Blog Optimization to Increase Organic Traffic in 4 Steps

The lack of traffic and a low influx of readers is a gloomy problem for blogs. Moreover, it can appear even when hard work on content has been done, and quality posts are regularly published.

The reasons are multiple. Here are the root ones:

• The blog is fresh (the results may be noticed only after 4-12 months).
• The blog lacks search engine optimization.

In this post, we're going to delve into four significant steps that will help optimize blog and increase organic traffic.

• 1. Tackle Technical Issues
• 2. Keyword Research
• 3. Content Optimization
• 4. External Optimization
• Let's Recap

1. Tackle Technical Issues

Technical optimization is a first-hand influencer on the workability of websites and blogs. The better it is, the more successful SEO. You should regularly check for:

• availability for search engines
• loading speed
• broken and duplicate pages
• mobile version

Use Google Search Console for website audits to identify issues.

Netpeak Spider, in turn, helps carry out complex and detailed audit:

1. Enter the initial URL into the ‘Initial URL’ field and then press the 'Start' button. Before this, make sure you chose the 'Default' template in parameters.

   

2. When the analysis is completed, go to the 'Reports' tab → 'Issues' and review the issues spotted during the current crawling.

   

First off, you should draw your attention to severe errors since they are the ones that more than others hinder the promotion of the blog.

To review every single error in detail and learn about the ways of its elimination, click its name and open the 'Info' panel in the bottom left corner.

2. Keyword Research

You should do keyword research to understand what queries people usually use to explore some issue. After that, go for nourishing your text with these words and phrases. It will help search engines identify the relevancy of your content to the user's intent. I'm going to dismantle this process into several stages.

2.1. Search Queries Gathering

Gather search queries that characterize the topic of your website. It can be done on individual platforms for keyword selection, for instance, Keyword Planner.

To understand the keyword volume:

1. Define a dozen of major search queries.
2. Add each of them to the platform and gather phrases and words that users enter along with this query.

All selected search queries add to the table.

2.2. Semantic Broadening

Most likely, at this stage, the keywords collected from the services or brainstormed won't be enough to call the result a full-fledged semantic core.

That's why the next step is to expand semantics. Engage synonyms, wordy search queries, associations, and research competitor's websites. Such platforms as Serpstat, SEMRush, SE Ranking, and the like will definitely come in handy during your word-and-phrase search.

For instance, Serpstat has the 'Keyword Research' tool that helps expand semantics.

When you significantly expanded the search queries base, get rid of the junk words and stop-words:

• words that don't fit the topic of the website
• mentions of competitors
• words and phrases with mistakes

2.3. Clustering

So when you have the list of relevant search queries, they should be evenly distributed throughout the pages. To do it wittingly, cluster, and group the words.

You can use manual, automatic, or mixed ways of clustering, depending on the volume of the semantic core.

The manual way means you have to group queries of similar intent. To better understand what queries should be assigned to a particular cluster, use the SERP's top. If you type in different queries and see different pages, it means that these keywords are from different clusters. If similar pages are shown to different queries, this is the one cluster and it fits the user's intent. For example, if a group of articles about cats from different websites is shown to ten same queries, these queries form the keyword cluster we are looking for.

To automate grouping, use the platforms such as KeyCollector, Serpstat and the like.

Finally, when your semantics is grouped, knuckle down to the distribution of keywords across the website. Optimize pages for specific keywords by adding them directly to the texts, as well as titles, headings, and meta tags.

3. Content Optimization

Care for quality and readability of content should be a matter of priority for every blog owner since the optimized content is an important ranking factor. To optimize your content, you need to bear in mind various criteria. Let's touch upon some of them.

3.1. Originality

The text, published on your blog should be original both within your blog (relative originality) and within the web (absolute). To check the absolute originality, use services Text.com, Copyscape, eTXT.biz, etc.

To make sure there's no duplicate content on your blog, put Netpeak Spider into use.

It'll find duplicates of pages, h1, title tags, and meta descriptions.

3.2. Structure of the Text

The text, which is divided into paragraphs and contains headings and lists is a hell of easier to read, isn't it? Most undoubtedly, yes.

Check the structure of the content and cut off the issues, or better yet, monitor this during the creation process. Check of the headings can be automated with the help of Netpeak Spider.

The program helps identify such issues as:

• empty or missing H1
• multiple H1
• duplicate H1
• same title and H1
• max H1 length

More information about how to deal with each issue you can find in the 'Info' panel.

3.3. Meta Data

Thanks to the title tag and meta description, users get the gist of a page and its relevance to their query, and most often, on their basis, they choose to land the page or to continue looking for the right information on the web.

Check your blog for these issues with Netpeak Spider:

• missing or empty title / description
• multiple title / description tags
• max title / description length
• short title / description
• duplicate title / description
• same title and H1

3.4. Image Optimization

Images don't only ease the perception of information but also hold the visitors on the website and drive traffic from the image search.

Image optimization means the upkeep of further aspects:

• The quality and size of the picture.
• The image loading time – it should be as fast as possible.
• Filled alt attribute – it'll help search robots understand what is displayed in the picture.

4. External Optimization

External optimization is a bundle of actions aimed at getting backlinks. The more quality backlinks are poured into the website, the higher its authority for search robots and the users. The promotion is tough without backlinks, especially in Google.

If you don't know yet how to grow the link equity, take a sneak peek at how your competitors do this. To do so, use Serpstat.

1. Go to the 'Backlink Analysis' section.
2. Choose the tab 'Competitors'.

   

Thereby you can see the dynamics of the link equity growth and build your own strategy based on your observation.

Let's take a brief look at major methods of getting backlinks:

1. Crowd-marketing. Place the links under the guise of tips and tricks on the resources which the target audience uses: social media, external sites, Q&A services, feedback platforms, etc.
2. Outreach. Place guest posts, banners, mentions on other sites with a link by personal agreement with the owner of the site / blog.
3. Information partnership. Make an information partnership with another site and you'll have a chance to get backlinks.
4. Create a good content that gets its natural links. Please, opt for this option.

Let's Recap

If you found out that your quality and interesting blog goes unnoticed unfairly, it's the right time to optimize it.

What you need to do first:

• Brush up on technical optimization.
• Gather and expand the semantic core.
• Optimize content.
• Grow link equity.

Share the methods you used to improve organic traffic on your blog in the comment section below.