So you know how everyone talks about organic traffic like it’s just SEO? It’s actually way more than that. Google is changing things up again with their default search page, and I break down what that means for us. But also, there are so many other ways to get traffic without paying for ads. I also tie in those five questions from last week so you can start connecting the dots on your strategy.
Enjoy the episode!
Stop wasting time, energy and money on AI-generated content that never shows up in search results. The goal of SEO content is to appear when someone is searching for your service or offer.
In this upcoming free webinar, I’m walking you through:
• the practical way to use AI for SEO content that actually ranks
• what Google thinks about AI content
• why ChatGPT is not a keyword research tool
• how to structure a blog post so it shows up in both Google and AI search.
This shing ding is going down on May 29th at 10am Pacific time. Grab your spot here. Be there or be square!
🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. This week’s recommended tool is Wispr Flow.
I had my reservations about always saying what I wanted to type. For some reason it felt like more work. And I was wrong. Wow! The ability to speak to text in any app or platform is incredibily more useful that I expected. The benefit is it saves me the frustration of having to always type everything out. And I feel like I’m a pretty fast typer. I’m not a fan of texting as much as I used to be. It’s much simpler to say something and it just be there. Because sometimes the other person doesn’t want to hear but read. The downside is I’m much more wordy when it comes to talking vs typing. I appreciate the convenience of this tool.
🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is Fastest Way to Quantum Leap Your Life on the Earn Your Happy podcast.
I feel like they use the “quantum leap” phrase a little too loosely in definition but I can appreciate perspective. Lately I’ve been becoming a lot more aware of the fact that we can’t make things happen when we want to. If we could, everything would happen right now, right? And everything we do to affect changes in our life are only allowed when we are capable of keeping them. There are some good self reflection questions in this episode.
Other Resource Links
Google’s AI Optimization Guide
Use This Code to Track Your Marketing
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tbdListen on Apple
tbdLast week we covered 3 website traffic methods, organic, paid and earned.
This week, we’re going into organic specifically.
When we think of organic traffic, we tend to think of Google because that has been the primary way of finding things.
But it’s actually more than that. Organic means. Not paid.
Did you answer the 5 questions from last week? As we go through this episode, you’re going to hear how those tie into organic methods specifically.
If you didn’t, no worries. You can get helpful info independent of last week’s episode.
First I must tell you, I am wearing my proverbial splat hat… an asterisk over my head. Search is a roller coaster right now and for the for seeable future. Anything I say cannot and will not be held against me in a court of law. [duh duh]
I mean there are articles talking about not even needing websites to show up in search for cryin’ out loud. Seems so bizarre to me. I wonder if the yellow pages people are getting excited and thinking about making a comeback using electronic books of some sort. I digress.
We build a website to make it easy for people to find our service, to provide our audience with the answer to their problems or desires. Getting people to that website is getting increasingly harder.
Budgets are always thin. We want to keep our profit margin as high as possible. So getting people to our website without having to pay for advertising is the obvious answer to why we would want to get website traffic organically.
A lesser known benefit is because the effort and minimal costs you put into organic compounds over time. Remember question one from last week about how much time you have each week? Here’s where that comes in. If your answer was ‘not much, Barb,’ organic is still worth carving out time for. You build something once and you get traffic for years!
You still have to have budget; it’s not as talked about because the cost is typically rolled up into labor expenses, not media buys.
In google’s recent conference, they shared the default landing page as we know it is changing again. They are deprioritizing the normal links we see even more than has been happening. Instead, they are providing more of an interface of sort to allow the searcher to interact with the search engine.
I’ve put a link to an article with more info the show notes.
So what does this mean for us?
If you answered yes to question four last week, that people are proactively searching for what you do, this is exactly why you want to pay attention to how Google is changing its default search experience.
What do we need to pay attention to? The ever changing landscape of the algorithm. How Google and other search engines choose to show their information. Algorithms are instructions coded by people of what websites to show in search results or what websites to cite in AI responses.
As of today, if you’re doing SEO traditionally speaking, keep doing that. That’s ensuring your website doesn’t have any front end or back end errors, the headings, copy and image alternative text is clear and it has digital street cred in the form of links from other websites. Even having your business on socials channels is part of traditional SEO.
If you haven’t given much attention to your SEO, it’s not too late. Start with the basics. Run a site health check ensuring any errors are cleaned up, ensure all your pages are optimized, etc.
Google released their AI optimization guide. I’ll put that link in the show notes.
Something to remember. SEO is not dead. All the search engines still need your website content.
Search engines aren’t the only way to get website traffic organically. It’s anywhere you can post or share for free that also allows a way for the visitor to link over to your website.
Social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are the most common.
Referencing question three from last week about how fast you need results… Organic social can build momentum faster than SEO, but it still isn’t guaranteed overnight. And, it’s only if you choose to use social in this way.
Another option is using Google Business Profile.
Another option is YouTube.
There’s Medium, Substack and Tumblr.
The key is deciding which ones your audience is on and go there. Using content from another channel eases some of the agony that comes with multi-platform posting.
Or alternative, choose one of these as your main platform and repurpose from others.
The not-so-secret secret is to create a piece of content that’s long enough you can cut and reformat to other platforms.
For example, I generally reformat and use content from this podcast or my blog posts and use them for publishing to other channels.
Though sometimes I’ll get a bug up my butt and post whatever floated into my mind that day because I feel like it needs to be out in the universe so sometimes IG gets the privilege of two posts from me some days.
One of the more underutilized methods is through downloadable marketing material. These come from webinars you host, guest appearing on podcasts, guest writing on another website or even going to an in-person or online networking event and using your 10 minutes pitch to invite people to the downloadable.
These methods cost you time mostly more so than labor costs so if you have a high margin service, question five from last week, the return on this method is significantly higher.
One more thing before we get to the takeaway. Question two from last week asked whether you can track a lead all the way to a sale. That applies to organic traffic too, not just with paid.
Even with organic sources, knowing where your leads come from matters.
A simple ‘how did you find me’ in your intake form or using special tracking code on links you share. And you know I have a resource on that! And I know you know where you can find the link!
Here’s The Takeaway
There’s more to organic traffic than just search engines.
It just happens that for many years it was the biggest piece of the pie.
But that’s changing. And so should your strategy. Maybe you find a new source of leads in a new channel.
About This Show
The Get More Website Traffic Podcast covers the strategies, tools, and tactics that help small business owners get more people to their website and turn that traffic into leads. Host Barb Davids breaks it down in plain language every week, with bonus episodes featuring other business owners sharing their expertise on topics that matter to running a small business. Produced by Compass Digital Strategies.
