Organic Traffic - How to Raise Your Profile Using SEO
By Jeffrey Neal
What Is Organic Traffic And Why Is It Important?
Organic traffic is the search traffic that you gained naturally from various search engines using a technique called SEO. SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization, and doing certain things that are well-recognized first steps for SEO will earn you more organic traffic from natural human searches in the popular engines.
The importance of gaining this organic traffic should be obvious. If you want your work recognized or want visitors to your site without having to pay for advertising, the primary way and most lasting method is through these various search engine optimization steps. They will need to be used on any hub, website, or blog you write on. Without these methods you will have to pray to the search engine gods that you will be found, and from what I have been told they are not very responsive to those that ignore what they are looking for.
Almost anyone who teaches SEO techniques for earning organic traffic will tell you to focus on Google. Even if you don't personally use Google or just not very often, their engine accounts for roughly 70 – 80% of all organic traffic to pages from any given web search term. It is generally accepted that whatever works to get you ranked high in the Google SERPS (search engine results pages) will have a positive effect in Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines. There are specific things you can do for the others, but that is beyond the scope of this hub.
The process of optimizing for organic traffic from search engines starts with what is known as “on-page” optimization. This simply describes the factors that are used exclusively locally on your site or page to assist the search engines in finding and ranking you. The most important of these techniques are described further below.
On-Page Optimization for Organic Traffic
So what do you need to do to guarantee that you get more organic traffic to your page? Well, it all builds from your keywords. Keyword research can be a lengthy topic of discussion that hopefully you have already looked into. If not, there are some recommended hubs at the bottom of this one to help you, but your SEO efforts must begin with selecting good keywords. When you have done good keyword research, you will have determined what people are searching for and you will be able to provide them exactly that.
Let's say that you are passionate about hats. You just designed a type of Derby, and you would like to write a page about that, or maybe your goal is to get people to buy your hats. From the keyword research you did you have found that people are searching for “pink derby for women”. Those are the keywords you will want to write for and target. There are some easy places to put those keywords where they can earn you a look from the search engines and should help translate into a higher ranking which leads to a better level of organic traffic coming to your page about a pink derby for women.
Your keyword phrase needs to be well represented on you page. You do not need to write “pink derby for women” in every other sentence, though. You simply want to make it easy for the search engines to pick it up that your page is about the phrase you are targeting, and this is done a few specific ways.
The two most important places to have your keyword string is in the Title and in the URL of the page. It has been proven over and over again that it is possible to get on the first page of Google for low competition phrases with just those things done and nothing else. If you can rank and get the organic traffic for lower competition phrases, you should absolutely want to start there for the higher competition spots. You should choose a natural sounding title that will get your reader to want to look at your page. Entice them somehow. You could title the page Pink Derby for Women, but that's not very compelling. A better choice could be something like Don't Get Left Behind in the Pink Derby for Women Trend or Pink Derby for Women – It's the Next Sliced Bread or something like that. (I know those are goofy, but what do I know about hats?)
When you go to select your URL, either here or on another site, you will want to be mindful that your keyword phrase is also represented within it. Here at HubPages when you type in your title if you don't change anything the whole title string becomes the URL. That's OK in some cases, but you may want to remove all words except for you exact keyword phrase. You can do this by simply dropping down to the the box where your URL is displayed before you save your hub, and retype that URL to whatever you want it to be. If it is not already in use by someone else, then that will be your page's new address. This can work virtually the same way whether you are writing for another site or if you are registering your own domain.
If, for some reason, you are unable to get your exact keyword phrase in the address, you may try hyphens between the keywords or adding another word or number to the end. You might even have to switch the words around, but I would only do that as a last resort. You need to make sure your keywords are in the URL, though, as this can often be a tie-breaker of sorts for Google if another page comes up that is similar in strength to yours.
If you are doing a hub or a blog, you also want to make sure that you have added appropriate tags. You will want your main keyword phrase represented, and then you should include variations of it along with other similar keyword phrases that you may have found during your keyword research.
The other basic part of SEO to get organic traffic is known as off-page optimization, and it is primarily a process of back-linking. There are other hubs written that describe this process better than I can, so I will include a listing at the bottom of this hub.
Here at HubPages and most anywhere else you want to have an internet presence, the “life” of your content depends on the amount of organic traffic you can get to your site. Practicing these techniques and learning about other, more advanced method will go a long way toward achieving the rankings you will need. After you have done them for awhile, it will be second nature, and you won't have to focus so much on your organic traffic gathering methods.
Ryan Gives Some Keyword Tips
Further Explanation of SEO Tips for Organic Traffic Generation
- Keyword Research
Keyword Research This unit introduces you to keywords and keyword research. Keyword research is a fundamental part of the search engine optimisation process. After completing this unit, you should be able... - Guide to Backlinks for SEO, How to Make them Where t...
This is a guide to teach what a backlink is, how to find backlinks for seo and the correct methods of configuring anchor text for backlinks. This is a great resource for nebies learning Search Engine Optimization.
Comments
Great info there, I am going to use these tips in my future hubs!
I am approaching these hubs like a University class, meaning I need to study them. I am so computer illiterate that I have to read these articles over and over again. You have made this a little easier to understand, so I'll bookmark your hub and revisit it often. Thanks very much. Very good hub.
Thank you all for the comments. It makes me feel good if you were able to learn something from this. I'm no expert, but have found out these techniques do work and they can work well.
If you do proper keyword research and add some backlinks out on the web back to your hubs, you can make it to where you are earning decent traffic and hopefully that translates into adsense earnings.
It's always good to read info that reinforces what I *think* I know lol! Thanks for the great hub and thumbs up!
Thank you, Aqua!
wow and wow, thank you for your exciting and informative hub, and thank to for your kind words and becoming my fan. I appreciate you. creativeone59
wow and wow, thank you for your exciting and informative hub, and thank to for your kind words and becoming my fan. I appreciate you. creativeone59
Great information that is written on a level that I can understand. Thanks so much for sharing!
Thank you for reading my hub, Money Glitch. I am hoping the information proves useful. From my previous job I became used to breaking complicated concepts into easy-to-understand conversation for others. I would like to be able to do this with my writing as well, so I'm happy you found it easy to read!
Thanks - very informative.
the way you are explain is fantastic....informative hub.
aquaseaCreative and samironwebtrack, I appreciate the visit, and I'm happy you found my hub helpful. Thank you.
Most of the guys doesn't think importance of on page optimization, With above points always make your hub in best readable format, Like use much heading so when users give a quick look, he understand whole hub theory. This will help user allot and laso encourage him to read.
Dennis, you are correct, and it is important for getting additional traffic. I struggle with good titles, but hopefully I will get better at that with time. Thanks for stopping by!
Nice hub. I haven't put much thought into my hub titles and URLs so far. I certainly will from now on!
It's very useful information for me. Thanks for your article.
I was able to double my organic traffic with some simple seo tips. This ended up saving me hundreds in PPC costs.
Very useful information. Thanks for the tips.
Good basic information! I want to know if images or video's help your SEO? Someone told me that Google loves landing pages with videos.
seo is great i sure like it petter than ppc, thx for the hub!
Quality content is it's own form of SEO.
@Freeze75, thank you for reading.
@Artemus, it is neat how something relatively simple makes a big difference.
@Smireles, hope it helps, and thank you for your readership.
@john7600, images can help, but they need to be optimized as well. It might be long enough to write a hub on, but the basics info is to name the image file using your targeted keywords, and your "alt" tags. Neither of these things really apply to HubPages since we don't have alt tags and the image file names are changed when you upload them.
Videos are supposed to help in Google's eyes primarily, I believe, due to the extra length of time visitors stay on the page, but I'm sure there may be other benefits.
@samsungbeholdt919, thank you for the visit.
@MikeNV, you are so right. From my research this is said frequently, and it makes sense due to Google wants to serve the best, most relevant results. Thank you for your comment.
Thanks for the tips! The main problem I have is finding the best keyword strings to target. very useful info :)
deletia, check out the link to Peter Hoggan's keyword research article. It tells about checking competition, and I think that is one of the keys. One marketer I've read says it like this: if you go after the phrases with lower competition in the search engines you are not trying to kick down the door...it is already open. Of course you want to target phrases that people are actually searching for, so at minimum, a person should use the adwords keyword tool. I am using one called Market Saumrai, and it makes the process of narrowing down keywords much faster.
Thank you for reading!
Very informative hub, enjoyed reading more about keywords and SEO.
Good information here for a technically challenged newbie - now I shall go & try to put it into practice!
Neat, thanks!
Hi Neal
Agreed with the contents.
SEO is the ultimate solution to traffic for any business for life long success.Your hub is very informative specially for SEO.
wow.. so enlightening...
thanks...
..thank you very much Sir for the information.. this is a great help! :)
Very helpful hub!
very nice hub
I work on off page optimization mostly. But saw on page effect much for long term results. Thanks for opening a new way of optimization for me :)
Well done, thank you.
One of the biggest issues I have come upon is creating a URL that has my keyword(s) in it. So many URLs that I wish to have are already registered, therefore I find I have to "settle" for a URL that is not exactly my top pick. It's a challenge, but you are correct - keyword in URL is very important.
Great hub. This is a good overall explanation of using SEO for organic search traffic. I wrote one a while back in a hub but I prefer yours!
Great overall review for SEO beginners! Thanks!
great hub thanks!
Yes just got into this myself so it is good to try and pick up tipsfrom hubs such as yours.
Great Hub Jeffrey, I was looking for more info but that is fine as you included links for more information. The URL in the title as helpful information helps to optimize traffic. Great work.
WHAT A GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT SEO,I've learned a lot from it .
Great article, you can never stop searching for seo tips in your efforts to reduce your search engine marketing costs. If I had to pay per click for all the organic traffic I get to my websites it would cost me a small fortune every day. Great job,
Bob
This is a great article about SEO. I found it to be informative and interesting. Good Work!!
This was good advice. I will keep at it some more. I seem to need more advice in SEO, can't get the gist of it yet.
Congratulations on your being discovered by hubpages. you deserve it. I would be honoured if you could check out mine and see if you could advise me where I am going wrong Geffrey. God Bless and well done again.BB
Beautybabe, thank you! I will stop by and take a look, but I am far from an expert. I'm still picking things up with regard to SEO, but I've had good teachers.
Thanks to everyone for your comments! I really appreciate it. I hope my tips help you get more organic traffic to your hubs or websites.
Jeffrey Neal - Great Hubs, I already bookmarked this page for future reference, thanks!
u have written good and informative hub.
Nice article!! Very informative and helpful for a beginner like me. Thanks a lot Jeffrey! I m looking forward for more tips from you.
If I have a Robots INDEX NOFOLLOW meta tag "within" the head - head section, “just below” the keywords meta tag, and above the last closing head tag. It wouldn’t affect any one-way back links I have, Correct? But, does that meta tag affect any Reciprocal links? Would the Reciprocal links become Invalid if I use the Robots NOFOLLOW tag, in the top portion of my webpages.
Great Hub! Thank you for the pointers!
Where did you learn all this stuff?? I'm glad you're willing to share!
habee, I have picked this stuff up over the past couple of years by learning from some friends of mine. These guys are making a tidy sum from hubpages alone, and they have a nice network of sites also. When they tell me something I listen.
What a great hub. Lots of detailed information and I've learnt alot from it. Thanks.
I am always interested in improving my organic search, thanks for the terrific Hub.
I have learned something here today. Thanks One question, Do you know how to incorporate a seo tool to hubs? I've heard you can do it to blogs.
Golden Mama, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by incorporating an seo tool, but you might be thinking of Google analytics. If so it is very helpful in determining all sorts of information about the traffic coming into your hubs. If analytics is indeed what you are asking about, you can get instructions on how to add it to your profile here:
Great information. I find new ideas in every article I read. The key, I think, is to know whether or not the links are "follow" or not in areas you blog.
fdoleac, true that follow links are important, but I have also been informed that no-follow links are valuable for traffic generation; they just don't help with seo. If you post a linked comment to a popular blog, even if it is no-follow, you still might get a significant amount of traffic from the blog's followers who just might link to you if your content is good. All links have some value.
Thank you for this hub, Jeffrey! You have written this very clearly and easy to understand manner. I don't tend to do keyword research and just go with the web address that goes with the title, but reading this, it has made me understand that it does work and is better for organic searches of the hubs.
G Miah, thank you for your comments. I hope that some of this helps you find good keywords and get more organic traffic to your hubs.
wow nice info
fantastic job! this is very easy to understand. thanks for this post.
thank for the advice
i am trying to publish my web page
www.qatarsale.com
and your way is working gr8
Good advice, I'll try this and pray it works!
Great hub! Thanks for explaining a complex issue in easy to follow terms. It was really helpful.
Thanks... I'll use these tips for my next hub and my blog also...
Thank you so much..
Great article. The concept of SEO is pretty straightforward, it can just be very time consuming. Good content is step one, and after that the key is backlinking. But good content should encourage people to share your articles and link back to you on there own, so if you can do that, that's half the battle!
Thanks for this, very useful information.
Good hub ,
I have more tips on my hubs and on my report. Learn the basics of ON-PAGE SEO :
Thank you, thank you, thank you- great hub and much appreciated!
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Highvoltagewriter 2 years ago
Thanks for your insights I learned a lot just from that one article!