SEO Isn’t Enough: How to Make Organic Traffic Matter

Whether you’re running a rigorous search engine optimization program or just getting lucky, a significant portion of your new site visitors will find their way to you via Google.

Great, right? Maybe. All that nifty organic traffic, by itself, isn’t worth a whole lot. The tricky part is turning these incidental visits into meaningful conversions. Here are five ways to increase your chances.

Tip #1: Answer the user’s question.

If you pay close attention to your search analytics, you’ll often know what questions people are trying to answer when they arrive at a particular page on your site. Do your pages actually answer these questions? If not, consider refocusing the page content so it better addresses a typical user’s needs. If visitors don’t see what they’re looking for right away, they’ll leave — and you’ve missed your opportunity.

Tip #2: Teach users about your organization.

Using Google Analytics, study where typical visitors are landing. Maybe it’s a blog post from two years ago, or a video from last week. Determine whether these pages send the right message about what you do — and why what you’re doing matters. If a page fails the messaging test, augment the first paragraph with a clarifying sentence and a link to your mission page. If you’re a nonprofit, don’t forget to say so. Likewise, a five- to 10-word tagline in the header can give some context to every page on your site.

Tip #3: Ask users to take action.

If a page is getting sizable traffic, take advantage of the opportunity by asking those visitors to do something — anything. The ask, of course, should depend on the nature of the page. If it contains compelling information about community education programs, ask the user to donate to support these programs. On an events listing page, you might ask someone to sign up for email to find out about upcoming events in their area. Always consider the likely objective of the users who arrive at each page. 

Tip #4: Bury dead content.

Google has an unfortunate bias toward older content. To Google’s bots, the page with the most inbound links looks like the best choice, even if it was posted in 2002. This might mean that your organic search traffic is routed to last year’s campaign page — not your meticulously deployed brand-new one.

To solve this problem, you have two options: (a) update the old page with new information (preferred) or (b) use a 301 redirect to route traffic from the old page to the new one.

Tip #5: Point to other relevant pages.

You should always attempt to point users to other valuable content, whether via sidebars, footers, or in the page body itself. But this is especially important on pages that pull in search traffic. The users who arrive at these pages are impressionable — and you may only have one chance to sell them on the value and utility of your website. If you have a fun interactive tool, reference it with a big bold link. If you have a more up-to-date blog post that deals with a related issue, refer to it directly in the body of the article. And don’t be shy about pointing users away from your website from time to time — if there’s a raging debate on your Facebook page, promote it and link to it.

Will Begeny is Lead SEO and Senior Content Strategist at Blue State Digital.

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