What is Organic Traffic and Why is Organic SEO Important?

Building organic traffic will take a great deal of time and effort. If you are looking to increase website traffic quickly, focusing on organic traffic won’t work – organic SEO traffic is a long term strategy.

However, if you are looking to build a steady and sustainable flow of traffic, it may be a good idea to invest in building organic traffic

There are different sources of website traffic: referral traffic, organic traffic, direct traffic, paid traffic and social media traffic. However, when it comes to search engine traffic there are two main traffic sources. 

What is organic traffic?

Organic website traffic are visitors that visit your website via a search engine. Moreover it is a visit that happens without clicking on a paid advertisement. Traffic generated organically is considered to be one of the most valuable website traffic sources as it is indicative of a visitor’s real interest in your content or product.

The main way to get organic traffic is through the use of search engine optimization (SEO). This involves using keywords and phrases on your website in order to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). By increasing the ranking of web pages, they will gain impressions from search users and increase the number of clicks.

SEO to increase organic traffic is a long-term strategy, it’s worth noting that this traffic source doesn’t always stay this way – it can be volatile and fluctuate. However, there are many tools and techniques available today that can help you stay ahead of the competition and maintain high levels of organic traffic.

How Google Defines Organic Search Results:

Google defines ‘Organic search results’ as: a free listing in Google Search that appears because it’s relevant to someone’s search terms. Google provides the organic search results in a specific location, which can be seen in red below:

Organic search traffic may take more time to generate results. However, it is the superior form of traffic for your website. Here are a few reasons why:

• Organic traffic is targeted: That means that the search engine user landing on the website has a specific intent, and the search engine has determined that you have the content that meets this intent.
• Higher Conversions: If you can meet the needs of the searcher, and provide valuable information, services or products you will have a higher conversion rate than a random visitor from a paid search.
• Increase Credibility: People that land on a page organically usually feel the site is more trustworthy and credible as the search engine is recommending the site in response to the users query.

Ranking websites is difficult. It takes time and energy, and is constantly changing due to the updates in algorithms. Not to mention that competitor’s websites are constantly changing as well.

Ranking on SERPs: Where You Need to Rank

Ranking in the top 50 or even 20 doesn’t have the same benefits as ranking in the top 10. Remember, the top 10 will place you on the first page of SERPs. You can see the drastic falloff just on the first search engine results page in the graphic below:

Roughly 80 percent of organic traffic finds what they are looking for within the first 10 recommended sites. To drive home the power of organic search and ranking well on SERPs, we have included research from Backlinko’s analysis of 4 million search results:

1. #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 27.6%.

2. #1 organic result is 10x more likely to receive an organic click compared to a page in the #10 spot on page 1.

3. On average, moving up 1 spot in the search results will increase CTR by 2.8%. However, this depends on where you’re moving from and to. Moving from position #3 to position #2 will usually result in a significant CTR boost. However, moving from #10 to #9 doesn’t make a statistically significant difference.

Why is organic traffic important?

Organic traffic is important because, it is traffic that is most likely to be representative of a site’s quality and authority. This is because organic search results are based on the opinions and experiences of real people, rather than paid advertising or other forms of manipulation. 

This trust leads to them spending more time on your site, which in turn leads to higher click-through rates (CTRs) and better conversion rates. Additionally, organic traffic is more likely to be engaged with – meaning that it’s more likely to lead to a sale. 

Additionally, organic traffic tends to be less costly to acquire than other kinds of traffic. This is because it is a sustainable source of traffic that can bring in high-quality, highly motivated visitors. Although securing organic traffic takes a large upfront investment, it usually pays off in the long run because organic visitors are more loyal and often spend more money on the website than non-organic visitors.

5 Benefits of Investing in Organic Traffic?

One of the most important benefits is that it’s sustainable and highly targeted. Organic traffic comes from people who have visited your website via search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Baidu.

This type of traffic is considered to be more valuable than any other form of traffic because it’s considered to be more natural and authentic. Here are 5 benefits of organic traffic.

1. Cost-benefit:

When you invest in organic traffic, the cost of getting that traffic is typically much lower than buying paid traffic. This is because organic traffic is sourced from people who are already interested in your product or service.

You’re not bidding against other businesses for the someone’s attention, making it a more affordable option. 

2. Scalability:

Organic traffic can be scaled up easily – as needed – to meet your business’ needs. This means that you won’t have to waste money on overreaching or unsuccessful campaigns that won’t result in long-term benefits.

Whereas, all that is needed to scale your SEO goals and objectives of driving organic traffic to your website is by engaging in content writing for SEO, and content optimization of existing content on your website.

3. Relevance:

Organic traffic is typically motivated, interested and relevant to a business’ products and services. This is because people are using search engines to find answers and solutions, products and services for their particular query.

Organic traffic tends to have one of the highest engagement rates as well as conversion rates compared to other traffic sources.

4. Duration:

Organic visitors tend to stay longer on a site than those who are sourced through paid ads. By investing in organic traffic a website can lower its bounce rate as well as raise its conversion rate overall. This is because they’re more likely to take the time to read everything you’ve got before leaving.

Additionally, by lowering the bounce rate of a website, a digital marketer is sending positive signals to Google regarding the value of the website’s content. Resulting in Google valuing the content more and increasing its ranking.

5. Relationship building: 

When you invest in organic traffic, you build relationships with people who are interested in what you have to say and likely have similar interests or opinions as yours. These relationships can lead to future business opportunities down the line.

Your website will be seen as a thought leader and a trustworthy site. This will help a site build a strong community and get their target audience to sign up for emails, ultimately increasing the site’s email marketing efforts.

Best strategies to increase organic traffic

In order to increase organic traffic to your website, you will need to focus on the 4 pillars of SEO: Content Marketing, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Technical SEO. By optimizing every element of the website, an online business will have an easier time increasing its rankings, and organic traffic. 

Let’s take a look at why these four elements are important for increasing organic traffic.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the best ways to increase organic traffic to your website. It’s a strategy that involves creating and publishing quality content that is relevant to your target audience. This will attract search engine users who are looking for information about the topics you cover.

2. On-page SEO

On-page SEO is important in order to make sure your website rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes things like using keywords throughout your content, optimizing your titles and descriptions, and making sure you have a well-optimized website overall.

3. Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO focuses on improving the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs) by increasing the authority and trust. This includes things like backlinks from other high-quality websites, building links from authoritative sources, and creating positive PR around your website.

By building backlinks and citations to your website, you are influencing your website’s domain authority (DA). Google takes into account the authority of your domain while ranking it. Typically, the higher the DA, the better the ranking, and subsequently an increase in organic website traffic.

4. Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to ensuring your website looks good on all devices and browsers, including mobile devices and different platforms like tablets and laptops. This means that your website should be responsive to all screen sizes and have a fast loading time. A slow load time is one of the fastest ways to kill your organic traffic. No one likes waiting around for a website to load.

5. Track your optimization efforts

It is important to know what your current organic traffic flow looks like. This way you can measure how successful your optimization efforts were. Therefore, to track your organic traffic flow, you can use both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. 

You can also use a third-party SEO tool to track your website traffic as well. However, these will not be as accurate as Google’s tools. 

6 ways to increase organic traffic:

Using the strategies listed above, we have five ways to increase the organic traffic of your website.

1. Keyword Research: Use long-tail keywords

Content is king. However it is only half of what will drive traffic to a website. Thus, it is essential you also include keywords throughout your content. It is important to conduct relevant keyword research and look for low-hanging fruit opportunities such as long-tail keywords. 

Long-tail keywords are defined as a key phrase that are a combination of multiple words, usually three to four. An example would be ‘how can I get pet insurance’, or ‘how to repair a broken bicycle’. These long-tail phrases should be used throughout your content in order to assist Google in understanding the content. By knowing where to place keywords, a website can see significant increases in organic rankings, impressions, and clicks.

2. Leverage on-page SEO

Content that ads value is only half of the equation. If you have not optimized the content for search engines, it will never be seen by anyone. Content that is SEO optimized is one of the best ways to increase your website’s organic traffic.

On-page SEO as well as website optimization, includes many different factors, such as optimizing images, HTML tags, title and header tags as well as using internal links. 

Images should be high-quality and relevant to the content they are supporting. Additionally, you should optimize image alt tags to ensure that search engines can understand what they are.

In regards to header tags you can use keywords, or long-tail keywords to demonstrate to Google the importance of the text and what the content is about. Additionally, the header tags will make your posts easier to read as well as skim for information. Readability will help your ranking as it can help keep visitors on your page and lower your bounce rate.

Finally, internal links will help Google understand your content better and help it find new pages on your website. However, more importantly, it will help website visitors find additional information regarding their search query. Internal links help with user experience and providing an overall rich informational experience.

3. Guest blogging

Guest blogging in order to build backlinks to your website can assist your website’s organic traffic. Backlinks will increase your website’s authority and show to search engines that your website is trustworthy.

If you decide to engage in guest blogging, you should target well performing websites, and websites that have a high-authority ranking. By posting guest blogs on other websites and linking them back to your website you can develop referral traffic as well.

4. Create content for YouTube:

Text-based content is important when it comes to allowing search engines to crawl through your website. However, video and audio content can also help boost organic traffic. As the way people consume content continues to evolve, some people prefer to listen to content on the go. Or even watch informational videos to understand the content. One reason people enjoy video content is that data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text.

Video and audio help disseminate your information in different ways and appeal to different people while doing so. Additionally, these videos can be shared on Youtube or other video sharing sites, increasing your reach further.

5. Promote your content on social media

Sharing your content on social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are excellent ways to get your content in front of additional people from your target audience. By posting in like minded groups and communities on social media, you can attract new people and increase organic traffic.

Before you go spamming the communities with your own content, it’s a good idea to engage with other users’ posts and add meaningful responses and comments. This will help your business and profile to build a credible brand. Remember, the best way to gain trust and authority is to provide high-quality valuable content.

Once you build a following on your socials, remember the better relationship you have, the more likely people will re-share your content and promote your business and its services and products.

6. Local SEO

Local SEO can be a great SEO tactic to help a website owner find a potential customer who is looking for a service or product in their area. By optimizing your Google Business Profile (Google my Business) your company can be presented to an organic visitor as a rich snippet and in the local map pack.

Key takeaways: Organic Traffic

By no means have we exhausted all the different actions you can take to increase your organic traffic. Use these initial five suggestions as building blocks to build up your network and community to have multiple streams of traffic. It is always a good idea to diversify (if you have the resources, i.e. time) and promote your content on different platforms and not just Google to ensure that you have organic traffic from everywhere.

Remember, if you are looking for quick fixes and increased traffic, paid ads will be the way you want to go. However, if you are looking to increase high-quality traffic that will provide higher conversions, you will want to focus on increasing your organic traffic with the five actions listed above.

FAQs: Organic website traffic

Below you can see some of the most frequently asked questions regarding organic traffic.