In 2022 I started a new hobby: growing cut flowers. In autumn, when the flower season ended, I began blogging about growing cut flowers on Slow Flower Garden. I work in digital marketing and SEO, so I wanted my own site where I could test SEO ideas and try out new things. Within a year, I grew the monthly organic traffic on my blog from 0 to 50K. In this article, I will share my best tips on how to grow the organic traffic on a new blog or website.
Keyword Research and Mapping
Start with keyword research. Collect all the keywords that are relevant to your business into a spreadsheet or Excel. Also, look at the search volumes and keyword intent. Use tools like Semrush to find keywords.
When you have the keywords, start mapping similar keywords together. All the keywords that will go to the same page should be grouped together. Include other relevant details in your keyword mapping, like search volumes, keyword intent, meta title, description and H1, URL, and other relevant comments on what kind of content you need for these keywords to rank.
When you have done this, you will have a great plan to start creating content.
Create Content
Create pages from your keyword mapping. You now have a plan for what pages you will need and what keywords will go on each page. You also know if the page should be an article, a product, or another type of page based on the keyword intent. Google your keyword and look at the top 5 ranking results to get a deeper understanding of what your page needs to have to rank well. Use ChatGPT to create an outline for your article. Submit your newly created pages to Search Console for faster indexing.
Meta Titles & Descriptions
Optimize meta titles and descriptions for your pages. Make sure that your most important keyword is in the meta title and description. Add one more keyword if you can. A meta title can be a maximum of 60 characters long and a meta description can be a maximum of 155 characters long. Add unique selling points to your meta description to increase the click-through rates in Google Search Results.
Link Similar Content Together to Content Hubs
Now that you have created some pages and done basic on-site optimization, it is time to link similar content together into content hubs. We want to make sure that Google and users can reach all content from anywhere with as few clicks as possible, ideally no more than 4-5 clicks. This way, Google can find all the pages on your site and helps in getting them indexed. Linking with the right keyword helps Google better understand what each page is about and also improves topical authority.
Look for Low-Hanging Fruits such as Getting Featured Snippets
When you have created and SEO-optimized your pages, you might already start to see some rankings. Maybe you will even get a featured snippet or maybe your competitor is getting featured snippets? If your competitor has a featured snippet, you can try to get that position from them by optimizing your content further. Analyze how the featured snippet looks, what elements Google has highlighted, and what question Google wants to answer. Then, create an H2 heading with that question on your page and provide a short and straightforward answer that is easily understood.
Here is a good start for SEO-optimizing your site and growing your organic traffic. The basics need to be done before jumping into more advanced SEO tactics like link building.
I had the chance to tell my Slow Flower Garden growth story at SEO Vibes on Tour in Helsinki 23. May 2024. See my speaker deck here and find more inspiration and practical tips for your SEO work. More on the Slow Flower Garden growth story in the Genero blog.
You can also read this blog post in Italian on Gaetano Romeo’s SEO blog.