🚀How to Grow Your Organic Traffic - An Holistic Approach

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Read time: 5 minutesHey, Shane hereThis week’s newsletter is a direct follow-up to last week’s newsletter, which focused on the Search Off the Record Podcast, where John Mueller dove into details about Google’s August 2023 core updates.After the updates, a few pages on my website have seen an increase in organic traffic and rankings tremendously. So I’ve decided to share what I’ve changed SEO-wise, and what I’ve been focusing on throughout 2023.What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

• How holistic SEO has helped increase my website traffic

• The sponsored tool of the week

• Latest blog updates

How Holistic SEO Has Helped Increase My Website Traffic

It’s not a secret that Google updated its core algorithm last week. It also prompted me to write about what we could expect moving forward in last week’s newsletter. There I discussed all the things John Mueller mentioned during the Search Off the Record podcast episode about increasing your chances of ranking higher in the SERPs.For the last six months, I have focused on a more holistic SEO approach, focusing on creating content with the users in mind, and the results speak for themselves.

As John Mueller mentioned, SEO is not an overnight thing but strategic hard work pays off.Today I want to share the keys to my SEO success (exclusively for my newsletter subscribers).

1. Approach content from a user perspective

This is by far the most important thing, and Google has reiterated this point, time and time again.Right after you’ve done your keyword research and created a brief outline, you should shift the perspective toward that of your target audience.Create your content and design the layout with the user in mind first, before focusing on other SEO-related aspects.Constantly ask yourself:

• Is this useful for the reader to know? 

• What should I add and what should I remove to benefit the user? 

• Can I add some helpful, professional insights that users can’t find on the internet?

2. Add videos where relevant

Video content is king, whether it’s on your web page or on your socials.A study conducted by HubSpot showed that 72% of users would rather watch a video tutorial about a product than read about it. Not only that, but video content on a webpage boosts the average time spent on a page, which helps Google trust your content and rank it higher.I’ve started adding tutorials and YouTube videos where relevant. They work great for listicles that involve tools, which usually have plenty of video material online already to share with users.Here’s an example from one of my recent articles:

3. Create a content calendar and stick to itIt’s a well-known fact among the SEO community that your posting schedule doesn’t directly affect your SEO but it certainly helps boost engagement.Frequently posting and updating content means that your website is regularly crawled by Google, which in turn could result in pages ranking better and faster.For the last three months, I started posting between 3-5 articles every week on set scheduled days and times.If you struggle to keep up with your projects, you can use these project management tools to get you started. I personally love ClickUp for managing my editorial calendar and streamlining content creation.

4. You need to add a unique, personal perspective

Google’s core updates and helpful content update emphasizes unique content. Even Google has a limit on its crawl budget, and crawling regurgitated content over and over again is a waste of its crawling budget.If your content does not include any unique, or insightful content, what value does it offer over hundreds of articles on the same topic?This will become even more important as Google is planning on rolling out its Topic Authority system, mentioned in the same podcast. This is also one of the systems that could possibly curb AI content as proving authority on any niche would require personal insights and examples.

5. Don’t sleep on SEO tools

SEO tools have come a long way. With the new wave of AI-assisted SEO tools, there’s never been a better time to use them.That doesn’t mean using an SEO tool guarantees results. However, using them in tandem with the previous points on the list will not only help speed up your content creation process but also help you assess and adjust your content accordingly.I’ve been using Semrush for years to help with all things related to SEO, including organic research and topic research.If you’re interested in improving your SEO, check out my SEO Quick Wins course.