11 Tactics to Increase Organic Traffic Without Backlinks

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Do you want to increase organic traffic to your website? Traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines?

Yes, right?

With so many complicated theories, it is hard to find working SEO strategies that connect every dot and attract organic traffic from Google.

But in this article, I will reveal the 11 SEO strategies that will increase organic traffic even if your website has little to no backlinks.

Today’s SEO is no longer about links and content; it requires holistic and omnichannel marketing strategies. You must start seeing SEO as a broader component or aspect of your business.

Follow these tips to increase your website traffic without doing SEO link-building.

1. Write Useful Content

Every other piece of advice on the list is useless if your content sucks or doesn’t appeal to the right audience.

I don’t like using the much-thrown-around phrase “quality content.” Instead, I like using this “useful content.”

This is because the word “quality” is relative here, and to a greater degree, it depends on who is consuming the information and what they regard as quality information.

But when I say “useful content,” It doesn’t matter whether the content is quality; so far, the consumer of such information finds it “useful” for the intended purpose.

Then, we can conclude that your content meets the user’s expectations and is of quality as far as the user is concerned.

Write content that stands out from the rest of the noise we regularly see published on the net. Write something super helpful that your audience will find interesting, something other writers in your niche find extremely difficult to replicate.

When you achieve this, people will naturally link to you, and your referral traffic will grow substantially.

Your organic traffic will start picking up, too.

What is confusing is that, according to many reliable sources, Google’s top 10 search results pages contain content exceeding 2,000 words on average.

This has been causing a dilemma for many content marketers who don’t have much to report in a single post. Like the entertainment industry, affiliate review sites, coupon sites, smartphone review sites, software review sites, etc.

These blogs, especially entertainment blogs and smartphone review sites, don’t have much going on to report the information as it is.

If your blog topic is not evergreen, tutorials, how-tos, or similar, you don’t need to worry about the 2,000-word count or anything else.

Your focus should be on delivering users’ expectations, not a specific word count threshold.

If your blog topics can be well covered in under 1,000 counts without leaving anything out, don’t drag it to 1,500 just because you want to satisfy Google.

Remember, Google doesn’t read your blog; your site visitors do.

If your blog is useful to readers, it’s valuable to Google because Google is in the business of user satisfaction.

2. Be The First to Report Time Sensitive Information

Sometimes, being the first to break the news or report an event is all you need to get traffic without SEO from the search engines.

This is especially true if you work in entertainment, news and events, celebrity gossip, politics, or other related industries.

When an event breaks up, people want to know where, when, how, why, what, who, etc.

The quicker you report this information, the better your chances of beating your competitors. If you’re in one of the above niches, it could be your best way to increase organic traffic without building backlinks.

Your strategies should include massive social media sharing, especially on Facebook and Twitter.

Also, please don’t wait for the spiders to visit; invite them to crawl and index your link quickly. You can do this by logging into your Google search console dashboard.

Click on ‘URL inspection” from the left sidebar menu.

The next step is to put your URL in the field above. This dialog box will appear to retrieve data from your requesting URL.

Once this is done, click “requesting indexing,” as shown in the image below.

Give it a few seconds, and the Google spiders will crawl your newly published post for indexing within minutes.

However, this is unnecessary if you update your website regularly, just in case, and to be sure your link is indexed.

3. Target Low, competitive Geo-Targeted Keywords

When I wrote this post, I wasn’t that Blogger who was constantly mentioned in the blogosphere or had large circles of bloggers’ friends.

My blog is not new but not that popular, and it attracts very little organic traffic from search engines.

(Updated – The link above is now linked to an updated version of the same post, not exactly the one I wrote years back)

Yet, I went to Google Keyword Planner, researched keywords, and found a particularly low competitive geo-targeted keyword.

Aspiring Nigerian newbie bloggers must search for this keyword.

I wrote two articles around the keyword, and to be honest with you, the first version of the article remains the number one post that drives organic traffic to this blog weekly.

No week has passed without having had dozens of visits to this post.

This is because it ranks on the first pages of Google and Yahoo—not just on the first pages, but number 1 for the target keyword since I wrote that post.

That post has brought in a relatively significant amount of income from blog coaching to blogging setup fees.

This week’s most recent message was from a lady who contacted me after reading my blog and wanting to start her own.

Targeting low, competitive long-tail keywords is much easier than fighting it out with the big established brands for high-volume competitive search terms.

Targeting long-tail keywords is one of the best ways to increase organic traffic to any blog – big or small.

Target long-tail keywords – simple.

Chances are, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of low-competitive local search terms you can easily rank for.

Keywords that attract organic traffic from the search engine. Traffic that will take positive actions on your blog, like email sign-up, sales, etc.

Instead of targeting “search engine optimization, “you can choose “search engine optimization professional Chicago.”

If a user is looking for a nearby search engine optimization professional in Chicago, you’re more likely to appear in SERP.

Apart from this point raised, there is something else you’ll need to understand and abide by. However, it depends on the size of the blog and the SEO strength.

In the image below, the column with the average monthly search volume is what you should care about and base your keyword research strategy on.

The other one, high, low, or medium, is not your concern unless you’re a Google Ads advertiser. The data in both columns, “Competition and Top of the Page Bid,” are your concerns.

I have said this before, but just in case you missed it.

Again, look at the figure in the arrow labeled “2 “in the image above. As you can see, it is just a very small search term with an approximately monthly search volume of “100k“.

The other arrow labeled “1” has an outstanding search volume of “1 to 10 million “monthly search.

If you want to dramatically improve organic traffic, the best advice I can give is to use search queries related to “2.”

It is more detailed and precise, and the searcher is looking for specific information—in this case, what a blog is.

But you might still want to expand on the keyword and gather more relevant queries.

That is a question the searcher wants an answer to.

The other search term (arrow “1 “Blogger) may look more promising and, on the surface, will drive massive traffic compared to what the other will bring.

…but your chances of getting anywhere near 3, 4, 5, or even the 6th page of SERP  is not visible.

Such search terms like this one are called “Generic terms. “

They’re hard to compete for and require more significant efforts and a substantial marketing budget. And an ongoing increased quality off-page SEO success to find your way through for such a term.

Besides, you’re likely to attract irrelevant audiences with such a keyword.

Blogger!

What does the user want to know from such a single keyword in the search engine?

Ask yourself if you can find the answer. At this stage, we don’t know what he/she is looking for.

But with a search phrase like “What is a blog”?

It is obvious what the user is asking, and in an ideal world, I can tell this person is a beginner who is about to go into online marketing but does not know how to get started with a blog.

He wants a clear definition of a blog, its functions, why it is used for online marketing, etc.

You can better provide this user with a thorough definition, functions, benefits, etc. And why use blogs for online marketing? The more your chances of hitting the top 10 results.

4. Build Your Blog For Users

You may be wondering how this will increase organic traffic.

Recently, there has been a buzz around Google revealing its secret ranking signals. Do you know what many believe it to be?

CTR – This is called the click-through rate.

If your article link appears in an organic search result, the user clicks on it and, within seconds, returns to the search result page to click on another result.

At its discretion, Google believes your information does not solve that user problem.

If the percentage of users who engage in this behavior on your web pages from organic traffic is high, then Google may place less value on your indexed pages.

If visitors to your sites interact well with your content, or at least, don’t bounce back to search result pages to find alternatives.

Google “may” reward you with a better search ranking…which will or may result in more organic traffic.

Here is an article put together by WordSream on how to improve your CTR in organic search result pages.

5. Improve Your Page Speed

Apart from the quality of links pointing toward your pages, page speed is another factor Google has confirmed that affects the ranking in search engines.

In the abovementioned point, we discuss building your blog for users – Page speed is part of it.

The last time you waited for 1 minute for a web page to load, what did you do?

If I were you, I would guess…you closed the page, opened another tab, and typed in another blog URL, and that is!

You never care to wait that long for a single web page to load.

The same thing will happen to you if your blog visitors wait that long for your pages to load on their desktop computers or smartphones.

Here is the page speed loading time for CyberNaira.com from testing with Gtmetrix.

Optimizing your pages for desktop and mobile users in today’s SEO and online marketing space is essential.

Google made it part of their ranking criteria that your blog must be optimized for mobile users.

I don’t see why you shouldn’t target mobile users in today’s marketing world. In 2018, 52. 2% of all web traffic came from mobile usage, compared to 50.3% the previous year.

Source…

If you’re a WordPress user blogging on a premium theme from StudioPress, you have nothing to worry about optimizing your blog for mobile users.

All StudioPress premium themes are mobile responsive-ready and quickly adapt to the device your blog is viewed with.

Web hosting is another factor you need to consider for a faster page speed. The quality of your web host plays a crucial role in how fast your web pages load.

If your server is configured poorly or your website is hosted on a slow server, on-page optimization won’t help much.

Consider moving to a reliable web host if your business can afford it.

6. Update Your Existing Content

Analyzing the data in your Google search console will help increase organic blogs if you already have many published posts.

Log in to your Google search console account and choose the web propriety you want to improve organic traffic.

Click on “performance” and check the other two checkboxes in the traffic performance data section on the page.

Now, I want you to scroll down the page a bit. You will see detailed search traffic data for your website.

This data includes search impression figures, search queries, target pages, average CTR, position, etc. You should focus on queries, pages, impressions, and positions.

Your web pages are already gaining traction in the organic search results and related search queries. Most of the search queries you don’t even target in the content.

You didn’t even mention them in your content.

But Google thinks they’re relevant to your page topic.

Click on the label “Page” in the top navigational menu. It will reveal all the pages on your website that appear for a search query.

Now, click on “Queries” from the navigational menu. This will reveal all the search queries that generate impressions/clicks for that particular web page.

Visit these pages on your website to update the content with search console queries Google finds relevant.

But wait…

Although these search queries may seem relevant to the on-page topic, not all can fuse with the content.

Please don’t force it; only update the content with what comes naturally to add.

Also, look for ways to improve the content by adding more words, images, points, internal links, and backlinks.

When done, update your blog’s content and return to the Google search console to request crawling and indexing using the link inspection tool.

Google will crawl the URL again and index the fresh copy of your page.

Assuming you’ve done a better job here, you should see a significant increase in impressions and clicks.

7. Publish Regularly

Publishing regularly doesn’t directly increase organic traffic to the blog, but it does help increase your chances of ranking for more keywords.

The trick is that the more pages you create, the more you write on keywords related to your industry. This increases your chances of getting found in search engines for more relevant keywords.

More pages may also increase your chances of acquiring links.

The more you write on different blog topics, the more you write on different levels of competitive and low-level keywords.

The more other bloggers in your niche see your works, the more likely they will link to them as a reference.

Web pages that stop over time to acquire more links or stop indefinitely to add fresh content to their sites will soon fall out of favor in Google searches.

As if this were not enough, if you stop updating your blog as expected, it will certainly affect your reader’s community, and your blog bounce rate could skyrocket anytime.

8. On-Page Optimization

You must put your first foot on the right track of search engine traffic.

On-page SEO – is highly important to increase your chances of ranking for your targeted search queries.

Your other foot lies in your off-page SEO.

A big part of it is beyond your control, at least for every average Blogger or internet marketer.

The good news is this…

Many SEO tools are available today to help, especially if you’re a WordPress user.

The most popular ones include but are not limited to WordPress SEO by Yoast, AIO SEO, and Rank Math.

While writing your content, please pay attention to their SEO score and recommendation, and ensure all required fields give the green light (not necessary) before you publish.

This might not be the case with all your published posts, as seen in the image below.

Don’t sweat over such a thing; keyword density is not as important for ranking as it was some years ago.

You might get penalized for keyword stuffing if you go crazy about the number of times your focus keyword appears in your content.

The focus keyword does not appear at the beginning of your headline (as seen in the screenshot below)

Yes! That’s a valid SEO ranking factor, but remember you’re writing for humans and not searching ROBOT.

If the focus keyword reads awkwardly to your blog readers if it appears at the beginning of the content headline, please don’t drag it in there all because you want to satisfy the search spiders.

Also, ensure your site is properly indexed and crawlable. Make sure your pages are linking to each other correctly.

Google specifies that all other internal pages should be reachable from a static link on your blog homepage.

Inter-linking your published articles to each other is very important for so many reasons:

• It helps reduce the bounce rate.
• Keeps visitors longer on the blog.
• It aids website navigation.
• It defines the architecture and hierarchy of your website.
• Passes SEO juice to other pages on the website, etc.

You’ll also need to avoid duplicate content – this could come in many forms, such as tags and category pages.

The best way to deal with this is to instruct spiders not to index these pages in their algorithms. You can use the SEO Power Suite free version to find errors that must be fixed on your blog.

The SEO tools take better care of many SEO signals that could cause your website to have a low ranking. Or the lack of search visibility altogether.

If you find it useful and worth the money, consider upgrading to a premium version later.

This SEO software lets you detect whether your blog 404 error page is correctly set up.

According to Google:

Just because a page displays a 404 File Not Found message doesn’t mean that it’s a 404 page. It’s like a giraffe wearing a name tag that says “dog”. Just because it says it’s a dog, doesn’t mean it’s actually a dog. Similarly, just because a page says 404, doesn’t mean it’s returning a 404…

Returning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page… can be problematic. Firstly, it tells search engines that there’s a real page at that URL. As a result, that URL may be crawled and its content indexed. Because of the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages. Your unique URLs may not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently and your site’s crawl coverage may be impacted.

We recommend that you always return a 404 (Not found) or a 410 (Gone) response code in response to a request for a non-existing page.”

A 404 error page should return the appropriate 404 not found a status code or syntax.

This SEO tool also helps in finding duplicate content, link-building opportunities, broken links, keyword research tools, site audits, content optimization, and lots more

9. Your Article Headline

Nothing guarantees a higher click-through rate from search result pages to your websites than your search listing headline.

It will be a total waste of time, energy, and resources if your pages appear in SERP only for your article headline to mean nothing to the user.

That wastes an opportunity to convert a blog tourist into a loyal reader.

If you get it right, a little tweak or changing words in your headline message can surprisingly lead to a 40% response rate.

But here is the truth: Only a few marketers have mastered the art of writing article headlines that get people clicking.

And here is why…

many content marketers believe you need to be a “guru” in copywriting to have mastered the secret to great article headlines.

This is far from the truth.

You, too, can write an article headline that will go viral. The type that just gets people clicking through to your web pages.

Years back, I wrote a guest post for the NinjaOutReach blog on article headlines. I discussed the ten headline formulas that keep readers reading your content.

In that post, I explained why borrowing expert credibility is vital to the success of your article headline.

Especially if you’re still that influencer figure people talked about. However, this is not something you always do or apply in your headline copy, only when necessary.

10. Write In-depth Articles

This may not apply to all blog topics. As we’ve seen in some blog niches, they do not require more details to express their thought, like in the entertainment industry, news, events, etc.

However, if your concern is to increase organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing,

Considers publishing long-form, in-depth articles free from fluff, jargon, and unnecessary words just for lengthy sake.

I have found that the best approach for long-form content that keeps people reading is to give all you can deliver on the subject.

Don’t leave anything out, and don’t start repeating yourself.

Long-form content also helps in achieving better on-page SEO results. And could even increase your chances of getting natural backlinks from other bloggers.

The more the content, the more you can fuse in your focus keyword and other related search terms.

Longer articles will also help you avoid keyword stuffing, which is now against Google keyword usage guidelines.

However, technical HTML background work, such as proper Schema.org markup, logo markup, and news article markup, must be included in the Google In-depth article category.

However, according to a post on QuickSprout, this WordPress plugin helps.

It is called the Virante In-depth Articles Generator.

However, your articles need 2,500 words or more to be included in a Google In-depth article search. And you should also know that Google gives more weight to well-established news sites in this category.

11. Target One Topic – Focus Keyword

All points listed above may not yield the expected results. They’ll give less value and won’t increase organic search traffic if your blog posts are not addressing or focusing on a single topic.

Don’t write on multiple industry topics in a single post because you want to touch on every related topic. Or to demonstrate you’re an expert. It won’t do you and your readers any good.

Pick a subject through keyword research or discover what your readers want to read. Then, focus on that subject and write down all you know about the topic.

Give everything out, and don’t hold back anything while you stay on track.

This will allow search engines and human visitors to understand what you’re saying quickly. It also gives search engines more accurate data to index your pages in the right category.

But this does not stop you from adding related and relevant search queries to your content.

For instance, if your main keyword is the best SEO tool. You can target other relevant search queries, such as top SEO tools, free SEO software, organic SEO tools, link-building SEO tools, etc.

All these keywords are related and could match the search intent for any one of the queries.

Conclusion…

How to get organic traffic from Google is neither hard nor easy. Before reaping the reward, you must put in lots of work, research, consistency, trials, errors, etc.

Finding low and medium-competitive long-tail keywords is the longtime hidden strategy to increase organic traffic.

The good news is that users create thousands of new long-tail keywords daily.