Getting visitors and building a blog is tough. That’s why I wanted to share one of the best ways to increase organic website traffic without building backlinks or doing anything shady. Using this method will also help you come up with new content ideas that can help you grow your blog or website.
How to Increase Organic Website Traffic by Analyzing Your Traffic
One of the most powerful things you can do for your blog is to pay attention to your analytics on a regular basis. Google will show you where your visitors are coming from.
Based on the information that you get, you can then use it to help you grow your website or blog and even get some great content ideas you can write about. I’d recommend checking your analytics at least once every 30 days.
Are you struggling to get traffic to your website or blog? Maybe you’re struggling to come up with new content ideas?
If so, you’re not alone. Starting a blog takes minutes, growing it into a profitable online venture takes a lot of time. I’m going to walk you on a way of driving traffic to your site without overthinking it.
first…
What Is Organic Traffic?
Search Engine Optimization aka (SEO) is time-consuming and can take months to work. If you’re brand new to the blogging world., then you will want to make sure that you read this.
Every blogger and business owner dreams of the day that their blog starts to get organic traffic from Google. Because it means that they are now getting free traffic from the search engines. (although they put in a ton of work on the front end)
Learning how to get traffic from Google is another subject that I won’t be covering in this post. If you want to learn how to get started, I recommend reading this post.
It will give you a good explanation of how Google Rankbrain works. If you’re brand new to blogging, then just know that it takes time to learn how to use SEO effectively, without keyword spamming.
But it’s definitely worth putting your time into it.
Today, we’re just going to be looking at one thing that you can do to help you increase your blog traffic using the old content you’ve already written.
Related: How to Get Free Website Traffic Using Old Content
My Experience
It took me a while to finally start getting traffic from Google because I was targetting keywords that were just too competitive. Since I’ve started using KWFinder, I am finally starting to see my organic traffic increase. (Finally!)
For the last couple of months, I’ve been focusing on creating helpful content that I am actually able to rank for without having to build a bunch of backlinks. (personally, I hate building backlinks)
One thing that I’ve learned is that keywords play a huge part in your overall success. If your blog is at least six months old and you’re not getting traffic, I’d sit down and take a look at the keywords you’re using.
Chances are you’re writing content on keywords that are too competitive. (at least that’s what I was doing for the longest)
How to Increase Organic Website Traffic Using Google Analytics
If you’re just starting your blog, then make sure that you learn how to install Google Analytics. You’re going to need it once you start getting traffic.
You’ll have to come back to this when you’re getting traffic. Right now, you just want to focus on writing content and promoting your blog.
For those of you who are already getting traffic and have at least 30 days worth of analytics, then you can use this method to help you find out what people are searching for on your blog.
I personally use this to help me improve my organic traffic, but you can do this to for your social media traffic if you wanted to. Unfortunately, my Pinterest traffic sucks.
I’m still working at it, but I just can’t seem to get it to drive a ton of traffic. That’s why this post is going to focus on growing your organic traffic.
Log Into Your Google Analytics
You’ll want to make sure that you set a custom date to the last 30 days. You can go back further if you want, but I always like to check the last 30 days.
Go to Behavior >> Site Content
This will show you the posts that are actually bringing visitors to your blog. If you pay attention to your stats every month, which you should, you’ll notice a trend.
You’re going to notice that it’s just a handful of blog posts that are actually helping your blog grow. This is why so many people talk about the 80/20 rule.
How to Find Out Where The Visitors Are Coming From
Now that you can see the top 10 posts or pages that are sending traffic to your website, it’s time to find out if they are coming from social media, Google or referral.
Click on the first result and then go to Secondary Dimension >> Acquisition >> Medium
This will show you where your traffic is coming from. Hopefully, your traffic is coming from several places and not just one. You NEVER want to put all your eggs in one basket this guide will show you how to promote your blog so you can diversify your efforts.
This is where my traffic is coming from for that one particular blog post.
This one post is getting visitors from several different places, which is nice. As you can see, it is getting some organic traffic as well.
I’m telling you things are finally changing since I’ve started using KWFinder and paying more attention to the keywords that I’m using.
Content Generation Ideas
Now that you know which posts people are interested in on your website or blog, you can focus more on creating more of that type of content.
This is why so many people say that you should piggyback off your successful posts. If it’s proven to work once, there’s no reason why you can’t write something related to that particular post.
I’ve been making it a point to go through Google Analytics to help me find out which of my popular posts I should try to recreate.
It’s one of the best ways to get more free visitors to your website or blog.
What Are People Searching for?
Another thing that I’ve been recently doing to help me with my website growth is taking the time to find out what people are actually searching for.
You won’t be able to get as much information using this method as you can from Google Search Console, so make sure that you use both. I’ll show you how to find the search queries on blog platforms.
Google Analytics
Go to Acquisition >> Overview
You’ll get a screenshot of all the different platforms that are sending you traffic. For this purpose, we’re focused on organic search traffic, so click on organic search.
You should see the search queries that people are doing to find your website or blog on Google.
Take some time and scroll through all those pages to see which terms typing in to find you online. If you already have written something that is related to one of the terms, you can write another post on that particular term.
You can also go through and your social media and direct traffic as well. Be sure that you write down all those search queries on a Google Document that you think you might want to expand on more with another blog article.
Google Search Console
I love Google Search Console, even though, I don’t know that much about it. It allows you to see a lot more of your search queries than Google Analytics allows.
Log into Your Dashboard
Go to Performance >> Queries
Scroll down and you will see all the queries that people are typing into Google to land on your website or blog.
The first thing you’ll notice is that there is a lot more information here than on Google Analytics. This is a goldmine for coming up with new content ideas.
Plus you can use this to update your old blog posts. Personally, I hate updating old blog posts but it’s a great way to generate more pageviews without having to write a brand new blog post. This guide walks you through step-by-step on how to update old blog posts.
Related: How to Fix Errors In Google Webmaster Tools
What If You Don’t Have Search Queries?
If your blog is at least 6 months old, you should have a few search queries. It does take time to start seeing traffic from Google, but at 6 months, you should see something.
It took me forever to start seeing traffic from Google because I was writing content on keywords that were too competitive or no one was searching for.
Related: 35% Growth In Free Traffic With 3 Simple Steps Using SEMRush
If you’re at the six-month mark and NOT seeing any organic traffic, then you’re probably making the same mistake I was making.
Stop what you’re doing and start paying more attention to the keywords that you’re using. Things have totally turned around for me since I’ve started using KWFinder and I can’t recommend it enough. They give you 5 free searches per month, you can sign up here.
If that’s not enough and you can’t afford to pay for a plan, then use something Ubersuggest which is free. The important thing is that you learn about keyword optimization and research as quickly as possible.
Read whatever you can get your hands on about SEO and don’t be afraid to test things out. You can’t go wrong unless you’re just spamming your blog with keywords.
Resources to Learn SEO
The one thing you need to keep in mind is that things are always changing online. If you want to succeed in the blogosphere, you’ll need to continue educating yourself.
Here are some great resources you can learn from that will help you make the most of your writing efforts.
- Keyword Research and SEO Tutorials for Beginners
- How to Get Your Keywords Ranked In Google Using the Google Pleaser Method
- 25 Blogs to Learn Read on A Regular Basis
You don’t have to invest in an SEO course. The most important thing to remember is if your content is helpful and not spammy you’ll do fine.
The most important thing is that you’re actually targeting the right keywords.
Website Traffic Growth Rate
The downside of focusing on SEO to grow your blog is that it takes time. One of the things that I’ve learned to accept is that what I am doing today will benefit me greatly in a year.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t start seeing some results from your efforts if you’re targeting the right keywords. You just shouldn’t expect to publish a new blog post today and start ranking on the first page of Google.
You have to be patient or spend a lot of time building backlinks. As long as you’re using LSI semantic keywords and Google related searches, you should still see an increase in page views. (at least that’s what I’m noticing)
- Your focus as a blogger should be to:
- Provide helpful content that helps your readers
- Using your analytics to increase website traffic and new content ideas
- Write new content on low competition keywords that you can rank easily
- Focus on promotion
If you can continue doing that on a regular basis, you will eventually start to see the results you want. The more content you publish on your blog, the more entryways people will have into your blog.
You’ll also notice an increase in the search queries in your Analytics that are responsible for your website growth.
Final Take Away
Starting a blog is the easy part, in fact, you can follow this tutorial and get WordPress installed in 5 minutes. The hard part comes when you’re trying to build a profitable business.
It takes a lot of hard work, that’s why it’s so important to treat your blog like a business. You might not get see the growth as quickly as you would like, but if you’re putting doing the things that need to be done and continually analyzing your metrics, you will eventually see some growth.
You might still write posts that don’t drive a lot of pageviews. Not every post is going to be a success, but who knows it may still help your loyal readers solve their problems.
Hand Picked Articles for You
- How to Get Your Blog Noticed When No One Knows You
- 7 Reasons You Need to Find Popular Blog Topics People Love
- 15 Types of Blog Posts That Will Help It Grow Like Crazy
Do you spend time analyzing your metrics to see how you can improve your page views? If so let me know what type of results it has generated and how often you do it. I’d love to hear about it.
Recommended Blogging Resources:
- Free 12 Day Blogging Bootcamp
- Article about using Yoast SEO for optimizing your blog posts and how to do it.
- SEMRush Free Trial to Gather Low Competitive Keywords
- Quiz: Which theme is best for your blog?
- If you want to build an email list and send newsletters, I recommend ConvertKit (starts at $29)
Hello Susan,
Wonderful Post. Google Analytics is one of the best tool to check your website traffic in detail. The points you have mentioned here are very helpful to find out some of the key aspect of your website traffic which helps you to make some vital decisions for your blog. Thanks for sharing this helpful post.
Hi Vishwajeet,
Yeah, I’ve been learning more and more about my traffic as I continue writing blog posts. It takes time to see what type of content people are resonating with, but once you start to see what’s working, you can do more of that.
Hope all is well with you, thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Super helpful post! My blog is 7 months old and still not seeing any traffic from the big G! Very frustrating but I know it’s a long game. Probably using way too many competitive keywords I’m certain now. Thank you for the great tips!
Hi Emily,
I am so glad that you found the post helpful. At least you’re only 7 months into blogging, I did it for over a year before I realized that my keywords were too competitive.
Be sure and come back and let me know if your new strategy helps you grow your blog. I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan