How to boost organic traffic
I’m usually far more invested in how to boost organic traffic to your website than how paid Google Ads are driving web traffic. That’s why when I realized the web traffic from one client’s Google Ads had dropped by 30%, I was THRILLED.
The drop in traffic from Google Ads doesn’t mean the ads are working less effectively. The total number of visitors from Google Ads is holding steady and, in some cases, increasing. It’s just the makeup of her traffic that has changed. The web traffic from Google Ads used to be 90% of total visits to her site. Now the ads drive just 60% of her total visits.
This shift means organic traffic to her website now makes up a 30% larger share of her overall traffic.
The spike in organic traffic is no accident. Our team has been focusing on driving organic traffic to her site since the end of August. We are just now seeing the results we had in mind.
This shift underscores an essential aspect of SEO and other traffic boosting measures: they don’t work overnight.
(Click to Tweet)
How to Boost Organic Traffic
We had a long list of tricks and strategies that we considered when trying to bring our client’s organic traffic up. We settled on a 3-prong approach to boost traffic.
1) SEO: Our copy is always SEO optimized. In this case, we also implemented some of the more finicky SEO strategies.
2) Weekly Targeted Blogging: We parsed the search terms that already brought traffic to the site. We then wrote biweekly blogs specifically tailored to these long-tail search terms.
3) Pinterest: We started a Pinterest account for the client and began posting multiple times each week.
We’re Pinterest People
One aspect of how Pinterest works makes it a magical tool for organic traffic.
You see, Pinterest is a search engine. (or, as the wordsmiths at Pinterest call it, a “visual discovery engine”) Other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, for example, are not.
Here’s what I mean. Say you’re looking for more information on how to build a deck. If you Google “How to Build a Deck,” you will get search results that contain that keyphrase, including individual Pinterest posts. (or pins in Pinterest parlance) You will NOT get individual Facebook or Instagram posts because Google does not search individual posts, probably because that would be chaos.
So if you are the business that builds decks, a well-run Pinterest account will do much more to drive organic traffic to your site than most other social media activity because your pin can come up in your customer’s search results. Your Facebook posts, for example, will not.
Pinterest also gives you more bang for your buck when it comes to the time you invest. That’s because your pins might turn up in search results weeks, months or even years after you pin them.
Compare that to, say, Twitter, where your post stops appearing within people’s feeds within 20 minutes or so, relying on others to retweet it to get any further traction.
Boosting Organic Traffic with Pinterest
Back to our client, her Pinterest strategy, designed by Create That’s Pinterest expert Vanessa, took some very calculated steps to feed traffic from Pinterest to our client’s website.
· Content Remix
We are big fans of what we like to call the “Content Remix.” This means if we write a blog, we also make it into a pin. We also send it in a newsletter, post it on LinkedIn, and use it as the subject of a video. Which brings us to…
· Video
Vanessa regularly uses video pins. Video views have taken off on Pinterest in the past couple of years. If you’re making videos to post on Instagram or TikTok and not reformatting them for Pinterest, you are missing out.
· SEO
Pinterest offers many opportunities to plug in those long-tail key phrases that help people find your content. Your Pinterest bio, captions, and even your user name can all contain search terms that help drive traffic.
In closing, I want to add that our client does not work in a visual field. She is not featuring the recipes, fashion and home decor that come to mind when you think “Pinterest.”
Vanessa and I thought long and hard about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that our client doesn’t have much competition for Pinterest searches that pertain to her subject area. We decided to give it a try and hope that being one of the few with her expertise would help our content rise to the top of search results more easily.
So far, so good!
