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How To Increase Organic Traffic To Your Store?
Winback Team on Aug 9, 2021 11:46:26 AM
With the increasing number of online stores and their amazing deals, people are getting into the habit of shopping online from the comfort of their homes. Right from a pen to a plane, everything is accessible in the world of the internet. But the increasing number of online stores has made it difficult for new players to attract and retain traffic, especially organic one.
There is no denying that both paid traffic and organic traffic are good for an online store. But when it comes to ROI, organic traffic takes the cake. Also, organic traffic beats paid traffic in terms of cost advantage. Interestingly, more than 50 percent of all website traffic comes from organic searches. That just seals the deal and proves that organic traffic can turn out to be a major difference between a successful eCommerce store and a failed one.
Therefore, it is imperative for e-commerce store owners to focus on increasing organic traffic. After all, that is where the most of the traffic originates from.
What is Organic Traffic?
Before we discuss ways to improve organic traffic for an online store, let us understand what organic traffic is.
Organic traffic, also known as free traffic, is any traffic that comes to your online store from a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
It is unpaid unlike the paid traffic that you direct to your site through ads.
Best Ways To Improve Organic Traffic
#1. Search Engine Optimization
A properly done SEO ensures that your online store ranks among the top-most results during a search-engine search for some specific set of keywords. As an online store owner, you must focus on your keyword research planning for strengthening your SEO, as it plays the most significant role in SEO marketing. Integrating long and detailed keywords into your SEO strategy will help you boost quality organic traffic. Optimizing images, titles, and meta descriptions; and structuring data to make it more understandable for search engines are some of the things involved in making the best use of SEO.
There are two types of search engine optimization that you should know about: On-page SEO & Off-page SEO. On-page SEO is all about what you do on your website. It involves factors like page loading speed, image optimization, keyword research, content length, broken links, meta tags, headers, among other things.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is all about activities that happen outside your website. It involves factors like backlinks, branded searches, social media engagement, etc. It is crucial that you focus on both on-page SEO & off-page SEO to rank your websites on a variety of relevant keywords.
Remember, do not stuff your web pages with keywords as that can prove to be counterproductive. The days of ranking on Google with keyword stuffing are long gone. It’s all about user intent today and if your website copy and blog posts are written from the user intent point of view, Google and other search engines will reward your website sooner or later.
#2. Good Quality Content
As an e-commerce store owner, consistent and engaging content can offer you a lot of opportunities. Consumers are inquisitive and want to learn something valuable from your website, so your content should not solely focus on selling your service or product. High-quality content will help you impact the decision-making of your audience. The types of content in which you can invest your time and money are endless. You should ensure that your content answers as many questions as possible about your products or services.
Target the topics people are searching for; you can either use ideas from websites like Quora, where people put up questions or refer your internal customer service data. Addressing actual queries relevant to your product or service can make up for appealing content.
For starters, you can create a blog post. You can write about best practices, product reviews, and how-tos, among many others. Inserting links to your website in the guest blogs posted on other notable sites can also help you reach your target audience. Guest blogging is a two-way street. Invite experts in your niche to write blogs on your website to grab the attention of new customers.
Try to interview thought leaders in your industry and publish their interviews on your website. Not only will the association add to your credibility and drive organic traffic, but it will also expand your reach.
You can also leverage social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter to upload videos with relevant content. Consistency in creating and uploading videos will help you gain and maintain a good number of subscribers. These subscribers will potentially add to your organic traffic.
#3. Detailed Product Descriptions
Unique, detailed, and high-quality product descriptions can help you achieve decent rankings from search-engine algorithms for those products. You must ensure that the product description includes the right keywords for maximum traffic. Apart from that, the details must consist of all the features and benefits of the products. User intent is also a key factor here.
#4. Social Proof
Social Proof confirms that a group of people trust an online store to buy from it. With the growing number of online businesses, your customers must know that your online store and website are authentic. Things like customer reviews and shareable links build trust among your audience. While customers consult reviews and ratings before purchasing a product from an online store, they only trust a mix of positive and negative reviews. Thereby, validation of your website from other users on the internet drives new traffic from the search engine results.
#5. The Power of Social Media
Leveraging social media to gain online reputation from active users of Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and Telegram will help in increasing brand search on search engines. These platforms can help you improve your brand awareness for your online store. Integrating a share button with the product description will allow your existing customers to post the product on their social media accounts. Regular posting will help you increase visibility, consequently increasing the number of your followers.
Besides posting, take advantage of social media platforms to connect with your customers. Incorporate chats and reply to their comments promptly for an excellent customer experience.
Your social media followers will drive organic traffic to your online store.
#6. Webpage Speed
We have already mentioned this factor from the SEO point of view, but we are also covering it individually in this article. The reason is that web page speed influences other crucial factors that can lead to a surge in organic traffic. It also means that if the webpage loading speed is poor, it can turn out to be a death knell for a website.
If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, it is very likely that the user will close the website and move on to the next one on the search list. If that happens, your website’s bounce rates, one of the key ranking factors on search engines will be very high.
Any website with a higher than average bounce rate will find it extremely difficult to rank on search engines. Thus, to maintain organic traffic coming to your online store, you should give due importance to the speed of your website. Typically, a website should not take more than 3 seconds to load. If a website takes too long to load, you may lose more than half of your potential customers.
#6. Mobile Phone Compatibility
Online shopping using a mobile or a tablet accounts for a whopping 54 percent of total sales from an online store in the United States. Another study shows that 40 percent of online shoppers will go to your competitor when they experience a bad mobile experience. Considering such high statistics, we cannot ignore the significance of mobile phone compatibility.
#7. Retargeting
Shoppers who have visited your website and left without completing the purchase are your warmest leads. Build a strategy to identify the reason why they did not complete the purchase. Target the messaging based on the reasons for incomplete sales. Incentivize them with offers, coupons, free shipping, or deals that they cannot ignore.
You can also take this opportunity to connect with them personally and address the unresolved concerns for a better customer experience. Collect data regarding the preferences of your existing customers and contact them with relevant information to target them for repeat sales.
#8. Website Architecture and Design
Good website architecture ensures that navigating through the website is simple and easy. Noticeable navigation pages give access to relevant content to your potential customers. The elements of website design, such as text and background color, the presentation, and the products on display, also play a huge factor in driving organic results.
#9. Old School Promotional Strategy
Use traditional promotional strategies like local marketing to encourage people to visit your website. Some of the age-old marketing tricks include offering discounts and coupons on retail holidays, loyalty programs for existing customers, offers for newbies, and creating bundles and kits where customers can save money by purchasing two or more products together.
#10. Email Newsletter
As an online store owner, you need to communicate about your new products, promotions, and discounts, festive offers, and loyalty programs to your existing customers. One of the most cost-effective ways of doing so is encouraging your loyal customers to subscribe to your e-newsletter. This way, you can keep them informed and educated about your brand and products.
Ensure that your e-newsletters are not only informative but also eye-catching and engaging. The e-newsletters may include information about upcoming events and promotions, recent blog posts, content from your social networks, and more. The strategy will not let you out of sight or out of mind, and your existing customers will reconnect with you, followed by a Google, Yahoo, or Bing search.
#11. Digital Influencer Marketing
Digital influencers typically include social media users, YouTubers, and bloggers. Once influencers partner with you, they may share your content with their audience in the form of an advert, an affiliate link, or a product review. A simple way by which the influencers increase organic traffic is by including a link to your online store on their website. You can also get creative and increase organic traffic through email campaigns, where you can grab retargeted customers’ attention by showing the association of the influencers with your brand. Even an image and quote from a leading influencer can make a difference.
#12. Word of Mouth and Referral
It is no secret that a piece of advice from a relative or a friend can influence buying decisions. Thus, you can offer rewards or incentives to your existing customers for referring your products. People tend to look for more information regarding a product or service recommended by a friend in search engines.
You can also go a step ahead by supporting your customers with healthy after-sales service. The exceptional service should encourage your existing customers to promote your brand and help you earn more traffic and customers for your online store. Overall, a happy customer acts as a magnet that can attract even more customers to buy from your store.
Wrap Up
As an e-commerce business, you need to be creative and integrate the discussed strategies to drive organic traffic to your online store. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to increasing organic traffic for your online store. Based on the scale of your business and your needs, you need to find the perfect balance of the strategies that work best for you. While the process of attracting organic traffic is time-consuming, but once you achieve desirable rankings, they can do wonders for your online business.
Have you leveraged the power of SMS marketing yet? Do you know that having an SMS marketing strategy in place can lead to a considerable decrease in abandoned cart rates of an e-commerce store? Let’s take Winback’s customers as an example. Winback’s users have been successful at recovering up to 34% of abandoned carts? It makes Winback among the best SMS service providers for eCommerce store owners.
The great thing about Winback is that their plans begin at a mere $59 per month and offer up to 3500 text messages per month. It means that signing up for Winback won’t create a hole in your pocket. Also, you will receive an ROI of up to 35X on every dollar you spend on Winback’s plans. Isn’t that great? Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and reach out to us right away to discuss how Winback can help you!
Topics: Organic Traffic
