Organic traffic is one of the most effective channels for attracting traffic and increasing conversions; because unlike monetary advertising where you have to pay for displays and clicks, it is free.
Also, users will realize that your content is exactly relevant to what they have searched for and are looking for, and their trust in you will increase. In this article, after examining the reasons why organic traffic is important and the challenges in this direction, we introduced 5 effective methods to increase organic traffic of the website in addition to the tools to measure and analyze it.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic refers to visits that are directed to your website without the use of paid advertising. This type of traffic is usually obtained from search engines such as Google and Bing. However, attracting organic traffic is not completely free, as implementing the strategies associated with it requires an investment of time and money. The main difference between organic and paid traffic is that with organic traffic, you invest resources up front and benefit from its results in the long run.
Increasing organic traffic is one of the main SEO goals for many businesses. This is because it can lead to increased sales leads and revenue.
How Organic Traffic Differs from Other Types of Traffic
Basically, website traffic is categorized into two types: “paid” and “organic.” Nonetheless, more precise terms help us understand how each visitor arrived at a particular page.
In addition to organic traffic, other sources of traffic include:
- Paid traffic: Includes visits attracted through paid advertising on Google or other websites where your target audience is present.
- Direct Traffic: This occurs when a user comes directly to your website, without being referred through another website. This type of traffic is still considered organic because it does not stem from paid sources.
- Social Traffic: This refers to visits that come from social media. This usually happens when links to your website are shared on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
- Referral Traffic: When a user comes to your website through a link on another website (other than search engines). You attract this traffic when you have traffic and visits via one of your website’s articles that received a backlink.
- Organic Traffic: Organic traffic does not just come from clicks on Google search results, but also from other sources, such as Google Discover, Google Maps and Business, Feature Snippets, Knowledge Graph, and Rich Results. Optimizing content for each of these areas can help increase website traffic.
Why is organic traffic crucial?
The latest data shows that over 5 trillion searches are performed on Google annually. This is one of the reasons why organic traffic has become a top priority for companies to invest in.
- Cost savings
Organic traffic helps reduce overall marketing costs. For example, a company that invests in SEO to rank high for relevant keywords can consistently attract visitors without paying a per-click cost.
Investing in SEO increases sales margins and makes organic traffic more cost-effective than monetary advertising.
- High scalability
Paid advertising has limited scalability; if you stop spending on advertising, your traffic will also decrease. For instance, an online store that ranks high in organic search for its popular product categories can grow without having to increase its advertising expenses.
As organic search traffic increases, customer acquisition costs diminish, making it an ideal choice for long-term growth.
- Increase user trust
Users tend to be less likely to trust results that are labeled as ads. However, if a blog post answers their question, it can build user trust and help drive organic traffic. Organic results are usually perceived as more authentic and credible by users, which can help them form a stronger connection with your brand.
- High durability
Organic strategies don’t have an expiration date. A strong SEO article or content can generate visits and sales for years, unlike paid advertising, which requires ongoing investment to maintain results.
For example, a comprehensive guide on how to use a product can attract new visitors and increase sales for a long time.
Challenges of Getting Organic Traffic
While it is true that organic traffic has many benefits, it is not easy to achieve. Here are some of the main challenges:
- Time-consuming results: Unlike paid advertising that generates traffic instantly, SEO is a long-term process and can take months to years to have a noticeable impact on website traffic.
- Strict competition: Competition among keywords is high in many industries. In some areas, large companies with large budgets dominate the results, making it difficult for smaller websites to compete.
- Constant changes to Google algorithms: Google’s algorithms are updated regularly, which can provoke in sudden changes in website rankings.
- Requirement of consistent, high-quality content: Creating valuable, SEO-friendly content on a consistent basis is essential to receive organic traffic. Publishing low-quality or duplicate articles not only does not assist, but they can also result in a Google penalty.
- Technical website issues: problems such as slow website speed, broken links, poor URL structure, and lack of mobile optimization can negatively impact rankings.
- The need for strong link building: Getting quality backlinks from reputable websites is one of the most important SEO factors; but building natural, valuable links is a difficult and time-consuming process.
What tools should we use to measure organic traffic on a website?
Analyzing organic traffic on a website is essential for evaluating SEO performance, identifying growth opportunities, and optimizing content strategy. In this section, we have introduced 3 practical tools for monitoring organic traffic.
Checking organic traffic with Organic Research tool in Semrush
Semrush is a popular tool for checking organic traffic on websites. To use this tool, follow below steps:
- Enter the domain address of your choice in the search bar and click “Search.”
- The number displayed in the “Traffic” section is an estimation of the number of monthly visits earned through organic rankings.
- To observe how your organic traffic has changed over time, click the “Traffic” section.
- You can see the impact of ranking changes on traffic by going to the “Position changes” report.
Checking organic traffic with Google Analytics
To check organic traffic in Google Analytics, follow these steps:
- Log in to your account.
- Click on “Reports.”
- In the “Life cycle” section, click on “Acquisition” and then “Traffic acquisition.”
- In this section, you will see all traffic sources particularly organic search.
- To see which search engine your organic traffic is coming from, scroll down in the “Traffic acquisition” report and add “Session source” as a “secondary dimension.”
Checking organic traffic with Google Search Console
To observe organic traffic through Google Search Console, follow these steps:
- Log in to your account.
- In the “Performance” section, select the “Search results” report. This section displays the number of organic clicks from Google search results to your website.
- Scroll down to see the queries, pages, and countries that are driving the most organic traffic to your website.
5 Ways to increase organic website traffic
To increase organic website traffic, you need a coherent SEO strategy. Here, we will look at 5 key steps to achieve this goal:
Fixing technical website issues
Search engines like Google need to be able to discover, crawl, and index your website in order for your content to appear in search results. Technical issues can hinder this process and drop your website’s ranking.
You can check for technical issues using the Semrush Site Audit tool.
Type the website address in the search bar and click “Start Audit.”
After the audit is complete, the “Site Health” section will display the overall health of your website. The higher the score, the fewer issues you have.
The “Issues” section will display a list of errors, warnings, and tips for improving the situation.
First, fix errors like broken links, corrupted images, or redirect issues.
To see how to fix the problem, click “Why and how to fix it.”
Keyword Research
Keyword research helps you find valuable user searches and create targeted content that drives more traffic. You can still use the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to do it.
Enter your seed keyword and add your website domain in the “AI-powered” section, then hit the search button.
A list of related keywords will appear, along with the following information:
- Search Intent: What are users looking for when they search?
- Search Volume: The average number of monthly searches for that keyword
- Keyword Difficulty: How difficult it is to rank for that keyword (the lower the number, the better your chances of ranking).
- Traffic Potential: An AI-based estimate of how much traffic you can get from a keyword.
It is best to target keywords with high search volume and low difficulty and create content that matches it.
In the left menu of the Keyword Magic Tool, you can see groups of related keywords. This section helps you discover more precise and specific topics in your field of work.
By selecting the “Add to keyword list” option, you can create a list and add your desired keywords to it.
Sometimes your competitors are ranking for keywords that you have not yet targeted. Analyzing these keywords can help you find new opportunities for growth. Use the “Keyword Gap” tool to check this issue.
Enter your domain address and at least one competitor’s domain. Then select the “Compare” option.
There are two categories of keywords on which you should focus first.
- Missing: Words that your competitors are ranking for but you are not.
- Weak: Words that your competitors are ranking for higher than you.
Get Quality Backlinks
Getting quality backlinks from reputable websites will increase your website’s reputation and authority, which can lead to better rankings and more organic traffic. The key to link building success is to consistently produce valuable content to which other websites will naturally intend to link.
However, you can speed up the process by using effective link building techniques:
- Broken link building: Finding websites with broken external links and offering to replace them with links to relevant content on your website.
- The Skyscraper Technique: Finding a popular piece of content and creating a better, more comprehensive version of it to get more links.
- Reviewing competitor backlinks: Identifying websites that link to your competitors and requesting links from them.
You can find new external link building opportunities using Semrush’s Link Building Tool. Enter your website’s domain and click “Start Link Building.”
The tool will generate a list of websites that might link to you based on your keywords and competitors. View these websites in the “Prospects” tab.
Select the most suitable options and start the communication process.
Set up a Google Business Profile (if needed)
If your business is local, local SEO can have a significant impact on attracting customers. In the United States, 32% of users search for local businesses several times a week, and 21% of them do it every day.
One of the most effective ways to increase your visibility in local searches is to create and optimize a Google Business Profile.
Log in to your Google Business Profile and add your business information.
Make sure that information such as your address, contact number, working hours, and business photos are complete and up-to-date.
Encourage users to leave positive reviews, as this will help improve your ranking in local results.
Conclusion
Focusing on organic traffic can help your business experience sustainable and long-term growth. To improve your visibility and increase your website traffic, it is essential to implement key measures such as technical SEO improvement, keyword research, quality content creation, and link building. These measures will help search engines gain better understanding of your website’s content and rank it higher in search results. Remember, an increase in search results usually indicates an increase in organic traffic in the future; therefore, continuous monitoring and optimization will play a significant role in the success of your SEO strategy.
