Web surfers find their way to a website in various ways, each one playing a role in your digital marketing strategy to drive traffic from various sources. Below are the 5 most common types of traffic. It helps paint a picture so we can then delve into the world of organic search traffic.

• Direct Traffic
• Social Media Traffic
• Paid Traffic
• Organic Traffic
• Referral Traffic

Direct traffic refers to those visitors that land on your website after typing in the name in their browser address bar, or if they have bookmarked your site. Somebody can also stumble upon a post in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other social media newsfeed and click a link that directs them to your website. This counts as social media traffic. Any traffic that is paid for, will count as paid traffic. Referral encompasses those visitors that came from another website, like clicking a link on a related site that sent you elsewhere as you navigate the web.

But what if somebody doesn’t know about your business and is searching in Google or Bing? Your organic search marketing channel encaptures those visitors that found you “naturally”, via a search engine query. Organic can also be paid traffic (SEM), but organic search comes from an unpaid earned source. The visitors you get here aren’t referrals from other websites or the result of digital marketing, which makes their visit to your business website natural and unaffected by external forces or influences.

Understanding What Is Organic Traffic

Google Analytics (GA) web tracking tool and Google Search Console (GSC) gives you incredible insight to understand your target audience better which you then use for Search Engine Optimization efforts to increase that visibility. Search engines, mainly Google, are the go-to place people look to find what they’re interested in. Organic search data from GA or GSC assists you evaluate how many visitors came to your site organically, what content they’re looking for, and how they’re searching to ultimately find your website. It will also help you monitor user activity and your overall SEO visibility.

To summarize organic search traffic, it’s the group of visitors that perform a search, come across your website, and go to it from within Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This means that the visitor has searched especially for something you have, whether it was the brand name, a product or service you sell, or content you have published. Your site popped up following certain search queries which we refer to as “keywords” in the SEO space. Appearing in search results doesn’t cost anything, but higher visibility is earned by following SEO best practices & quality guidelines. However, certain industries and niches are more competitive than others, depending on supply & demand.

Increasing organic search traffic and improving your SEO along the process can prove to be the difference between you and the competition. Search engine optimization aims to increase the credibility and trust of your content, which can then also increase the quality of your traffic and the rate at which you turn visitors into customers (conversion rate) across other marketing channels. Organic traffic is among the best converting channel, largely because you have better insight on what they’re looking for, so you can then present them with exactly what they’re looking for. The Return On Investment (ROI) of SEO is higher compared to most of the other marketing channels.

Importance of Organic Traffic

Targeted, Specific Approach

Search engines always strive to provide the most relevant search results for their users. So then your organic traffic will come from searches that relate to your business or brand, and the content you have created. As you use SEO tools like GA & GSC to dive deeper into your organic search data, you will undoubtedly begin working with keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases that people enter in search engines in which you appear in the results. This information is a powerful method to research your audience and see what they’re looking for to improve your content. As you optimize your content, you make it easier for searchers to find what they’re looking for, further driving better quality traffic to your website.

It’s integral for your site to be well optimized and have a strong content strategy to have the best shot at improving your visibility. This organic traffic also increases engagement and increases conversion rates as you’ll be acquiring qualified leads that are interested in your products and/or services.

Increased Credibility

Search engines like Google and Bing go to incredible measures to remove spam, dangerous or hacked sites, and even questionable websites that haven’t had a chance to prove themselves to earn that traffic. Think of this as an anti-spam filter to make sure that only those that truly research their audience and create the most amazing content will show up in search results. Google has created Quality Rater Guidelines to help people improve their credibility by working on creating Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T) factors on their website experience.

Thanks to advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (RainBrain & BERT) that Google has incorporated into their search result algorithm, they are able to increase the relevance of their results much better which helps increase user trust. So when a user lands on your website, they have the confidence that they will find what they’re looking for.

Cost-Effective

Organic traffic helps in reducing marketing costs associated with paid ads. With an organic search, visitors have come to your website without external interferences, which means that visitors are more likely to return and consume the great content you have. Hence organic traffic is incredibly sustainable and impactful. When you use paid referral sources, the moment you stop paying for ads, your traffic stops. Since SEO helps you acquire earned traffic, you retain that visibility even long after you stop optimizing your website.

Incorporating SEO best practices into your digital marketing efforts from the get-go will make your content even stronger, which will, in turn, help you perform better across other marketing channels while further improving your SEO potential. It’s an incredible long-term strategy that keeps on giving and builds upon previous SEO efforts.

How To Increase Organic Traffic

Given how organic traffic is integral for any site to develop successfully in its digital landscape, you should stay atop of your SEO data, pinpoint areas you can improve, and continually keep optimizing your site to increase your organic traffic.

Some of the strategies you can use to boost your organic traffic include:

• Create quality content.
• Include relevant keywords.
• Market your content.
• Improve user experience.

Final Thoughts

For your digital marketing campaign to be successful, it’s crucial for your site to grow your SEO channel. Sites that rank high on search engines are more likely to be visited by qualified leads and are seen to be more credible, both in the eyes of web users and the browser. When you have a strong web presence, you can be assured of building a sustainable channel.