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According to a study from BrightEdge, 53% of all web traffic comes from organic results. For many who are working to market their site online, that can only mean one thing - the need to drive additional traffic through SEO. 

Understanding how to increase organic traffic, though, begins with an understanding of organic traffic itself. 

What is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic is those visitors who come from a search engine. Keep in mind that if you’re doing some pay-per-click, or PPC, marketing, this isn’t included in your organic traffic numbers. Instead, it’s just the customers who typed a query into a search engine and your website popped up. 

It’s harder than ever to rank for those keywords, particularly if you’re in a fairly competitive vertical, but understanding and implementing these SEO trends into the fabric of your site may help. 

The Five Trends You Need to Know to Influence Organic Traffic Numbers

1. Core Web Vitals: 

In the midst of the pandemic, Google released its Core Web Vitals - three brand new metrics that help it understand user experience. They include load time, interactivity on a site, and visual stability. 

The first one is pretty self-explanatory. Load Time measures how long your site takes to load for potential users. The second one is a bit more complex. Interactivity measures how soon after loading the site becomes interactive for customers so they can play videos, click on links, or work with your chatbot. 

Visual stability measures the level of stability while the page or site is loading. This is something we’ve all seen in one way or another on some of our favorite sites.

For example, when you type in the URL, the page begins to load so you click a button before the page has fully loaded and suddenly you’re not on the page you clicked. This would mean that during load, the buttons were not fully in place so you may have accidentally clicked on the wrong element.

It’s important that the elements on your site load where they belong in the correct place. 

2. Content Depth: 

Now more than ever before, Google is looking for pages that are trustworthy enough to present the right information to consumers. Google wants to know that you know everything you should about your vertical, your audience, and if a user is looking for information, they should be able to find exactly what they need on your site and stay there to learn more. This is where content depth comes into play. 

It’s no longer enough to offer just a few articles on the products and services you provide. Instead, Google is looking for a wide variety of articles that are fairly long. 

For example, those pages with article or blog lengths of 7,000 words or more tend to drive nearly four times more traffic. This is due to the saturation of the internet with unreputable content.  The more informative, authoritative, and helpful the content, the easier you’ll be to find via search to increase your traffic and rankings. 

3. Search Intent: 

Google has gotten better than ever at understanding the intent of most searchers thanks to their BERT update. The goal here is that Google’s algorithm AI should be able to pick up on both the technical and human aspects. For those looking to improve organic traffic numbers, the intent of the search should be fulfilled by the website itself. 

Those sites that truly understand user intent and can fulfill that are going to rank better. If you’re looking to update your site to help build something better from a search intent perspective, it comes down to better keyword research. 

You’ll want to look deeply to understand how a user actually deploys that phrase or term so you know more about what they want when they type it into the search engine. That’s the only way to build content they’ll actually want to see. 

4. Voice Search Optimization: 

Studies have shown an increasing number of users are voice searching to find the information they need on the go, and structuring pages for voice search tends to be a bit different than structuring traditional pages. 

These pages should sound like your organization in a way that reaches your audience. Users tend to lead with specific kinds of questions, but in return, they want specific kinds of answers that help them move further into the sales funnel. 

More smart devices than ever are incorporating voice search technology, so you’ll want to make certain you address it every time you build out content. You can do that by understanding your basic user personas and creating compelling content that fits with those personas. 

5. Local SEO: 

This has been a practice for some time, but local SEO is more important than ever. To truly optimize for local search, you’ll want to be certain that you have claimed and optimized your Google My Business account, even if you don’t have a physical location, and that you’re taking advantage of the many online business directories that are out there. 

Additionally, you’ll want to develop content that is based on local events like news stories within your industry. 

Local SEO can also help those near you find you on their first page, for example:

“Real Estate Agent” is a broad keyword that may lead users down a frustrating tunnel, but you can help searchers by adding a city, state, or region such as “Real Estate Agents in West Palm Beach.” This helps users find what they need, where they need it - at their convenience. 

Trends and strategies abound in SEO, but if you’re really looking to learn how to increase organic traffic, implementing these trends on your site is absolutely essential. Need help getting started? Contact us today!