase its appeal and make it easier to navigate. This is an effective method of attracting and retaining visitors. According to numbers compiled by the Baymard Institute, 40% of web users leave websites that take more than three seconds to load. On the other hand, frictionless UX design has the potential to increase conversion rates by up to 400%.
In addition to amplifying the overall user experience, good web design makes going through content more enjoyable. Great design and quality content work hand-in-hand to inform your visitors about your website, and the result is a positive impact on your organic web traffic.
While a refurbished website lets you reach out to your target audience more effectively and conveniently, you need to redesign it in a way that appeals to its visitors. For example, if you run a website for children, it needs to be kid-friendly.
5. Monitor the Competition
Staying ahead of the competition requires diversifying your options, and often, it involves monitoring who you’re up against. With digital marketing becoming increasingly cutthroat, it helps to know how your contemporaries are getting ahead. This helps you modify your strategies accordingly. You can emulate some of their methods to benefit your website and eventually beat them at their own game.
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Online tools provided by platforms like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Similarweb enable you to track the performance of your competitors’ websites’. These can help with your search engine optimization and content strategy, factors that are crucial to boosting organic web traffic. If your analysis proves that your competitors are making significant progress, consider investigating their models of operation. Here are some of the criteria to consider when choosing a tracking tool to increase organic web traffic.
- Free or paid. It pays to use a tracking tool that won’t become a financial burden. Consider getting a free one or an affordable alternative that offers great value.
- In-depth analysis. Being affordable doesn’t mean it must be low-quality. For the best results, you need a tracking tool that offers a thorough analysis of competing websites. This includes traffic data, keywords, and content-related information.
- Ease of use. The tool should be easy to understand and navigate.
The goal is not to merely copy your competitors’ every move, but rather to monitor how the market reacts to their practices. By knowing their strengths, particularly in areas where your website struggles, you could fix the drop in your website’s organic web traffic. Additionally, tracking tools can expose weaknesses in competing websites, giving you more opportunities to leverage.
Conclusion
Maintaining a steady flow of visitors to a website requires ongoing work. After all, while a website may receive plenty of visitors today, the scenario may change for the worse tomorrow. Fortunately, it is possible to fix a sudden drop in organic traffic.
Implementing the methods suggested on this page will help steer your website toward significant improvements in organic web traffic. If you’re unsure about how to move forward, seeking assistance from a digital marketing agency that specializes in this realm might work well for you.
