Todd Sumamno
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you poured out your heart and soul into your blog, crafting compelling, high-quality content for years only to suddenly watch your organic traffic tank? Some of us have been there too. However, working with SEO experts can help you avoid those pitfalls or get back up as quickly as possible when it occurs.
Several factors can lead to a sudden drop in organic traffic. Some of them may be because of your recent activities on your website. For example, if you recently redesigned your website or migrated from one host to another, there is a huge chance you may experience a drop in traffic as Google bot recrawls your website.
However, the most dreaded factor that can lead to a drop in organic traffic is Google updates. In fact, a lot of blogs are yet to recover from the Google update of March 2024. Some blogs lost as much as 98% of their organic traffic after that update—and are yet to recover from the hit almost two months later. The worst of the effects of Google updates can be avoided by working with an award-winning SEO agency in Melbourne, Australia.
When should your SEO journey start?
Truth be told, a lot of blog owners treat SEO as an afterthought. However, the SEO journey should begin even before the first post on your website. Below are success tips from an award-winning SEO agency for acing your SEO game.
Do Keyword Research and Mapping before designing the website
Your SEO journey should begin from the time you conceived the idea of the blog. Take time to do in-depth keyword research on the niche of your website and assign keywords to relevant pages. Proper keyword mapping helps to create a logical structure for your website.
One of the key factors to consider during keyword research and mapping is the structure of your URL. Ensure your URL structure is based on research, not guesswork. Also, don’t take your eyes off the technical side of things. All these bits and pieces must be carefully thought out during the design of your website.
You can have the best content on the Internet and they will still not fly if your website is laden with broken links, your pages load at snail speed, or your metadata and tags are not properly implemented. All these can contribute to the loss of traffic. Therefore, when designing your website, never take your eyes off Google’s Core Web Vitals. Your target should be to hit greens in all the metrics.
Avoid using AI-generated content on your blogs or website copy
We are living in the era of AI where content generation can be automated and scaled with just a few clicks. However, relying on AI-generated content can hurt your ranking and traffic in the long run. Here is an excerpt from Google’s March 2024 update note.
“We’ve long had a policy against using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale with the goal of manipulating search rankings. This policy was originally designed to address instances of content being generated at a scale where it was clear that automation was involved.”
In other words, Google continues to frown at the use of AI tools to automatically generate content at scale. However, AI can still be useful in your SEO strategy. An award-winning SEO company in Sydney suggests bloggers should use AI tools for ideas and research in the backend.
In other words, your final publications should always have the human touch and voice that sets your blog apart from the competitors. If your content sounds just like every other content on the Internet, you will easily be drowned among the hundreds of thousands of websites created daily.
Balance conversion tools and SEO
While you need a visually stunning blog to attract and keep visitors, design should never be done at the expense of SEO. Design and SEO must be balanced. Get the best of both worlds by having a team of SEO specialists and Web Designers/Developers work together, not in silos without collaboration.
In this regard, constant testing is important. If you work with a reputable SEO agency, they will put all your ideas to the test and see which one provides the best balance between design and SEO. Also, you need to bear in mind that web design is not a one-and-done affair. Google’s requirements for ranking are continually changing and you must be ready to adjust your design accordingly.
Have a strong content strategy so you can target a wide pool of keywords
Your stunted traffic may be your own making. The more you niche down on your content strategy, the more you narrow your audience. Therefore, broadening your content strategy can be an important step in growing your traffic.
A strong content strategy should not just focus on commercial keywords but also informational keywords. Broadening your content strategy allows you to capture the interest of a diverse audience. This is usually the first strategy that SEO experts will suggest.
Set and track milestones every week or month to ensure constant activity and progress
It will be hard to tell if your SEO strategies are a hit or miss if you are not keeping track of your performance. Since acing the SEO game usually requires a combination of several strategies, it is important to know which of your efforts are bringing in the most traffic—and double down on what’s working and stop doing what isn’t.
Whether your goal is to boost your organic traffic or to increase conversion, you must have trackable milestones that will help you judge the performance of your strategies. Having milestones also makes it easier to detect anomalies on time.
When choosing a Sydney based SEO company, make sure they have a proven track record to bring the vision and goals of your blog to reality. One way to do that is to ask for an SEO visibility audit. After the audit, if the SEO company can’t identify your growth opportunities or the issues holding back your blog from trumping your competitors, they are likely not the right fit for you.
Brittany
