Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is a visitor to your website through Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc or from a hyperlink from an unpaid social media post. On Google Analytics, that visitor can be counted as a visit (ie session) to the site or a user to the site. When people type into search engines a keyword or a phrase, your website is listed as a results by the search engine, and when people click on your website from those listings, that visit is counted as organic traffic. The counterpart to organic traffic is paid traffic, which is a visit that is generated from paid advertising. Organic traffic is driven by the kind of content you create, SEO you do on your website, and the competition in your space.

• Content is King: Organic traffic is traffic from search engines that is not paid for but arises from the quality of the content on your site and the authority of your site itself. Challenges of acquiring organic traffic include the competitive nature of achieving high search rankings and the time required to see results.
• Long-Term Investment: Listings that rank well organically can continue to rank well, if it remains of the highest quality. As compared to advertising, organic traffic has more staying power and is often seen as good for the long-term and sustainable development of the website and its conversion rates.
• SEO Boosts Organic Traffic: Some of the most useful approaches that represent an opportunity to increase organic traffic as fast as possible are SEO, content marketing, and link-building.
• Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics are vital for measuring and understanding organic traffic performance. Given its importance, many companies have emerged to better understand site traffic and track visits from organic sources.

The Importance of Organic Traffic

The long-lasting success of every website greatly depends on organic traffic. This is because organic traffic comes from people who are already searching for information, products, and/or services that you provide and/or have on your website. This makes it highly specific and more likely to be converted into leads or even sales. These leads are called inbound leads and convert at a higher rate than outbound leads. However, building organic traffic demands time and energy, trial and error, and a bit of luck.  Generating organic traffic usually turns out to be a more self-sustaining and less costly approach to sustainable, long-term traffic. In comparison, paid traffic to a site with thin content will likely not generate additional visits from the same user.

How to Increase Organic Traffic

Boosting the organic traffic to a site includes several essential strategies:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It’s integral to optimize a site for search engines by using pertinent keywords, high-quality content, and making sure that it’s both mobile responsive and fast loading. These site visits are categorized as Organic Search Traffic.

2. Content Marketing: Producing fresh and useful articles, that might meet the requirements of the audience, can also attract more people. Writings that are shared on the blog, articles, videos, or infographics can boost organic traffic. Using analytics to understand what content performs better is important to better understand how content resonates or competes.

3. Link Building: To the search engines, getting backlinks from other sites is an indication that your content is worthy of being visited. Backlinks for high domain authorities, ie reputable sites, provide more credibility to your website. Note that backlinks can also be toxic, ie hurts your website’s performance with search engines.

4. Social Media: Much like link building, posting on social media has become another way to generate visits to your website and gain an audience through the social media platform’s users. These visits are generally categorized as Organic Social Traffic.

Benefits of Organic Traffic

The most notable advantage of organic traffic is that it’s free, once it’s been produced. On the other hand, paid traffic calls for continuous spending whereas, with organic traffic, web browsers naturally rank your article depending on its relevance and quality. Over time, if the content remains the best on the subject, it will continue to generate site visits long after it was created. Also, organic visits are frequently seen as more trustworthy by users since they happen to discover your website through their searches rather than through advertisements.

Challenges of Organic Traffic

Even though organic traffic has its worth, it comes with difficulties as well. To have and maintain high rankings on Google, Yahoo or Bing is not easy because of increased competition over the year. Therefore, increasingly ongoing efforts are necessary to maintain ranking positions as well as changes to content and SEO strategy after considering any new algorithm changes. Another downside is that businesses that want (or need) to generate quick profits may find it tough because it might take a long time before realizing any big results.

Measuring Organic Traffic

In order to know if the efforts of generating organic traffic through content and SEO has paid off, website owners need to use tools like Google Analytics, Heap Analytics, Amplitude, and other software available. They show you how visitors reach your website, what pages are most popular, and how long they stay there. By keeping track of these indicators among other metrics, you can adjust your tactics and enhance your organic traffic in the long run.

Additionally, there are SEO specific tools to help assess site structure, content, competition, and keywords such as SEMRush, Ah Refs, Google Search Console, and Screaming Frog.