5 Ways to Increase Organic Traffic With Quality Content

The struggle to increase organic traffic to a website is a common one. In fact, you may even say that it’s too common, with over 95% of websites failing to attract any search traffic from Google.

Don’t worry, though — this doesn’t mean your website has to be part of this statistic. With some high-quality content by your side, you can start ranking on search engines and attract readers in droves.

Ready to start getting more eyes on your top articles? Keep reading to learn how to increase organic traffic to your website with quality content.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

• Quality content should be fresh and up-to-date to attract more organic traffic.
• Targeting featured snippets in your content can help it appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Something as simple as changing up your headline can impact traffic to content.
• Earning credible backlinks can help your content rank higher.
• Scanning for and removing or editing AI-generated content can help with your website’s credibility, which can lead to more traffic.

1. Keep Content Fresh and Up-to-Date

You may have an excellent article on the “10 Content Marketing Statistics You Need to Know in 2016,” but it's not 2016 anymore. Google knows that people want fresh information for these types of topics and will rank more recent content higher.

Unless you update it, that is.

The extent to which you need to refresh things depends on the piece, but here are a few things to consider:

• Update statistics, dates, and other types of data to reflect the latest research and events.
• Remove anything that’s no longer relevant, and create new sections or images that reflect the current discussions about the topic.
• Fix broken links and add new ones to more recent resources.

When you update that 2016 blog post to reflect the current year, you may just see an increase in search engine rankings and organic traffic.

2. Target Featured Snippets

Sometimes, when you type a query into Google, a box will appear at the top of the SERP, highlighting a direct answer to your question. This is the featured snippet, and nabbing this spot can help you get more people clicking through to your website.

The best part? You don’t need to have the #1 ranking to do it! About 99% of the featured snippets come from the top 10 results, not necessarily the first one that pops up. So, if you have quality content on that first page, you’re already in a great position to shoot to the top of the SERPs.

To target featured snippets, keep the following tips in mind:

• Update facts and statistics to target more timely queries.
• Include the question and an accurate answer in your content, but keep it concise. No fluff, no filler.
• Look at the format of the currently ranking snippet (if any) and try to match it. If it’s a paragraph, answer it in a paragraph; if it’s a list, use a list, etc.

By appearing at the top of Google’s SERPs, you can increase online visibility and drive more traffic to your website.

3. Write Better Headlines

If you want to grab your readers’ attention, a good headline isn’t enough — you need a great one. It may be just a few words, but the headline can have a major impact on your organic search traffic.

To kick your headline game up a notch, try the following tips:

• Make them short and snappy. Research shows that 11 words and 65 characters is the sweet spot for the top shared headlines.
• Use numbers. A listicle gives readers an idea of the amount of content and makes it easier to scan through. Including other numbers like data and statistics can show that your article is well-researched and increases trust.
• Consider the 4 U’s. Headlines should be urgent, unique, useful, and ultra-specific for the best results. If you can’t get all four, at least aim for two.

Even if your ranking stays the same, you can get more clicks with an eye-catching headline.

4. Earn Backlinks

The more quality backlinks you have pointing to your content, the better your chance of ranking on Google. Research shows that the #1 result on Google’s SERPs has about 3.8x more backlinks than the rest of the websites in the top 10.

However, the number of backlinks doesn’t appear to be the only factor that affects rankings — variety matters too. The same study reports that earning backlinks from different sites also correlates with higher rankings, which can translate into more organic traffic.

Attracting links from other sites may sound like a lot of work, but it can be easier when you have useful, well-written content to offer other websites. Here are some strategies you can use to earn backlinks:

• Find guest posting opportunities with other credible sites and include links to yours in the content. If they can see that you post quality work, they may be more likely to accept a link in the article.
• Add infographics to your content. If people like them and use them in their content, they’ll link back to your site.
• Find relevant broken links on others’ sites and offer to replace them with yours.

The more credible your content and website, the easier it will be to attract backlinks and improve organic traffic.

5. Scan for AI Content

Speaking of credibility, it’s hard to have a well-respected website if it’s full of low-quality content. Even if you do have a few fantastic articles on there, the presence of poorly written, spammy articles may cause people to reconsider linking to your website. These days, this is especially true if it includes AI-generated content.

Sure, it can save you some time, but there are some serious cons to AI-generated content that can prevent you from increasing the organic traffic to your website. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution here: perform a site scan.

Using a website scanner, you can quickly uncover AI content on your website and evaluate its credibility. Edit or remove it entirely to avoid any negative impacts on your organic traffic.

Start Increasing Organic Traffic with Quality Content Today

When content marketing managers and web publishers put in the work, it makes websites stand out, leading to an increase in organic traffic. However, these results often don’t happen overnight, so add a dash of patience and focus on creating quality content to pave the way for more organic search traffic!