Learn How to Increase Organic Search Traffic
Organic traffic refers to visitors who come to your website through unpaid search engine results. This type of traffic, which is highly valued by website owners for being cost-effective compared to other traffic sources, can be increased by implementing SEO strategies, including regular updates of quality content on your website, technical maintenance, and link building.
In web search engines, organic search results are the query results which are calculated strictly algorithmically, and not affected by advertiser payments. They are distinguished from various kinds of sponsored results, whether they are explicit pay per click advertisements, shopping results, or other results where the search engine is paid either for showing the result, or for clicks on the result.
The benefits of organic traffic extend far beyond mere numbers.
- Attracts the Right Audience: Organic traffic targets users who are actively searching for what you offer, ensuring a more relevant visitor base.
- Higher Engagement and Conversions: The genuine interest of organic visitors often translates into higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Brand Awareness & Reputation: By attracting and satisfying the right audience’s organic search request, brands can build awareness around their products and services.
- Cost-Effective: Unlike other traffic sources that can be expensive, organic traffic does not require direct payment, making it a more economical option.
- Long-Term Strategy: Harnessing organic traffic is a long-term strategy. Once the correct strategy is implemented, it ensures a steady flow of visitors and sustained success over time.
Organic traffic is a critical driver of website visits. Research indicates that SEO drives over 1,000% more traffic than organic social media, and further studies show that Google organic search accounts for 57.8% of global web traffic. These statistics highlight the immense value of focusing on organic search strategies.
What Is Organic Traffic?
The term “organic traffic” is used to refer to the visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results. Visitors who are considered organic find your website after using a search engine like Google or Bing, so they are not “referred” by any other website.
When users enter a query into a search engine, the search engine’s algorithms scan through countless web pages to deliver the most relevant results. Websites that appear prominently in these search results without paid promotion are considered to have generated organic traffic.
Organic traffic is essentially the result of effective search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. By optimizing your website’s content, structure, technical elements and building its authority, you increase its chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. This, in turn, drives organic traffic as users click on your website’s links among the search results.
Benefits of Organic Traffic
Some of the benefits of organic traffic include:
- Cost-Effective: Organic traffic is a cost-effective traffic source as it doesn’t require direct payments for clicks or impressions. By investing in SEO strategies and quality content, you can attract visitors without ongoing advertising expenses.
- Sustainable: Organic traffic offers long-term sustainability, providing lasting benefits that build over time. With a well-planned SEO strategy encompassing site structure, content, and link building, you can enjoy ongoing benefits with minimal maintenance effort.
- High Engagement & Quality Leads: Visitors from organic search are actively seeking what you offer, resulting in high engagement rates and quality leads. By optimizing content based on user intent, you attract visitors who are genuinely interested in your offerings, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
- Better ROI: Organic traffic typically yields a higher return on investment compared to other traffic sources. Google states the ROI on organic search is 5.3x compared to 2x for paid search.
- Long-term Visibility: Achieving a high ranking in search engine results through effective SEO efforts ensures long-term visibility for your website. This sustained presence in search results enhances your site’s credibility and authority, leading to continued organic traffic growth.
What is the Difference Between Organic, Direct, and Paid Traffic Sources?
There are several types of website traffic, and organic traffic is one of them. Let’s explore their distinctions:
- Organic Traffic: This is generated when users find your website through a search engine without the influence of paid advertising. It’s valued for its authenticity and relevance, often leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Direct Traffic: Occurs when users enter your website’s URL directly into their browser or click a bookmark. It’s often an indicator of brand loyalty or repeat visits and doesn’t involve any intermediary.
- Paid Traffic: Comes from advertisements or sponsored links where you pay to get displayed. This type of traffic can quickly boost website visits and is easy to track and analyze for ROI.
Additionally, there are other important traffic sources. Referral traffic – users clicking on links from external sites, and social traffic, derived from engagement on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
Each type has distinct implications for site engagement and marketing strategy. Organic traffic is valued for its authenticity and relevance, often leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
While each traffic source has its own role, businesses should leverage them based on their unique goals and objectives.
How to Increase Organic Traffic?
The volume of organic traffic you can get depends on your rankings in search engine results. As you move down the search results page, there will be a substantial drop in click-through rates. For instance, the first result on Google gets around 40% click-through rate, but it drops to 20% for the second position and 10% for the third.
This underscores the importance of implementing techniques to improve your website’s ranking and ultimately drive more organic traffic.
Therefore, to rank higher and get organic traffic, you need to optimize your website for search engines by implementing best SEO practices. This combines SEO strategies like content optimization, technical health maintenance, and authority building.
Website Structure & Architecture
If you want to be strategic about your optimization, we recommend first focusing on foundational components in SEO, such as architecture and structure. Developing a structured architecture plan involves organizing your website logically and user-friendly.
This includes creating a clear hierarchy of pages, optimizing URL structures, and ensuring easy navigation for visitors. A well-designed architecture plan improves user experience and helps search engines understand the content and relevance of each page, ultimately leading to better organic search rankings.
UX Optimization
To enhance user experience (UX) and drive organic traffic, focus on these practical tips: Improve readability with clear fonts and ample spacing. Ensure intuitive navigation through a logical menu structure and internal linking. Optimize UI elements for consistency and simplicity.
Prioritize site speed by minimizing large files and enabling caching. These strategies create a seamless and enjoyable experience, encouraging longer visits and higher engagement.
Keyword Research & Optimization
Identify keywords that accurately describe your offerings by understanding user/search intent. For instance, if you are an e-commerce store, “buy Adidas shoes” indicates a purchase intent, while “what are Adidas shoes made of” has an informational intent.
Tailor your content to match user intent, incorporate relevant keywords naturally, and optimize meta tags and headings. Regularly monitoring keyword performance and adapting your strategy accordingly enables you to stay ahead of the competition and maintain a strong presence in search results.
Content Optimization
Effective content optimization begins with a well-defined content strategy tailored to your specific business objectives, whether you’re running an e-commerce store, offering services, or providing information. Start by prioritizing optimization efforts on your “money pages,” such as product/collection pages or service offerings, ensuring they are optimized for relevant user intent and keyword variations.
Additionally, incorporate informational content, such as blog posts, to address user questions and provide valuable insights related to your industry or niche.
When planning your content, it’s essential to understand the needs and pain points of your target market. By creating problem-focused content that addresses common challenges or questions within your industry, you can establish your expertise and build trust with potential customers. Pay attention to elements such as headings, metadata, and internal linking to ensure search engines can effectively crawl and index your pages.
Technical SEO
In the realm of SEO, technical aspects are the backbone of a successful strategy. Ensuring your website’s crawlability and indexation is paramount; without it, achieving high rankings becomes nearly impossible. Focus on aspects like optimizing images for faster loading times, implementing structured data to enhance search engine understanding, maintaining technical health by fixing errors and improving site speed, and optimizing internal linking to improve navigation and distribute authority throughout your site.
In order to discover all the underlying technical issues of a website, an initial audit is recommended. This can be done by a professional agency or you can do it in-house using dedicated tools such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or SemRush. Google Search Console can also be an invaluable asset for discovering technical issues.
Much like a CRO audit, an SEO audit stands at the base of any successful campaign. Without it, all your SEO efforts might not result in noticeable organic traffic growth. On the contrary, you run the risk of losing current ranking positions if the implementation is not done properly.
Link Building
Website authority is a cornerstone of SEO, and link building is a key strategy for enhancing it. Without sufficient authority, achieving high rankings is challenging. Link building involves various strategies such as guest posting, link insertions, and directory submissions, all aimed at acquiring backlinks from other relevant websites.
These backlinks signal to search engines that your site is reputable and trustworthy, boosting its authority and improving its chances of ranking well in search results.
Update and optimize local listings
If you’re a local business, local listings are, for my money, the most efficient way to generate immediate results organically. There are a number of online directories that local customers can use to find and evaluate your business–Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp–but Google Business Profile is the most visible and crucial.
Having (and optimizing) a Google Business Profile ensures that when a potential customer for your plumbing business searches for a “plumber near me,” your business shows up.
Creating a GMB Account for Local SEO
Creating a Google My Business (GMB) account can significantly help your organic website traffic if you have a local business.
- Local Search Boost: Your GMB listing shows up in local searches, putting your business in front of nearby potential customers.
- Builds Trust: A well-maintained GMB profile with positive reviews builds trust and attracts customers.
- Easy Customer Contact: GMB lets customers find your website, call you, or message you directly.
- Free Marketing & Insights: Manage your listing, post updates, and track user engagement – all for free!
Optimize page speed
Google made page speed a ranking factor in 2020 when it released its Core Web Vitals. If your website has a slow load time, not only will users hold it against you by leaving at a higher rate, Google will actually rank your site lower than your competitors’ sites.
The first step in optimizing site speed is understanding whether or not you have a speed problem. Sadly, the majority of websites do. You can use tools like GT Metrix and PageSpeed Insights to quickly diagnose how effectively your site is loading.
