Whilst useful for those wanting quick answers on a topic, the rise of the ‘zero click’ results is a growing problem for those looking for ways to improve organic search traffic to their websites. Google’s featured snippets take up a large section of SERPs detracting from other website results and can cause an issue for those looking to gain organic traffic from search engines, particularly if they have not previously been appearing in the top few results.
What Can I do to Regain Traffic from Google?
Something we see time and again from our clients is a desire to see real growth in Google rankings. If you are looking for a way to regain traffic from Google lost to ‘zero click’ results without constantly increasing spending on advertising, organic traffic is key. But how do you drive organic traffic to your website from Google? Our Regaining Your Organic Traffic From Google guide will show you how to generate organic traffic and how SEO can help regain traffic to your website.
What Are ‘Zero Click’ Results?
The term ‘zero click’ results is often used to descripe search engine results that do not require a consumer to click on a result in order to access the information they have been searching for. This is often the result of Google’s ‘featured snippets’ which display information relating to the question that has been typed into the search engine. An example of this could be a maths problem or something such as ‘what was the name of William Shakespeare’s wife’. Featured snippets allow the searcher to access the information they were looking for directly in the search engine results page, without having to visit another website. This leads to zero clicks from the page, hence the term ‘zero click’ results.
What is Organic Traffic?
You may have heard the term before, but what does organic traffic mean? Organic traffic, simply put, is traffic or visitors to your website as a result of unpaid search results. Organic traffic differs from paid traffic in that it is not driven by paid ads so can potentially keep earning revenue long after an ad campaign would end.
Why is Organic Traffic Important?
Organic traffic is important because it is how you will generate site traffic and potential conversions without a continuous cost. Once it is established, content that brings in organic traffic can keep bringing in quality leads far into the future. Because of this, organic traffic is the most important type of traffic to your website.
Organic web traffic increases website trust and authority, improving your website’s position in search engine results pages (SERPs) and more. Traffic from social media, for example, can often have a high bounce rate due to the nature of the referral. Organic leads, however, will find your site through an active search. They know what they are looking for and your well-optimised page has been matched with their needs by Google’s algorithms.
How Do I Measure Organic Traffic?
Using site analysis tools such as Google Analytics, you can measure the number of visitors you have to your website. If you have the correct tracking in place, you should be able to see exactly where your website visitors are coming from and how many of them you have. When doing this, it is worth looking at the number of unique visitors you are receiving to your website, this can help you to work out how large your audience base is and how many sessions are repeat customers.
When you break down the number of organic sessions your site is receiving by page, you will be able to measure which pages are doing well and which are not. Using metrics such as the bounce rate and time on page will also allow you to see if your visitors are finding what they were looking for on your site. Make sure that you are excluding any traffic that has come from paid keywords, email marketing or any other paid channels when measuring organic traffic to get the true figure.
How to Increase Organic Traffic
If you are looking for ways to drive organic to your website, it all starts with SEO. Optimising your website for search engines is the first way you can increase organic traffic and help combat any decrease in sessions you might be experiencing organically. You can improve organic SEO by, among other things, making changes to the functionality or structure of your website, optimising content including images and text for search engines and improving usability for visitors to your site. Here is our simple SEO checklist you can do from home to get you started.
How Can SEO Help Organic Traffic?
When you create relevant and engaging content, Google will reward you with a better search engine results page ranking. But what happens when your amazing article isn’t getting the attention it deserves? This is where SEO comes in. SEO (short for search engine optimisation) techniques can take your brilliantly-written content and put it in front of the people most likely to find it useful.
On average, the top three Google search results will get around 75% of all clicks, with the number of organic clicks dropping with each position. If you are looking for a way to improve organic search traffic, SEO techniques can help your page rank on Google and bring in visitors who will be best matched to what you have to offer.
Pay Attention to the Metrics
One thing that is key when working on ways to regain traffic lost on Google is to keep a close eye on your key metrics. Are you targeting a particular location either nationally or internationally? If you are a local business running a bricks-and-mortar store, you should be targeting and attracting that audience. Analytics can help you to work out where in the world your traffic is coming from and where you are not getting traffic from.
A key element to put in place when looking to gain organic traffic from Google is a keyword strategy. Do you have a keyword strategy in place? Type your target phrases into Google and see where you rank. If you can’t find yourself on the first or at least the second page, you probably need to work on improving your organic traffic for that key phrase. You should continue to measure your performance over time to ensure a steady flow of organic traffic to your website. Search engine rankings continuously update so it is worth keeping a log of how you are performing on a regular basis.
Need some guidance on how your website is performing or not sure where to start? Get in touch with the team now or try our new website SEO audit tool for an instant response on how your page is performing and what you can do to help your rankings and regain your organic traffic from Google.
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