If you needed pest control services, where would you go first? If you’re like everyone else, you might search for “pest control near me” and click one of the first local websites you see.
If you are a local business owner, you might have heard whispers about search engine optimization, organic search results, or other digital marketing topics, but who has time for that? What is an “organic traffic” result going to do for your website’s performance or getting more clients on your schedule? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.
How can you increase your organic search rankings? Teams like Relentless Digital often specialize in providing SEO for pest control companies and other service providers who benefit hugely from harnessing organic search results. Below are a few expert tips on how you can achieve high organic rankings to increase your website traffic (and what this actually means).
Organic Search Traffic: Defined
It’s quite simple to get to the bottom of what “organic” refers to in terms of your website visitors. On an analytics program, this metric literally counts people who find your website on a search engine results page. That means organic traffic does not include people who click on your paid advertising sources, social media platforms, or referrals.
People who find your website themselves by typing a keyword, phrase, or question into a search box are the only ones who carry that “organic” label. For example, if someone searches for “pest control services in San Francisco,” and your Google Business Profile pops up with a map and your website link, their click would count toward your site’s organic traffic tally.
It follows that organic traffic and search engine optimization go hand in hand. If you want to increase the number of people clicking on your site from search engine results, you need to make your site more visible–show up in those top results. More interested customers can find your products or services if you successfully drive organic traffic to your site using proven SEO strategies, which we cover in more detail below.
Organic vs. Paid Search Engine Traffic
You already know that organic traffic only includes unpaid search engine results–you won’t see the visitors clicking on paid ads increase organic traffic rates.
Typically, paid search ads appear just above a search engine’s ranked organic results. They might have a small tag, like the word “Ad,” to inform people that the paid “search result” is an advertisement that might be relevant to what they’re looking for.
Depending on your site or company’s goals, the paid traffic you win might offer some benefits. For example, running a paid search ad might get an immediate traffic boost. However, harnessing free and more sustainable (organic) growth for your site will only come from ranking in unpaid search engine results.
You may boost organic traffic by creating a few paid campaigns when first increasing your online visibility. Over time, though, organic traffic is a more cost-effective and scalable traffic acquisition strategy.
Other Types of Traffic Sources Beyond Search Engines
The value of organic traffic also speaks to other possible traffic sources. Aside from search engines directing organic or paid traffic sources to your site, additional traffic sources you could track alongside organic and paid traffic rates include the following:
- Direct traffic: if someone types your website’s URL into their search bar, their visit counts toward direct traffic.
- Referral traffic: Referral traffic comes from other websites that link back to your own. These handy referrals bring in traffic, but more importantly, they also boost your organic position in search engines. (That’s why experts like Relentless Digital always recommend link-building campaigns in your SEO efforts.)
- Social traffic: Any paid or organic visitors arriving from your social media channels count as social traffic.
Why Is Organic Search Traffic Important for Pest Control Companies?
So, what is an organic traffic campaign’s main benefit for website owners, particularly businesses in the service sphere? When businesses like pest control companies can increase organic traffic, they will often enjoy several important benefits, such as:
Lower Your Customer Acquisition Cost
SEO efforts take time to master, but one of the greatest benefits of organic traffic includes long-term, quality clients. Optimizing your website and content is an incredibly cost-effective strategy for growing your business. Think of organic traffic as a completely free marketing tool.
Increase Trust Among Those You Sell To
Many people don’t trust search results under the Google Ads section. Whether you’re a pest control service or a freelance designer, why not refine your website’s organic traffic rankings to prove you can offer quality content? Appearing near the top of the search results shows you’ve worked hard to be there and would work just as hard to provide a customer with trustworthy products or services.
Gain Potential Clients
Most organic traffic arrives as people type in very specific keywords. If you’re in pest control, you’ll want people who search for “how to get rid of ants” to find your site. By optimizing your content to meet that searcher’s intent, you can gain high-quality leads (people who are actively searching for pest control solutions and might hire you).
Scale in a Cost-Effective Way
Paying for ads brings more traffic while the campaign is live, but can you afford to shovel out these expenses indefinitely? Organic search strategies rank your site higher in search results for long-term traffic acquisition that’s completely free. Just publish great-quality content and then keep your website in good shape to continue attracting organic traffic.
How To Optimize Your Organic Search Traffic: 6 SEO Tips for Pest Control Companies and Everyone Else
What will SEO strategies do for organic traffic flow? Increasing your site’s rankings in search results attracts organic traffic without ad costs or extra effort on your part. Still, high-quality content and a technically sound website are important if you want to stay on top because search engines like Google consider over 200 factors when ranking websites.
These expert tips for ranking well in search engine results pages might help:
#1 Create a Google Business Profile for Your Pest Control Service
A Google Business Profile is a local directory. If a potential customer uses search terms like “pest control technicians in Denver,” Google will list businesses it thinks are relevant beside the standard search results with need-to-know information. For example, your Google Business Profile can include your:
- Company name.
- Reviews.
- Years in business.
- Phone number.
- Business hours.
- A link to your website’s content.
- Your Google Maps location.
What is an organic traffic result going to achieve if you have a Google Business Profile? It lets local customers quickly find your local company when they need service (if your profile is up to date). This platform even offers a keyword tool to help your business add relevant keywords to match potential search queries.
Be sure to add photos and a clear description of your services, as well as request reviews from your happy customers. You’ll want to complete these same steps for other directories like Yelp, Bing, and Apple Maps, too.
#2 Conduct Keyword Research
We mentioned keyword research above, but how can selecting certain phrases or words for your website’s content produce more organic traffic? Keywords that match search queries show up in search engine results. If you want your landing pages or money pages to feature when search engine crawlers rank pages for relevance, your keywords have to be spot on.
Leverage Research Tools
You have a plethora of tools at your disposal for keyword research, including current favorites like:
- Semrush.
- Moz.
- Ahrefs.
- Google Keyword Planner.
- Google Search Console.
Choose Relevant Terms
Remember, all of your keywords must be relevant to your business and the products or services you provide. You don’t want to create content that will rank for “termite removal” unless you can provide this service. Increasing organic traffic rates depends on hitting those exact words your customers are inputting into the search box.
Consider the Keyword Traffic and Competition Levels
Keyword research tools provide data on the monthly search volumes and difficulty levels (how hard it is to rank). You’ll want terms that promise you a high enough monthly search volume to increase your website’s organic traffic flow but not so high they are unreachable. A mix of easier and more challenging terms is realistic.
Consider User Intent
To use a keyword to increase your site’s organic traffic, you can also check a term’s results page or the research tool’s information on user intent. Have you optimized content to align with what people need in pest control, or will the film The Exterminator kill your keyword relevance? Removing “the” in your term might avoid confusion.
Choose Long and Short-Tail Keywords
For organic search relevance, your site will also need a good mix of keywords to optimize meta tags, money pages, blogs, core pages, and everything in between. As you research, create a list of short and long keyword phrases, difficult terms, easier keywords, and more niche terms that you can use across your website.
Don’t Cannibalize or Stuff Terms
What is an organic traffic mistake a website owner should avoid at all costs?
- Keyword cannibalization: Avoid using the same keywords on all of your website pages. You don’t want your website competing against itself in searches.
- Keyword stuffing: Be careful about overusing keywords. You risk Google penalties and poor organic rankings.
#3 Use a Site Audit To Nail the Technical Aspects of Your Website
Website development isn’t simple when you’re an expert in pest control but not in coding. The odds are that your website harbors a few issues that are impacting its performance or decreasing your potential organic website traffic. Building organic volumes depends on you locating and resolving these issues, and that means you’ll have to dig deeper into the technical aspects of your site.
Experts like Relentless Digital recommend tools like Semrush to conduct a site audit. You can locate any potential issues dragging down your organic website traffic, keyword rankings, and overall site performance. Just enter your website URL and let the site audit tool present you with an SEO score, a complete list of issues it identifies on your website, and suggestions for how to fix them.
Here are some common problems that may be disrupting your website’s search traffic:
- Missing meta tags (those 60 to 160-character titles and descriptions that appear in search results for your web page)
- Slow site speed (the average time to load should be less than 3.0 seconds)
- Broken links (to your website or any other website)
- Duplicated content
- Missing alternative descriptions (behind images)
- Non-mobile optimized pages
#4 Create Valuable Content
If you found this optimized post for organic traffic, it might be because you want a detailed yet easy-to-understand explanation instead of a bland dictionary definition. The people who are searching for information on pest control topics you’re placing keywords for want the same. If you want to reel in organic traffic with every core website page, you have to look at keywords but also provide people with value in the form of unique, authoritative content.
For example, a pest control company might want to create relevant content to rank high for searches like “How to get rid of mice.” Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer high-quality, valuable, authoritative, and relevant information linked to that search term. It’s not enough to answer the question about how to get rid of mice–you have to do so better and more convincingly than other pages are doing it.
Why not amplify your organic traffic rankings by authoring blog posts? Pest control topics may include:
- The key differences between an ant and a termite infestation.
- DIY tips for getting rid of fruit flies.
- How to prepare for Colorado’s moth season.
Over time, you may notice that some pages pull in most organic traffic levels while others see little to no search traffic. At that point, rather than brand-new blog post ideas, you can repurpose old content with new keywords to improve your organic traffic rankings.
#5 Gather High-Quality Backlinks
What is an organic traffic tip for enticing potential customers beyond a search page result? We mentioned referrals–link-building that directs visitors from other websites to yours. Referrals are great organic traffic sources when other high-quality websites link to your site because the search engine then sees your business as more credible.
The benefits of organic traffic from link-building include ranking higher and increasing your visibility online. So, here are a few basic steps to get going with that first link-building campaign (we’ll stick with the pest control angle):
- Create a list of high-quality websites within the pest control industry.
- Gather email addresses using a tool like Semrush.
- Send emails requesting a mention in another site owner’s next blog post, do guest posting, or offer a referral in return.
- Track all links you receive moving forward.
#6 Measure With Google Analytics
As you implement more organic traffic strategies, it will get easier to track which ones work. An analytics tool like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or Tag Manager gives detailed insights into:
- Organic traffic levels.
- Page rankings.
- Paid and organic traffic sources.
- Growth metrics.
- And more.
Adding Google Analytics is super easy, too.
Gain More Organic Traffic With Professional Digital Marketing Support
Whether or not you’re in pest control, organic traffic means sustainable growth for your business. So, what is an organic traffic strategy that’s going to help your website attract search engine users? Learn more about Google Analytics and other helpful tools when you schedule a strategy call with Relentless Digital!
