As more brands make the digital jump, transitioning to an online sales strategy, mainstream paid advertising platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube are becoming more and more expensive. Unfortunately, that means your marketing dollars aren’t going nearly as far as they used to.

So, how can you increase your website’s organic web traffic with qualified people who are actively looking for your products or services while building stronger paid advertising audiences?

Three words… Search Engine Optimization. Or SEO for short.

Putting forth the effort to optimize your website, making it easily found by the top search engines, can lead to high-quality traffic to your site and, ultimately, a lower overall cost per purchase. While that may not happen overnight, dedication to SEO brings a variety of short- and long-term benefits. 

Quality leads can lead to increased online sales and a higher ROI. And, even if those new visitors don’t make a purchase during their first visit to your website, their data can be used to increase the size of your retargeting audiences on socials after their visit.

Although SEO can be complicated, here are three ways you can start improving your organic traffic numbers today.

Technical SEO

Your website’s health is a crucial factor in how well your business will rank on Google Search Pages. Site health is calculated with the following equation:

(1- (Internal URLs with errors / total internal URLs)) x 100

This will provide a percentage that details how healthy your site is. To help you determine your website health, use a tool like SEMrush to run a site audit. 

Poor site health can have a huge negative impact on your ranking in Google’s search results. This is because Google doesn’t want to show searchers a site riddled with errors. 

Site health errors aren’t the end of the world and can usually be fixed relatively quickly, all the more reason why improving your site health should be one of the first things you do to promote enhanced organic search engine growth.

Here are a few common errors we see on websites:

• Low text count on pages
• Broken links
• Large content files (photos and videos with large file sizes)
• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Improper H1-H6 tags
• Unminified javascript and/or CSS causing an overload in code for Google

Throughout 2020, 253 Media ran over 150 website site health audits and, on average, we saw a site health score of 79% for businesses that didn’t really focus on organic growth. Ideally, we push for a site health score over 92% for optimum growth, however, 88% is a great benchmark to shoot for. To put things in perspective, a site health score drop from 90% to 75% can result in up to a 44% drop in organic web traffic.

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Keyword Optimization For SEO

One of the most commonly talked about factors for improving organic search rankings is keyword optimization and on-page SEO.

So what are keywords and why are they important?

Simply put, SEO keywords are single words or phrases added throughout the content on your website (headings, subheads, body copy, etc…) that search engines can crawl to match your website with words or phrases that people are searching for.

Great, so should you just add a bunch of random words and phrases on your website that have to do with your business and hope they match what people are searching for. 

Not quite…

The best thing to do is create a keyword heat map like this one that shows the keywords you should focus on, their monthly search volume, the ranking difficulty, and the competitive density. This will help you find the low hanging keyword fruit, as well as help you identify where to focus your energy and resources.

Not sure where to start when it comes to keyword research? Get in touch with our SEO experts today and get a ton of ideas for where to direct your attention and efforts!

Once you have your keyword heatmap(s) made, you can start adding in new content (blogs, landing pages, video, etc…) based on those keywords you want to appear in search results for.

Keyword Targeted Blogs

To really amplify your organic efforts, implement a keyword targeted blog on your website. By building blog content around the keywords you want to target, you’ll be able to add more relevancy, which can lead to overall improved keyword rankings. 

Plus, blogs are a great way to add more value and information for people who are searching for specific topics related to your business.

Don’t think your business is blog worthy? Think again! Even businesses that are more on the “boring” side of things can benefit from consistent, compelling blog content. Coming up with new ideas regularly can be a bit tricky, but with a little creativity you can create an SEO powerhouse blog that will increase your organic search results and bring in high-quality prospective customers. 

Here are 12 pest control company blog ideas to show you just how simple it can be: 

• Six ways to keep your home pest free during the summer
• How to control your rat problem for good
• How to keep ants out of your house
• How weather affects pests and what you can do to keep your home pest free
• Is pest control safe for pets?
• How to keep mosquitos away from your pool this summer
• What to do when gophers are living in your yard
• Five easy ways to get rid of rodents fast
• Should you hire a pest control company or should you do it yourself?
• Why you need to take care of your pest problem sooner rather than later
• The best pest control product that you can use today
• How to insect proof your home

Now if you’re a pest control company building out a monthly blog strategy, that’s enough content for an entire year!

Not too bad, huh? In all reality, there are endless possibilities for blog content you can put out that will help prospective customers find your website organically.  

Building a strong SEO strategy shouldn’t be over-thought, but it should be made an integral part of your online sales and marketing strategy. Although it can be time consuming to get started and maintain, it’s valuable work that can lead to massive dividends for years to come.