In order to reach your page, people have to actually search for the content, so organic clicks are all about relevancy. Many businesses wrongly believe that paid advertising is the only digital marketing strategy they’ll need to reach a wider audience.
Whether you use an SEO agency or not, the simple truth is that people want authentic, valuable content without any tricks. If your site seems shady, visitors will be quick to bounce. Search engines feel the same way, punishing pages that try and exploit the algorithm, a practice known as black hat SEO.
It’s infinitely more rewarding to focus on honest, high-quality content delivered in a trustworthy manner. So here’s how you top the rankings and increase organic clicks:
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Get your Search Snippet Right
The search snippet is the tiny slice of your website that’s presented in the search engine results page (SERP). While they can vary between engines, the most important components are: title, description and URL.
In order to perform more strongly in the rankings, it’s essential to fill out these elements optimally. Your title should flow naturally and concisely communicate the topic of the content. If you aren’t placing <title> elements within the <head>, search engines must create one themselves from the text. Avoid needlessly long titles, as they will be shortened.
The meta description is the sample of text visible in SERPs, the window into the webpage. It’s important to write a description that is both engaging and informative, so think of it like an outline for the content on that page. It’s not a place to put a thousand keywords, or copy-paste the entire content.
Lastly, the URL path itself needs to look genuine:
- “https://www.examplesite.com/folder1/17384.html” doesn’t instil much confidence that the content will be useful
- “https://www.shtudio.com.au/seo/4-tips-on-how-to-start-seo-for-your-website/ has a clear directory that succinctly defines the content topic
Even if you’re writing the best content in the world, your organic clicks will still suffer if you aren’t nailing search snippet basics.
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Create Link-worthy Content
Obviously we can’t talk about increasing organic clicks without mentioning your actual content. Whatever you’re writing, it has to be high-quality, which applies to the content itself and how it’s formatted. It’s crucial to properly embed elements, appreciate site margins and use a design that feels intuitive thus enjoyable.
Many businesses assume that the mere presence of content will bring more people in. That’s not the case. Content is only valuable when it’s unique and interesting. Longer posts are generally more authoritative, meaning they’ll attract more backlinks, ultimately increasing organic clicks.
Focus on evergreen content, information that isn’t time-sensitive, for long-term traffic improvements and periodically update older posts with fresh insight.
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Reduce Page Load Time
When you think of content marketing, page load time isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Nevertheless, a slow site can cost you insane amounts of organic clicks. In 2016, Google discovered that 53% of mobile users were likely to leave a site after 3 seconds of loading.
All website owners should be testing the load times of all pages. If you’re site is underperforming, there’s a few things to check:
- Minify any HTML, CSS and JavaScript code
- Reduce number of HTML elements per page
- Optimise Images by balancing quality with size
- Use a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce latency
If someone clicks on your site but leaves before it loads, you’ve gained nothing. You could use Google PageSpeed to check your site’s current load times.
Final Thought
Managing a website is heaps of fun, but not without its challenges. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is of course a powerful tool in digital marketing, but high organic traffic is reflective of an excellent site, full of appreciated content. Follow the fundamental principles and there’s no doubt you’ll see an increase to your organic clicks.
Hungry for more proven techniques for increasing organic traffic? Go here!