You pump out new blog posts every week. After all, consistently publishing SEO-friendly content drives more website visitors, email subscribers and revenue. The problem is: only a handful of blog posts generate organic traffic.
Organic search accounts for more than 70% of traffic to business services websites. And blogging is one of the best ways to grow your online authority and traffic.
So how do you make every blog post count — and avoid wasting time on content that doesn’t get results?
Applying these simple SEO tips every time will help you increase blog traffic:
Need expert content marketing help? Reach out to Human today.
Content produces traffic. So more content should equate to more traffic, right?
Not always.
The important distinction here is “quality.” Publishing multiple blog posts a week won’t generate much traffic unless the content is high-quality and just plain better than the competition.
So what exactly does “quality” mean?
To create content that gets ranked above the competition, you should strive to write blog content that is:
While “quality” is subjective, analytics can help ground your analysis in data.
Of course, rankings and organic traffic are the first sign of high-quality content. But as you move up the SERPs, you can also look to behavioral metrics like time on page and bounce rate to quantify how compelling your content is.
Before publishing your blog, thoroughly research competitors to make sure you have the best resource available on the topic. Ultimately, the most useful, accurate and engaging content will prevail.
Free Download: 4 Steps For Producing Great Content That Search Engines Will Love
Internal links help drive readers to related posts where they can learn more about the topic. When done correctly, an internal linking strategy helps organize your content, directing search engines to your most important pages.
When publishing blogs, look for natural opportunities to link between posts.
If you’ve defined a topic cluster strategy, check to make sure the blog links to its pillar page and related pages within the cluster.
Tools like Blueprint SEO help you manage your topic cluster strategy and see where links don’t exist in your topic cluster.
Showing relationships between your content via links helps search engines understand your topical “expertise” and points them to high-value pages to surface in the results page (helping you earn more rankings and visibility!)
Plus, this gives readers more opportunities to find and engage with your content — increasing traffic to your blogs.
The topic and keywords you target directly affect how much organic traffic your blog post generates. It’s an essential SEO task that should inform the content you produce.
But it’s not as easy as selecting a keyword, inserting it into your blog and ranking. Topic and keyword research inform your blog structure and content. And mastering this step is a blend of art and science.
First, let’s understand what we mean by “topic” and “keywords.”
Once you have a topic in mind, conduct keyword research to validate your ideas with data and compile a list of keywords to target in your article.
The days when keyword density would earn you a top organic position are long gone.
But that doesn’t mean keywords are dead.
Including a target keyword in your metadata and content is still important for reinforcing what your content is about.
Once you’ve selected a primary keyword, include that phrase in the metadata on your page:
Not sure if your blog post is missing these critical SEO elements?
Install the Google extension Open SEO Stats, and you'll see exactly what Google does on any webpage. Other inbound marketing tools like Moz and Yoast WordPress plugin also offer this insight.
Google’s mission is to make information accessible and useful.
A slow-loading or mobile-unfriendly blog layout interferes with the user experience — something Google no longer stands for.
That’s why Google introduced its newest page experience criteria — Core Web Vitals — which measures “ how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.”
If your blog loads slowly or measures poorly against these criteria, your organic rankings and traffic could also suffer.
Track your blog’s page speed and core web vitals scores using Google’s PageSpeed insights. While these fixes require some development legwork, you can get a head start on what to fix with a Page Experience audit.
Once you hit publish, it could take months for your blog post to move up the search engine results.
Give your blog post instant visibility by promoting it across your social channels and to your email list. Getting readers to engage with your blog is an important trust signal to search engines that can help it move up the SERPs faster.
You can also boost blog posts that segue nicely into your services with some paid spend to get in front of new audiences (and drive new leads).
Get our ultimate guide to content promotion here.
We know that search algorithms aim to deliver the most accurate, up-to-date information.
A fast, effective way to drive blog traffic is to keep your content fresh.
By updating your blog content to better answer the search query, you improve what exists and signal that the content is current, giving you a potential boost in rankings.
Here’s how to identify opportunities to improve your blog content and increase traffic:
Few people regularly update their blog posts. If you run a technical blog — where information changes with every new product release or update — you have plenty of opportunities to update your content and leapfrog competitors.
Looking for more? Get our step-by-step content optimization guide.
At Human, we’ve found that blog optimization is hands-down the best way to drive organic traffic and build website authority.
By regularly polishing your content with up-to-date research, related information or improved readability, you show search engines you’re committed to keeping content fresh.
Of course, you shouldn't abandon your new content development efforts. But dedicating a few hours a week to revamping underperforming blog posts will dramatically improve their ranking potential and organic traffic to your blogs.
Struggling to drive traffic to your blogs? Learn how Human helped one company increase blog traffic by 1,500% in 6 months.