One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is through organic search. More than 50% of website visits are from search engines such as Google. That is why it is so important to focus on search engine optimisation (SEO).
Google is not just about the top ten blue links. There are various opportunities to drive traffic from Google.
In this post, I’m not suggesting the usual tips to improve your standard organic rankings. Instead, we are going to look at some other ways to drive traffic from Google.
List your products on Google Shopping
First, let’s take a look at Google Shopping.
Google Shopping is a feature by Google that allows you to list your products and include rich content such as product images, prices, descriptions and more. As of October 2020, Google has permitted retailers in the UK to list their products on Google Shopping for free.
Free Google Shopping listings are shown in the Google Shopping tab. By appearing in Google Shopping results, your products will achieve greater visibility and also the potential to drive more traffic to your PDPs (Product Detail Pages).
To get your products listed on Google Shopping, you will need a Merchant Center account. Once you have set up your account, you will need to set up a product feed. Google will automatically pull in relevant information about each product, including title, description, brand name, category, and price. The Google Shopping feed is crucial as it is your direct line to google, so google gets the latest information about what you are selling and how much you are charging.
All you have to do is choose which products you’d like to list in Google Shopping, upload the feeds when they are ready, and review them when Google pulls in the data. You can add or edit any product at any time afterwards.
Rank in the Local Pack
With nearly half of all Google searches having local intent, ranking highly in Google’s Local Pack will help drive traffic from customers looking for local businesses like yours.
Often people will search for services with ‘near me’ also in the query. These types of searches will almost always display the Local Pack. However, Google has also identified other terms with local intent, even if the person searching has not used ‘near me’ or does not specify a location. For example, try searching for ‘plumbers’ and see if the Local Pack appears. Clearly, this is a query with local intent, and so the Local Pack is displayed.
To rank well within the Local pack, do the following:
- Optimise your Google My Business profile (see the next section)
- Gather positive reviews for your business
- Ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is consistent across online business directories and other sites
- Ensure your content and on-page factors are optimised for local terms by including the name of the town or city within your primary copy, the title and H1 tag
- Build both internal and external links to your local landing pages using keyword-rich anchor text
Optimise your Google My Business profile
Google My Business is a service provided by Google that allows users to edit and manage their business profiles and local listings. By optimising your Google My Business profile, you can attract more customers to your website, generate more leads, increase customer loyalty, and improve your rankings in Google search results.
If you want to find out more, I have written an article about optimising your Google My Business profile.
Optimise for video search
Google provides video search results within the Video tab and also displays videos as rich results within the main SERP for relevant queries. Video search is excellent for reaching a new audience and also providing quality traffic.
Find out more about how to optimise your videos for SEO.
People Also Ask
You have probably seen the People Also Ask (PAA) results on Google. These are questions that other people commonly ask that are relevant to your search query and that Google thinks may be a helpful next step in your search journey.
People Also Ask is another way to increase your traffic from Google. While searchers may not often click on the source of the answer in PAA, this is potentially high-quality, high-converting traffic if you can rank for the right keywords.
To rank with the list of PAA questions, scrape the PAA results for your target keywords. Once you have this list of questions, either update your existing content to answer these questions or write new content and provide an answer to these questions. I would recommend that you add FAQ structured data to your pages to help Google best understand the structure of your content and precisely what the content is.
Wrapping up
The Internet is a vast place, and it’s growing every single day. Google alone is reported to process more than 63,000 search queries a second. That is a lot of people using Google to find products or services that they need. Your website could be sitting right there, unseen by Google’s ever-growing audience who are desperately searching for just what you have to offer them.
I have given you five different methods that you can use to attract potential customers who are searching Google for businesses like yours. Please do not feel limited to the approaches I have mentioned above. There are many ways to drive traffic from Google. Also, do not forget your standard SEO, i.e. optimising your landing pages for the top ten blue links.
If you would like to speak with me about our SEO services, please email hello@emiquent.com.
