If you are a veteran to SEO and digital marketing, you probably already know the ins and outs of search engines, internal linking, and any way a client might be able to get to your page. If you’re not a veteran, all these terms might be a bit overwhelming. This is a list of the six basic types of traffic your website might get, and this is for you.

 

1. Organic traffic

Often considered the best type of traffic, organic traffic describes when a client searches something related to your business and ultimately find their way to your page. You don’t have to pay to get them there, they find you on their own. It’s the romantic meet-cute of web-traffic.

The best way to increase your organic traffic is to improve your website SEO. Work with Google’s algorithms to increase your page rankings, and make sure to have content the client both wants and trusts. 

 

2. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is made up of clients who got to your page by clicking through an advertisement. There’s some overlap between paid and social traffic, but for the sake of this article let’s say that paid traffic is any advertisement on any web-platform. 

Advertising will only increase your customer base if the page they land on is well built. If a client clicks on an advertisement and finds a slow page with bad content, they’re likely to bounce (leave the page in less than 10 seconds without interacting with any aspect of the page). Advertising costs money, so make sure you make it worth it for the people who click-through.

3. Social Traffic

Social media is a huge opportunity for growing your brand presence, and if you don’t have a solid presence on whatever platforms are popular in your country you’re neglecting a huge portion of your market. Not only will a presence on social media open you up to a much larger client base, but it will also help to build your brand identity. At the very least, it will be an easy access point for customers to find information about you. Even if you never post anything make sure to put all your information on your social media platforms. Business location, hours, contact info, all this will make your business feel more trustworthy and accessible.

 

4. Local Traffic

Local traffic is only really relevant if your business has a physical location that customers can visit. If this is your business, its vital that you set up your business information on the main Location Citation Sources. This will help build your local customer base and increase the trustworthiness. 

Local traffic is the more palpable version of social traffic: set it up well and people will find you without knowing who you are; just set it up and people who know who you are will be able to find you.

 

5. Referred Traffic

Referral traffic comes from clients following links from other webpages. Maybe they found their way to the website of your furniture business through a link you put on a Smithsonian article about antique chairs. Maybe they found their way to a legal blog through a random link to a 2017 post about the State of New York banning child marriage. Referral traffic is a significant percentage of web traffic, and link-building is a task that shouldn’t be neglected. The number of links referring to your website helps to build your page rankings in search engines like Google.

 

6. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic comes from people typing your URL into their browser or clicking on a bookmarked link. Direct traffic can be hard to analyze, as there’s no real information on why or from where the client decided to visit your website. This isn’t ideal for tracking client behaviors or knowing what changes to make to optimize your online presence, but it is traffic.  

 

There is overlap within these subsections of web traffic: Facebook Ads blending from paid into social, links in Twitter posts sitting on the intersection of referral and social, a local news article linking your local law firm bridging the gap between local and referral. The best way to increase your traffic from all origins is to make sure your website follows SEO best practices and is prepared for optimal user experience.

Consumers have a better and better idea of what they’re looking for when they search for something online, whether they care about specific brands or not. This allows them to use keywords that your brand can benefit from. The problem comes when trying to decide whether or not to have your keywords or phrases as branded or unbranded. As it turns out, distinguishing between the two is simple.

Branded keywords work best when referring to features of the business that may not be present in other locations. If the manager of a hotel in a chain wanted people to remember that their branch has a breakfast with espresso drinks they might want to capitalize on searches for “[hotel brand] in [location] with espresso” and “[hotel brand] near [location] with good coffee.” 

A business that already has a strong local foundation is optimized for branded keywords. They help repeat customers to find businesses they enjoyed or had unique features they wanted to revisit or comment on. 

Unbranded keywords help to build a business and only work well when sufficient details of the business have been provided. Google’s local searches won’t help you if Google doesn’t know where you are. Make sure you have your address, phone number, hours, and website easily accessible. These are important for both branded and unbranded searches.

When choosing unbranded keywords, focus on the foundational aspects of your business. Are you a family/locally owned, vegan cafe? Those are your keywords. The consumers performing unbranded searches are the easiest to convert into first-time customers. If they cared about brands, they would have done a branded search. Unbranded keywords are your opportunity to catch the attention of new customers, while branded keywords help you to convert them into a reliable consumer base.

When deciding on branded and unbranded keywords, it’s not a question of “either/or,” both are required to keep a business running and customers spending.

Simply put, you should be writing content that your customers need. The goal is for a potential client to stumble across a page on your site and think, “these people know what they’re talking about, I’ll give them a call”. Given that basic premise of content writing, there are a lot of ways to go about getting inspiration for what your customers need to find. Here are 9 quick and easy ways to figure out what you should be writing about, drawing on personal experience and two great articles by localvisibilitysystem and Moz.

1. Google Ads Keyword Planner

This is the default source for most SEOs. Log into Google Ads, “Tools and Settings”, “Keyword Planner”, “Discover New Keywords”, and start firing away. This tool will give search volume for any term you type in by location, which can guide you as you build out content addressing high search volume phrases to start competing in search results. It’s worth a look to check search results for content quality on a given search term to see you if might outperform it with better content of your own. At the same time, this tool is helpful for identifying content opportunities for lower traffic, more specific topics.

 

2. Google Trends

This tool is helpful for identifying popular search terms. I’ve found this to be more helpful on a larger scale, helpful at the beginning of your keyword research to get a general sense for where things are heading. This tool has location settings in addition to timeframe settings. A helpful tip for using this tool is the “Related Topics” section. Whatever keywords you add will be followed by similar but different suggested terms, very helpful when piecing together what you need on your site. Below I typed in “Family Law” and Google Trends came back with a number of specific related terms.

3. “Google Suggests”

It sounds simple because it is. Just type in the beginning of a search term and see what Google recommends you finish it with. These are popular searches that Google thinks you might be going for. Below are a few opportunities for content based on typing in “Family Law”

4. Competitor Analysis

Check out what your competitors are writing about. This will not only give you ideas of where you need to build out content on your site to start competing directly with those pages you find, but can also lead to inspiration for spin-offs and similar-but-different pages for you to start working on.

5. Moz Keyword Explorer

Similar to to Google Ads Keyword Planner, Moz’s tool will give you related terms for inspiration as well as SERP analysis and other functionalities for a new perspective. Unless you’re paying for Moz Pro, this has a monthly quota.

6. Your Own Reviews

Moving on to a few more creative ways to gather keyword research, try checking out your own review. After running down the reviews you’ve been collecting over time in Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Avvo, or anywhere else, see if you can pick apart any trends. Reviews will tend to mention the things that are important to them in reviews, wether that be a particular type of case, product, or service. It’s often the case that at least a few of the things mentioned in reviews are being sought after by other people and warrant a page of content.

7. Competitor Reviews

Just like your own reviews, competitor reviews can unearth valuable trends. See what your competitors clients liked/didn’t like, and write about that.

8. Competitor’s QAs in Google My Business

The QA section of your own and competitor’s Google My Business listings can bring valuable insights into what people want to know. This is basically a tiny version of a search engine with some users putting exactly what they’re wondering straight to your listing. Trends in what customers are wondering can often be valuable as pages.

9. Directory Categories

Run through some online directories like Avvo, Lawyers.com, or Superlawyers to see what categories they are using to segment out a given practice area. More often than not, these categories are heavily researched by the directories, doing some of the work for you. This can be used as a baseline to make sure any category showing up popular directories is showing up on your website as well.

 

 

Google’s recent core update included a feature, or at least the announcement of an upcoming feature, changing the search engine’s “Opt-Out” policy regarding snippets and website previews to an “Opt-In” policy. The update will give webmasters a variety of options regarding snippet word-count, preview video length, and whether or not to show a snippet at all.

Why

This update, set to launch late-October, is in response to a recently implemented French copyright law requiring search engines to offer “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” options for webmasters. This is the first implementation of Europe’s new copyright laws, which Google is complying with by providing more snippet options.

Will it Affect Me

Users of Yoast SEO don’t have to worry about their Google snippets vanishing and costing them valuable web traffic; Yoast announced a company-wide policy that they will still offer the “Opt-Out” option for their users but will have all their websites automatically opted-in to snippets unless they were opted-out before the update. 

What Should I Do

While Google’s update isn’t set to launch for another few weeks, Yoast SEO has announced its update for October 1st. George Nguyen, in a blog post for Search Engine Land, recommends that Yoast users who aren’t interested in the new snippet features shouldn’t update to version 12.2, and for those who do want to take part in the new features to keep track of their max-snippet limits for each of their pages.

 

 This new update won’t have an impact on your Google rankings but could affect your rich results if you get opted out of snippets. This could affect traffic to your page the previously came from rich results, which is why Yoast SEO automatically opted its users in. If you are a Yoast SEO user who does not want to take part in Google’s snippets or rich results, make sure your preferences say so before or after Yoast’s version 12.2 update. If you do want to take part in snippets, still check and make sure all your preferences are up to date and to your liking after the update October 1st.

The balance of SEO copy with quality content is difficult to find and often misunderstood.  How much copy should be in your content? How much content in your copy? How much should keywords play into what you post? The broad answers to these questions blend together into “it depends on the project and your team(s).” Luckily, we don’t have to leave it there. Here’s how good SEO copywriting can improve organic traffic and conversions.

Navigating Vs. Steering

Imagine a car with a driver and a passenger. The passenger has a map or, more likely, directions on their phone. For them to get where they need to go, the driver needs to trust the passenger’s navigation, and the passenger needs to trust the driver’s steering. SEO should function as navigation and content should be the driver.

If your company has separate SEO and content departments it is important to get them on the same page. They are working for the same goal, and they’ll go further together. It is key to remember that both departments have specific jobs that they excel at, and forcing those in SEO to try and design content or those in content to analyze SEO will only result in failure and confusion. The car will crash if the passenger tries to steer or if the driver tries to read. 

The Role of SEO

As previously stated, SEO should function as a GPS. Let the data show where to go, and don’t stop at your company’s data. Research your competitors, see what’s working for them and either beat them at their own game or focus on areas where they’re weaker. If your competitor is producing a lot of high-traffic content in the form of video blogs but is lacking in written articles: it’s time to get your content department to start writing.  

The Role of Content

Content writing is focused more on producing well-written, enjoyable, and/or useful pieces, as opposed to copywriting, which is aimed at increasing traffic and conversions. The two exist on a spectrum, in that copy needs to be well written in order to have conversions, and content needs traffic in order to be read. A good content department/writer can strike a balance between the two and should be familiar with the basics of SEO. This doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from guidance from the SEO professionals. 

Where They Blend

Keywords and formatting. Before content writers cringe, this doesn’t mean content should be dictated by how many keywords can be stuffed into an article. This leads to clunky writing and ultimately lowers organic traffic. Keywords should be used as a prompt. SEO research can provide content writers with topics consumers are interested in, as well as what formats perform best for that topic. From there the writer can get to work. Ideally, other keywords will naturally fit into the content. 

Good SEO copywriting exists in the gray area between data analysis and content. It cannot exist without collaboration between SEO researchers and content writers, and it cannot succeed without hard work on both sides.