How to Grow Organic Traffic Using Your Competitor’s Websites

This is something many never think about when building their website.  The primary focus is often how it looks now how it’s found, how it loads, not how it brings in customers.

In reality, it’s something which needs considering before the design because it directly impacts your overall design, user experience and marketing.

If you don’t want a website that keeps on giving look away now, but if you want a website which will keep working for you even whilst you sleep, then read on.

What is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic refers to the visitors that come to your website from search engines like Google or Bing without paid advertisements. It is the result of your website’s visibility in search engine rankings based on its relevance to the user’s search query.

Unlike paid traffic, organic traffic is free and can provide long-term benefits for your website. It is generated by optimising your website’s content, structure, and user experience to align with the search algorithms and ranking factors of search engines.

By targeting relevant keywords, creating high-quality content, and building a strong link structure, you can increase your website’s organic traffic and attract more potential customers.

Organic traffic is valuable because it tends to be more targeted and has a higher likelihood of conversion compared to other sources of traffic.

How to Grow Organic Traffic by Using Your Competitor’s Websites for Guidance (So That Your Content is Better)

Believe it or not, the Internet to some degree is an open playing field. This means you can compete with the big boys if you provide higher-value content than they do. It’s not easy, but you can use your competitor’s content to your advantage, even ranking higher than them in the process.  It’s a great way in how to grow organic traffic.

Here’s how.

• Perform competitor research by entering your competitor’s website into something like SEMRush or other SEO tools you might have.
• You can now review the pages they have on their website and how well they’re ranking.
• Make a list of these pages and compare how you rank for them by comparison along with any gaps you might have (ie any pages missing).
• Now go ahead and create better content than them on your website making sure you add more value.
• Add some better links to your page content, including internal links.
• Make sure your images are loading quickly and have relevant alt tags added to the content.
• Promote your content across social channels, email marketing and keep pushing the content out there.
• Wait for 3-6 months and see how you’re doing.
• Tweak your content further to make sure it gets even better.

Make sure you then keep on top of your content and keep improving it over time.  Never, ever though copy and paste your competitor’s content because not only might it be copyrighted, but you will also be knocked down for copying content and not providing any additional value.

This is why when websites are created with duplicate content they never rank well – or at least as well as they potentially could do.  You’re better off not adding new content than adding replicate content.

This is one strategy above that is actually really effective to grow your website’s search volume in search engines and make sure you’re providing relevant information within your industry.

Here are some benefits to why you should be looking to grow your organic traffic from the get go.

The Benefits of Growing Organic Traffic

Growing organic traffic on a website is crucial for its success. It offers numerous benefits that can drive meaningful results for businesses.

Attract a Wider Audience

First and foremost, organic traffic increases visibility, allowing your website to be seen by a wider audience. This increased visibility can lead to higher brand recognition and better market penetration.

Organic traffic attracts targeted audiences who are actively searching for products or services related to your website. By targeting relevant keywords and creating high-quality content, you can attract visitors who are more likely to convert into customers or leads. This can result in a higher conversion rate and ultimately boost your revenue.

Rank Higher in Google (and other search engines)

Organic traffic can significantly improve search engine rankings. When your website ranks higher in search engine results pages, it gains more visibility and credibility. This credibility establishes trust among users and helps to solidify your brand’s reputation.

Build Credibility and Authority

A higher-ranking website helps establish credibility and authority in your industry or niche. When users find your website through organic search results, they perceive your content as valuable and trustworthy, positioning your brand as an industry leader.

For example, if you type in ‘how often should I wash my hair’ and you’re a hairdresser, this could attract potential customers in your local search district.  In reality, you’re up against Pantene, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping.

If you do your research however, you could choose ‘how often to wash my thin hair’ instead, which will bring you in some niche customers and a low competition rank.

Yes, some of these might be outside your catchment area, but you get the idea. Once you provide some tips and show others your advice people start talking.  You become a trusted adviser, and of course, can advise every customer to visit your website when they visit and further increase your authority.

By focusing on organic traffic growth, you can optimise your website from the start for long-term success in the online marketplace.  The more authority you built online, but more you can reach out to more and more customers.

Understanding Search Engines and Search Queries

To grow organic traffic, it’s crucial to have a deep understanding of how search engines work and the intent behind search queries.

Search engines, such as Google, use complex algorithms to analyse and rank websites based on various factors like relevance, user experience, and credibility.

By understanding these algorithms and optimizing your website accordingly, you can improve your chances of appearing higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attracting more organic traffic.

Search queries, or the words and phrases that users enter into search engines (via the search box), play a vital role in driving organic traffic. By conducting keyword research and identifying relevant keywords related to your business or industry, you can optimise your website’s content to match what users are searching for.

Targeting long-tail keywords, which are longer and more specific phrases, can help attract more targeted and qualified visitors to your site.  Understanding the search intent behind these queries is equally important.

By catering your content to match the user’s intent, whether it’s informational, commercial, or transactional, you can provide value and meet their needs effectively. This can positively impact your website’s search rankings and drive more organic traffic.

For example, you might be able to optimise your website for a keyword which has higher monthly searches than what you are currently ranking for and drive traffic with just a few tweaks here and there, armed with a greater understanding of how people are searching for you online.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines play a crucial role in driving organic traffic to websites. They use search engine bots, also known as crawlers or spiders, to discover and index web pages. These bots crawl the web, following links from one page to another, and collect information about the content they find.

Once a page is indexed, search algorithms analyze various factors to determine its relevance and ranking in search results. These algorithms consider factors like keyword usage, backlinks, user experience, and more. By understanding and optimising these factors, website owners can improve their chances of attracting organic traffic.

Search engines aim to provide the most relevant and useful results to users based on their search queries. They consider the relevance of the content to the search query, the credibility and authority of the website, and the overall user experience. Websites that consistently provide high-quality, relevant content and optimize for search engine ranking factors tend to receive more organic traffic.

Monthly search volume plays a factor because there is no point ranking for a keyword that has a low or non-existing search volume vs a keyword which is high in search volume and low in competition as this could very well be the key ingredient your business is missing to increase sales.

To grow organic traffic, business owners should focus on optimising their content for search engines.

This includes conducting keyword research, using relevant keywords throughout the content, improving website loading times, and building high-quality backlinks.

By understanding search terms you can greatly improve your content marketing efforts and build greater traffic, sometimes just from a single piece of content.  That’s the power of optimising for organic keywords vs growing PPC campaigns which are costing you money for each and every click.

Understanding Search Intent

Search intent, often referred to as “user intent,” is a fundamental concept in the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing. It refers to the underlying reason or purpose a user has when they enter a query into a search engine. In essence, it’s about figuring out what the searcher is really trying to find.

Understanding and optimizing for search intent is crucial for several reasons:

• Better User Experience: By providing content that aligns with the searcher’s intent, websites can offer a more satisfactory and seamless user experience. When users find exactly what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to stay on the site, explore other content, or convert (make a purchase, sign up, etc.).
• Improved Search Rankings: Search engines, especially Google, have evolved over the years to prioritize search intent. Google’s algorithms, for instance, aim to understand the purpose behind a search query and display the most relevant results. Websites that match their content with search intent are more likely to rank higher and also provide you with relevant traffic for your business.
• Increased Conversion Rates: Matching content to search intent ensures that the right audience finds your page. When the content aligns with the user’s stage in the buying or research process, they’re more likely to take a desired action, be it signing up, purchasing a product, or any other conversion goal.
• More Effective Keyword Research: Understanding intent can guide keyword research. Instead of just targeting high-volume keywords, businesses can focus on keywords and phrases that align with specific intents, which may lead to more qualified traffic.
• Content Gap Analysis: By studying search intent, you can identify gaps in your content. If people are searching with a specific intent that you haven’t catered to, it indicates a potential area to develop content around.
• Ad Spend Efficiency: For pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, targeting keywords with clear purchase intent can lead to a higher return on ad spend. If you know what users are looking for, you can tailor your ads to better match their needs.
• Keeping Up with Changing Algorithms: As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, they become better at discerning user intent. Websites and businesses that fail to adapt to these changes and consider user intent in their SEO strategies risk losing visibility.

When users use search engines, they perform different types of search queries to find the information they need.

These search queries can be categorised into four main types:

• informational queries,
• navigational queries,
• transactional queries,
• and commercial investigation queries.

Here’s what these mean in practice:

• Informational queries: These are queries in which users are seeking information or answers to their questions. They often include words like “how to,” “what is,” or “why.” For example, “how to grow organic traffic” or “what is search engine optimisation.”
• Navigational queries: These queries are used when users are trying to find a specific website or web page. They often include brand names or specific URLs. For example, “Facebook login” or “YouTube.com.”
• Transactional queries: These queries indicate that users are ready to make a purchase or complete a specific action. They often include words like “buy,” “order,” or “download.” For example, “buy organic traffic ebook” or “download SEO tools.”
• Commercial investigation queries: These queries show that users are in the research or comparison stage of their buying journey. They often include words like “best,” “reviews,” or “compare.” For example, “best organic traffic strategies” or “compare SEO keyword research tools.”

Understanding the different types of search queries can help website owners tailor their content and SEO strategy to attract the right audience and fulfil their specific needs.

You can see also straight sway how this ties into website design aspects too. By optimising for relevant keywords and providing valuable information, websites can increase their chances of attracting organic traffic.

By understanding search intent, you can align your content with what users are looking for, increasing the chances of attracting organic traffic.

Conducting keyword research to identify relevant keywords that indicate search intent and optimise your content accordingly. Providing valuable information, addressing user questions and concerns, and offering a seamless user experience will help maximize organic traffic and engagement to your website.

Researching Target Keywords

Researching target keywords is a crucial step in developing an effective SEO strategy to grow organic traffic.

By identifying the right keywords, you can optimise your content to align with what your target audience is searching for.  Start by using keyword research tools to find relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition.

Look for long-tail keywords that are specific and closely related to your content. Consider the search intent behind each keyword to ensure your content meets the user’s expectations.

Make sure to take the time to analyze your competitors’ keywords to identify opportunities and gaps in the market.

Once you have a list of target keywords, strategically incorporate them into your content, including the title, headings, meta descriptions, and body.

By regularly monitoring and adjusting your keyword strategy based on search trends and performance data from tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. By consistently researching and optimising your target keywords, you can increase your organic search rankings and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

Identifying Keywords with High Volume and Low Competition

When it comes to growing organic traffic to your website, one of the most important steps is identifying keywords with high search volume and low competition. By targeting these keywords, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in search engine results and driving more traffic to your site. Here’s how you can identify these keywords:

• Use keyword research tools: Start by using keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Moz Keyword Explorer. These tools provide valuable insights into the search volume and competition for specific keywords.
• Analyse search volume: Look for keywords with a high search volume. This indicates that people are actively searching for those terms, which means there is potential for a significant amount of traffic if you rank well for them.
• Assess competition: Take a look at the search engine results pages (SERPs) for each keyword. Analyse the competition by assessing the quality and relevance of the top-ranking sites. If you find that the top-ranking sites are low-quality or irrelevant, it’s an opportunity to target that keyword with less competition.
• Compile a list: Based on the search volume and competition analysis, compile a list of the top 5 most relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition. These keywords are your best bet for generating organic traffic.

Keep in mind though that it’s essential to choose keywords that are relevant to your business and align with your target audience’s search intent. By identifying keywords with high search volume and low competition, you can optimize your content and increase your chances of driving more organic traffic to your website.

Long-Tail Keywords vs Generic Keywords

When it comes to optimising your content for organic traffic, it’s important to differentiate between long-tail keywords and generic keywords. While both can help attract organic traffic, there are significant differences between the two.

Long-tail keywords are more specific and typically consist of three or more words. They generally have lower search volume and competition compared to generic keywords. However, long-tail keywords tend to attract higher-quality traffic because they are more targeted and aligned with the searcher’s intent.

On the other hand, generic keywords are broader terms that have higher search volume and competition. While they may bring in more traffic, it may not necessarily be high-quality traffic that is relevant to your content.

To effectively implement a successful SEO strategy for organic traffic, it’s crucial to find the right balance between long-tail and generic keywords. By incorporating long-tail keywords into your content, you can target specific audience segments and attract high-quality traffic. However, it’s also essential to leverage generic keywords strategically to maximize reach and visibility.

Creating a List of Target Keywords

To create a comprehensive list of target keywords for your website, you need to conduct thorough keyword research. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Start with a seed keyword: Begin your research by identifying a few seed keywords that are directly related to your website or business.
2. Use keyword research tools: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to explore keywords related to your seed keywords. These tools provide search volume data and suggest related keywords that can expand your list.
3. Assess search volume: Look for keywords with a high search volume as it indicates the popularity and potential traffic these keywords can bring to your website.
4. Evaluate competition: Consider the competition for each keyword. Choose keywords with lower competition to increase your chances of ranking well on search engine result pages (SERPs).
5. Consider relevance: Ensure that the keywords you choose are highly relevant to your website and target audience. Relevance is crucial for driving organic traffic and attracting users who are interested in your content or products.

Optimising Your Content for SEO Purposes

When it comes to growing organic traffic to your website, optimizing your content for search engines is crucial.  Whilst this often means your written content, you can also optimise other types of content such as your YouTube videos for example to make sure you’re hitting all relevant content in comparison to your competitors in your titles and descriptions.

By strategically incorporating relevant keywords and following SEO best practices, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in search engine result pages (SERPs), driving more organic traffic to your site.

As we’ve mentioned above, you need to conduct some keyword research to find out what people are searching for online in your niche and industry.  Once you have completed this, then here are some further tips to help optimise your existing and future content on your website:

• Incorporate keywords strategically: Once you have identified your target keywords, strategically incorporate them into your content to optimize it for search engines. However, be mindful of not overusing keywords, as keyword stuffing can negatively impact your content’s readability and SEO performance (which people still do today and wonder why they don’t get any results).
• Crafting high-quality, relevant content: Search engines prioritize content that is valuable and relevant to users. Focus on creating high-quality content that provides insightful information and answers users’ questions. This will not only attract and engage your audience but also increase the likelihood of getting organic traffic from search engines.  You should look around the topic and research angles which make your content unique and more valuable than others trying to rank for the same keywords.
• Perform On-Page Optimisation: Pay attention to your meta titles and descriptions, as they are key elements that influence click-through rates. Include relevant keywords, and make them informative and enticing to encourage users to click on your search results.  Make sure you apply all relevant header tags and alt tags, links and add highlights to key parts of your information.
• Improve user experience: Search engines value user experience, so make sure your website is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and mobile-friendly. Improve loading times, reduce bounce rates, and create a seamless browsing experience to enhance your website’s chances of ranking higher in SERPs.
• Make Your Content Response: Make sure your content loads across all platforms and loads quickly. Nothing kills the mood more than a slow-loading image so make sure your content works across desktop, mobile and tablet devices with ease.
• Promote Your Content: This is something many often forget, but keep promoting your content. The word in the industry is to re-purpose your content.  Send it out to your social media accounts, mail shots and ask others to link back to you. Time spent on your website, social signals and hits all add to the signals search engines use to rank your website content.  You can also use your content to grow your email marketing too and expand your content hubs and content marketing plan.

Crafting High-Quality Content that is Relevant to Your Audience

Crafting high-quality content that is relevant to your audience is crucial for driving organic traffic to your website. To create content that resonates with your target audience, consider the following key elements:

• Audience research: Conduct thorough audience research to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. This will help you tailor your content to address their specific interests and provide valuable solutions.  One way of achieving this is to think about potential buyer personas and adapt your website to them accordingly.
• Provide unique and valuable content: Aim to create content that stands out from the competition. Offer unique insights, perspectives, or information that your audience can’t find elsewhere such as via an in-depth blog post. Blog content can provide valuable tips, actionable advice, or in-depth analysis that demonstrates your expertise and helps your audience solve their problems.  If your content is better than the outdated content found on the Internet then you’re going to rank higher.  This will really help your organic search traffic as you will be offering up your expertise, especially long-form content and if you can keep evergreen content on your website as much as possible you’ll have fewer updates to perform in the future.
• Address audience pain points: Identify the key challenges, questions, or concerns of your target audience. Craft content that directly addresses these pain points, offering practical solutions, expert advice, or helpful resources. By providing valuable solutions, you will establish yourself as a trusted source of information and attract organic traffic from users actively searching for answers.
• Engaging and user-friendly format: Present your content in a visually appealing format that is easy to read and navigate. Use headings, bullet points, and clear formatting to break up the text and make it more scannable. Incorporate visuals such as images, infographics, or videos to enhance the user experience and make your content more engaging.

Using Internal Links in Your Content

Using internal links in your content is a powerful strategy to improve organic search traffic to your website. These internal links are hyperlinks that direct users to other pages within your website. They not only help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your content but also enhance the user experience.

By strategically placing internal links throughout your content, you can guide users to relevant and related information, encouraging them to stay longer on your site. This increased time spent on your website sends positive signals to search engines, indicating that your content is valuable and engaging.

Internal links allow users to easily navigate your site, making it more user-friendly and intuitive. When users can find the information they need quickly and effortlessly, they are more likely to explore other pages and engage with your content.

When adding internal links, prioritize relevant anchor text that includes your target keywords. This helps search engines understand the context and relevance of the linked pages.  Make sure you fix any broken links too as this can damage your technical SEO credibility and damage any link-building campaigns.

Remember to maintain a logical and organised link structure, ensuring that every page on your website can be reached within a few clicks. This enhances the crawlability of your site and increases the visibility of your content in search engines.

Incorporating internal links in your content strategy is an effective way to improve organic traffic, enhance the user experience, and boost your search engine rankings.

Optimising Meta Descriptions and Titles

Optimising meta descriptions and titles is crucial for improving organic traffic to your website. These elements play a significant role in how your pages appear in search engine results, influencing click-through rates and attracting potential visitors.  It can also greatly influence whether you show up in featured snippets too.

When writing meta descriptions, aim to create compelling and concise content summaries. Include relevant target keywords to signal to search engines and users the topic and relevance of your page. A well-written meta description can entice users to click on your link by offering a compelling snippet that accurately represents your content.

Crafting effective titles is essential. Start with your focus keyword at the beginning of the title, as it carries more weight in search engine algorithms. Keep your titles concise but meaningful, providing a clear indication of what the page is about. By incorporating target keywords, you increase the chances of your page appearing in relevant search queries.

Remember, meta descriptions and titles are your opportunity to make a strong first impression on potential visitors. By optimizing them with relevant keywords and compelling language, you can attract more organic traffic and improve the visibility of your content in search engine results.

Summary

Here’s a quick summary of how to grow organic traffic and the key topics covered in this article:

• Many businesses neglect the importance of growing organic traffic when launching a new website.
• Focusing solely on the design and launch of a website without considering how it will be found by users is a common mistake.
• A website that cannot be found or does not provide valuable information will not benefit the business.
• You can use your competitors websites or other websites in the industry to ensure you’re remaining relevant and thorough.
• Optimising your content over time is a key step missed by many businesses.  Make sure you keep your content working for you not against you.

If you want to get more from your website and want to increase your organic traffic then get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to help you and, provide you with actionable data about your website even if you don’t want to take anything further with us.