You’re trying to get that free organic traffic from google… but everything you do just doesn’t work.
Forget about all the hacks you have heard. Forget about spending countless hours trying get your core web vitals score up. Forget about ‘keyword placement’.
I’ll be straight with you; there’s only 2 reasons;
- You’re not doing keyword research right.
- You’re not creating enough content.
That’s it. It’s literally that simple.
This applies broadly to all websites/business, but most specifically to content websites. It does work for local businesses just as well, but local business sites also benefit from things like branded search, and reviews.
Anyhow let’s break it down further.
1. You’re not doing keyword research right.
To capture organic search traffic you have to publish content that is satisfying the intent of someone searching for it. If no one is searching for it, no one will ever find it.
Many people make this mistake, they write countless blog posts, on topics that may be interesting, but no one is actively searching for. This comes up a lot in the B2B markets. For example you might publish a piece about ’10 Features of A CRM That Can Grow Your Manufacturing Business’ but if no one is searching for ‘features of manufacturing business CRM, the piece will never capture organic search traffic.
The second fold to keyword research is that it must be low enough in competition from other websites that you can rank for it with good content. Forget about trying to rank for a keyword like ‘Best CRM System’…. that search term is something you are unlikely to rank for directly due to many aged, and well established sites ranking.
You need to identify keywords that get some search traffic and have low competition. In this video I explain my keyword research methodology.
2. You’re Not Creating Enough Content.
Get ‘SEO traffic’ takes consistency and time. By consistency I mean publishing a good bit of content. Just putting up a few blog posts, even if they are true master pieces, will not capture the attention of the Google algorithm. Google wants to see that you are a ‘topic authority’ and that is done by producing a a lot of content over a period of time.
How long? Well I’ve found that it take a blog post about 7-9 months to reach its peak of traffic…. and that is on a website that is a couple years old with hundreds of other articles in the same vertical.
If you’re working on a new site, it’s going to take a lot longer. From my own experience, and other that invest heavily in content websites, you typically don’t expect to see any direct revenue returns for at least 12 months assuming you’re publishing 100,000+ words on the site.
Aside from SEO value it is important to note there is other value from content you may realize, such as being able to use the content to nurture a customer through the sales process.
Bottom line…
SEO can work for you and it’s actually pretty simple. Stop looking for a magic bullet, or worrying about ‘technicalities’ and simply identify low competition terms that people are searching for and create good content to satisfy their search intent. Then repeat consistently for years.
If you don’t like that formula… then it is is time for paid ads!