How organic web traffic can stunt business growth

by Adeniyi Adegboye

Adegboye Adeniyi
| credits: File copy

I am a great believer in email marketing. I have in the past written about the dos and don’ts of email marketing and believe that every forward-looking business should start mastering email marketing to grow their business.

But at the core, as a Search Engine Optimisation enthusiast I want to share with you how much effect organic traffic can have on a business growth.

To help us understand this effect we will take a look at two recent case studies and the impact of organic search on their business, then discuss how you can build your own ranking and what to avoid.

Case study of eBay

Earlier in the month eBay, while discussing its report for Q2, said it was expecting a reduction in earning over $200m due in part to a significant seven per cent drop in GMV (growth merchandise volume).

This drop is believed to be associated with a change in ranking or what is called a drop in ranking suffered earlier in the month of May.

Case study of French Blogger

Have you ever suffered from a negative review lately? French blogger Doudet recently wrote a review of her experience in a restaurant. Somehow her review ended up on the first page of Google.

The effect was so bad that the owner of the restaurant has to get a court order to force the blogger to take down the review because the review was negatively affecting their business.

These two case studies show the impact online traffic can have on a business. If you need to promote your business online, then you need to start actively engaging in using the power of the web to get more people to your website.

Let’s take a look at an example to illustrate this. If you do a keyword research for “online shopping”, you will discover that over 1,300 people actively searched for this keyword on a monthly basis over the last 12 months. If you combine this with other variations of the keyword, you will begin to see how many isitors will visit your site on a monthly basis.

Imagine a website at position number four on the first page. You can expect a minimum of 10 per cent of that traffic to your website – all other factors being considered”.

That is how huge the impact of organic traffic is and why people will use all sorts of techniques to increase their ranking because in theory, the higher your ranking, the more your traffic.

Four things that can positively affect your traffic

Having understood the impact organic traffic can have let us take a brief look at certain factors that can positively affect your traffic.

Build for your visitors

One major mistake businesses make when designing a website is to build based on the latest technique or style. At every particular point you need to remember that your visitors are the reasons why you created your website in the first place. You want them to find you. You want them to be able to access your website on any devices (mobile responsive) and at the have a great experience while doing so (low bounce rate).

Optimise your website or go nowhere

Even if you have the most beautiful website or the largest market, if you do not pay attention to your organic traffic by implementing standard practices and living according to the rules, your business might take a hard hit. This is because Google spider does not understand any other language. All it understands is user intent based on keyword, meta description and HTML tags. Therefore, you need to build not for your visitors but also for Google bots.

Be social

Learn to build a quality social media follower. If you don’t know how to do it, pay someone to build your social media profile. While social media do not affect directly affect ranking in such a way that we want yet, the amount of traffic you can drive to your website when you correctly use social media is often worth the price. Remember, these platforms are here to stay. Your potential customers are on it. Use it to your advantage.

Build relationships to get links

One way to increase your organic traffic is to increase your Google ranking. The higher your website is ranked the more traffic it gets. Unfortunately webmasters give links, not website. If you do not cultivate these relationships earlier in the day, when the time comes to get a link, you might find it extremely difficult and time-consuming. Links are the liif-blood of higher ranking and links will not disappear anytime soon. If you need to get links, then start building relationships with other webmaster, bloggers in your fields and even journalists. At the end of the day, these are people who will write about you and link from their website to yours.

@punchng.com