Before going into details on how to build a content strategy that drives organic traffic, we must first understand what exactly organic traffic is.
Organic traffic is the visiting of the users that land on your website by using a search engine like Google or Bing.
In short, the user is not directed to your website through an advertisement or any paid media.
So, the better the content of your website is, higher is the probability of the user to land on your site.
And in future too, they will be searching your website directly for the reference and thus giving your website more hits.
4 C’s of Organic Traffic:
The benefits of organic traffic can be defined as 4C’s, i.e., Cost, Credibility, Competition, and Combined Approach.
1. Cost:
With proper implementation of SEO principles, you can make the cost per click for organic traffic to be negligible. Hence, saving a lot of cost for you and freedom from pay per click kind of thing.
2. Credibility:
Organic traffic gives a boost to your credibility and increases the confidence level for you among the users. Being at the top of the search engine is an achievement in itself for your business.
3. Competition:
Higher in the ranking of search result always gives you an edge over your competitors and you can increase your market share for your product by being higher than others.
4. Combined Approach:
Though organic traffic will always have an edge over the paid traffic, initially, some business goes for the combined approach so as to increase the traffic.
Combining the two approaches can also give you the expected results initially, but to get the higher ranking on the search engines, can even take a month.
But after getting on the top five searches of the search engine, relying solely on paid traffic is nothing more than absurdness.
Developing a Content Strategy for Organic Traffic Growth:
Now let us look at some of the strategies to drive organic traffic on your website. The steps below are a guide to boost the organic traffic on your website.
1. Set your goals:
Set realistic goals for the motive behind developing your website. Before starting anything ask yourself: Why are you starting the website and what is the ultimate goal of the website.
You should understand that starting a website to sell your product is entirely different from starting a website to offer your service to others.
The former requires deeper and in-depth knowledge about the product and trust factor on the product itself whereas latter requires detailed information about your service and the trust factor is on you more than the service you are offering.
2. Know your target audience:
This is the first thing you should do. Knowing the audience will help you in analyzing their profiles. First, you have to know about their demands and need, their searches, customized expertise they want.
After this, you will have to analyze the audience and prepare step by step guide on how you can cater to their demands and needs.
You can also know more about the target audience through customer service, salesperson, technical support and product marketing because these are the people who interact with people the most.
And through them, you can know in details what problems and what technical issues are being faced.
3. Be the master of your field:
Make sure that you have an expert and have a thorough knowledge of the product or service for which you are targeting the audience.
It is only through the knowledge, that you can make quality content for your website. Nothing can beat the knowledge. Remember that organic traffic brings in highly qualified prospects to your website.
So, never take them for granted. They visit your website for a specific purpose, so always try to serve them the best.
Make them realize that you are the best in your field and you are the right person to help them get the solution of their problem or query they are looking for.
4. Know the USP of the website:
USP stands for Unique Selling Point. Try to figure out what makes you unique among the competitors. It is only this USP that is highlighted among the audience because of which they repeatedly visit your website.
Since organic traffic is cost-effective in the long run, therefore, it is highly recommended that you combine the USP and organic website to maximize the traffic.
The combination of the two will have the highest impact on the results and it will be reflected in the profit and loss statement of your business at the end of the financial year.
5. Know the keywords of your audience searches:
Knowing the keywords of your audience searches will help you to develop and refine your content as per their needs.
The quality of your content should be developed to meet their demands. This is the basic and the most useful way to get organic traffic on your website.
Be specific while deciding the keywords. Short keywords can make you lost in the crowd of many. Choosing long keywords can make you stand apart in your niche and help generate more organic traffic.
There are four types of keywords:
Informational Keywords
Informational keywords are used by visitors to hunt for some information. They are exactly looking for the solution to their problems and insight into a particular topic.
Navigational Keywords
Navigational Keywords are used when the user is looking for a particular website. Searching for a particular site, product or brand is known as navigational search.
Transactional Keywords
When someone is signing on your website either for buying a product or for a free consultation or for downloading some stuff from your site, then the keywords that are used to search is known as a transactional keyword.
Commercial Keywords
These type of keywords are used by the users with an intent to make a purchase on your website. These users have high purchasing intent.
6. Combine USP and Keywords:
After determining the USP of your website and listing out the keywords for your website content, combine the result of the two. These will help you bring your website in limelight and giving you more organic traffic.
Repeated visitors are the strength of the organic traffic. This is the most crucial steps in building the content strategy that drives organic traffic.
It is a highly competitive world and therefore, it is always in favor to have an edge over your competitors.
Since your competitors cannot use the matter of that you had already used on their website, they will have to make an extra effort in trying to be better than you. In this way, you can have the upper hand on others.
7. Manage your type of content:
Today most of the businesses have a variety of content types to target the audience like social posts and updates, email newsletter, videos, blogging e-books and many more.
One has to do a proper study on his target audience and their preferences. Doing an experiment with different forms of content can help you understand your target audience in a better way.
You can manage your content in a better way by following these steps.
Interlink your other content:
Interlinking your content with other content of yours will help you in keeping your visitors engrossed on your website.
Question and answer forum:
Questions and Answer forum helps in making your website more interactive and informative.
Also, it helps in letting you know the facts or things you have missed out in your content which you can refine or add later on to develop the quality of the content.
Through answering the questions well in time, make the visitors rely on you for further queries.
Videos:
Videos are the best when it comes to leaving a visual impact on visitors. You can add videos to help them understand better about your products.
Social sharing options:
Social Sharing Options like WhatsApp or Facebook is a great way to expand your reach among the contacts of your visitors. It will, in turn, lead to higher traffic on your site.
Upgrading content to collect subscribers:
A regular visitor always wants to get notified about your latest update on your website. So, it is always beneficial to keep upgrading your content.
By doing this, there is a higher chance that they will subscribe to your newsletter or other subscription so that they get notified as soon as possible. Higher subscription in turns leads to higher organic traffic.
8. Your website, your style, your personality:
People tend to fall for the people who are like them. It is a universally accepted truth. So, with time make your website as your style.
With the passage of time, organic traffic will bring you regular and engaged visitors.
So, you will know the characteristics of your audience by then. It is always easy to create quality content especially designed for the audience if you know their demands.
For example, if your website is about the gym than you should target your audience with a fit and fine persons and not with lazy persons.
Similarly, if your website is about capital markets, then you should target them by writing about successful people like Warren Buffet, John C Bogle and Peter Lynch or writing about investment ideas.
9. Content Frequency pattern:
You should know about how and when to target your audience. Higher the cost of a content type, lesser will be the frequency of the content type to be generated.
Always think in terms of returns of investment.
You should target the frequency of your content so that it suits the audience and their social usage.
As per the Curata’s Pyramid, curated contents have the lowest effort involved from your end and hence the frequency of this content type is going to be highest.
While on the contrast, print books require the highest effort and a lot of costs is involved in them, and so the frequency of this content type will be the lowest.
10. Determine how to measure success:
Now, it is time for the result. Always analyze the result after all the hard work is done. Compare the pre-organic traffic period with the post-organic traffic period.
You can compare on a weekly or on a monthly basis the effect of organic traffic on your business. Also, don’t just stop there. Keep researching on ways to improve the organic traffic and the benefits it can bring later on.
For a website based on lead generation, try to analyze the conversion ratio of the prospects that visited your website and the prospects that actually became your clients.
Study the effect of organic traffic on this conversion ratio. You can use Google Analytics for the purpose.
After analysis, you can actually figure out the things that worked in your favor and things that didn’t. Put this study to further improve your content and boost organic traffic.
Organic traffic is an indicator of the credibility of your website. Higher credibility tells the visitors that they can rely on your website for their demands. People most of the time go for the top organic result rather than going for the paid result.
When prospects find you on the top of the search list, a trust automatically develops in them. Also, when they keep seeing you as a solution to their search, you become a brand in their minds.
These were some of the steps on how to build a content strategy that drives organic traffic on your website. Try to follow these steps to leave an impact on the visitors.