It’s estimated that the largest search engine Google receives approximately 63,000 search queries every second. It accounts for nearly 5.6 billion daily searches and approximately 2 trillion global searches annually. Online marketers need to work on a plan & strategy to capitalize on this online traffic to grow their business. Gaining online traffic is easier said than done. It is an essential SEO metric that needs to be analyzed regularly so that business owners can use SEO reports to peruse their marketing strategy to analyze SEO mistakes. The traffic to a website can be from email marketing campaigns, social media platforms, etc. In this blog, we will deeply understand organic traffic and its importance in SEO campaigns. We will discuss strategies to increase organic traffic, which ultimately helps boost the conversion rate.
What is organic traffic?
In the search engine optimization process, the vital point to concentrate on is organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to the visitors that reach your webpage after clicking on the search engine results for the keywords or search terms entered. It is essential to have a plan & strategy to increase organic traffic to the website, as the performance of all the crucial SEO KPIs depends on the organic traffic.
Organic traffic is different from paid traffic, which defines the visits generated by PPC ads. In the pay-per-click advertising world, the users that click on the ads and reach your landing page are known as paid traffic. At the same time, SEO traffic is users that find your website after the search results appear on the search engines like Google & Bing or on online platforms, social media platforms, etc. When the users reach your webpage through these results, they are not referred by any other website and are said to be organic traffic.
Why is organic traffic important?
Organic traffic to a website is important as the visitors stay in touch in the long run if they associate once with your business. Compared to any other form of traffic like paid traffic, referral traffic, social media traffic, etc., organic traffic is the most valuable traffic to be focused on in the digital marketing strategy. For all-size businesses, it is essential to concentrate on increasing organic traffic so that once these users get associated with the business, the chances of them staying in touch with the business in the long run increase. You can work on customer retention strategies to ensure that the users stay in touch with your business.
The world of digital marketing encompasses many forms of online marketing, like running PPC ad campaigns, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, affiliate marketing, etc. With such a wide range of audiences on these platforms, it becomes essential for marketers to get in touch with the relevant target audience at the right time. Running PPC ad campaigns requires money to be paid to search engines. Even when running PPC ad campaigns on the social media platforms like Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc., there is money to be paid to these platforms for every click on the ad. So, the traffic from these sources is known are paid traffic. However, with Facebook SEO, YouTube SEO, etc., the traffic that reaches the webpage is known as organic traffic.
With the increase in the number of websites, there is intense competition among marketers to reach the target audience. Organic traffic is essential as the visitors that convert into users after reaching the landing page should be focused on staying in touch with the business in the long run. To do so, you need to keep updating the content on the page, optimize the page loading speed, increase visitors’ time on the page, etc. It helps to know more about the users' behavior and how they navigate through each section on the website. As you focus on ad personalization and write engaging ad copies to increase clicks on the ad. In the same way, you need to focus on optimizing the content as per users' requirements so that they have a feeling that the business thinks from the users’ perspective. The organic search engine optimization tactics need to be planned in a way so that the users who associate with the business stay in touch in the long run. Organic traffic is essential as marketers do not have to pay money to search engines or online platforms to get them.
Reasons to invest in organic traffic
a. Cost-effective - One of the essential reasons you should consider investing in organic traffic is that it is cost-effective. When performing an organic search on search engines and online platforms, the critical point to concentrate upon is the website traffic. When you focus on the point of generating website traffic, you ensure that you have quality traffic to your webpage. You focus on conducting keyword research and choosing high-traffic relevant keywords. The vital advantage of organic traffic is that you do not have to pay money to search engines, as is the other way around in PPC advertising.
b. Long-term benefits - Another essential reason for investing in organic traffic is that it provides long-term benefits to businesses. In your online marketing strategy, when you have users who frequently visit your business, they can stay in touch with it in the long run. You may run an online business to build brand awareness, increase traffic on the website, etc. The users that associate with your business also provide their feedback in terms of ratings & reviews that help in improving the products or services being offered.
c. Better ROI - The essential benefit of organic traffic is that it provides a better return on investment compared to other forms of online marketing. With any form of online marketing in the digital marketing world, like PPC ad campaigns, SEO campaigns, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, etc., the critical benefit that marketers concentrate on is ROI.
With a PPC ad campaign, the focus lies on bid adjustment and bid strategy. Whether there is manual bidding or automated bidding, the focus lies on having better advertising ROI. It is done so that advertisers do not have to spend a huge amount on increasing clicks on the ad. With organic search traffic, when you have users who associate with your business in the long run, they trust the products or services being provided.
d. Boosts conversion rate - Another reason to invest in organic website traffic is that it boosts the conversion rate for your business. In the world of digital marketing, the essential point to concentrate on for businesses is that they need better conversion rates. Whether it is email marketing, content marketing, SEO campaigns, etc., the focus lies on a better conversion rate. The organic traffic boosts conversion rate as the users once associated with your business mostly take the desired action on the webpage.
When you have frequent user visits to your website, this implies that your brand awareness strategy works well. It shows that the users trust your website. When the users perform an organic search, your website appears for the keywords entered. You can segregate the keywords based on the keyword search traffic, search volume, etc. The advantage of organic traffic is that after visiting your website one or two times, they have a high chance to take the intended action as they trust the business. It helps to increase the conversion rate and generate website traffic.
e. Build relationships - Whether online or traditional marketing, one thing that cannot be guaranteed is that not every user that visits your website or offline store will get converted into a customer. But the major advantage of online marketing is that you can conduct keyword research, conduct SEO audits, and prepare SEO reports to analyze the performance of essential SEO metrics. All these are done to study the user behavior so that they can be targeted to convert into customers.
As in PPC ad campaigns, you run remarketing campaigns to get in touch with users who did not take the desired action on the landing page for one reason or other. Be it running PPC ad campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, and Instagram Ads, it is essential to keep an eye on the users that are just doing window shopping. You can then run Facebook remarketing campaigns, Google remarketing campaigns, etc., to target these users so that they take the desired action on the landing page.
With SEO campaigns, the vital benefit marketers have with website traffic is that they get users who can stay in touch with the business in the long run. You need to focus on some essential pointers like optimizing the website for mobile devices, improving page loading speed, optimizing images on the website, having great content on the page, etc. As in PPC ad campaigns, you focus on having ad copies that grab users' attention and create a sense of urgency among users to convert. In the same way, you need to focus on writing engaging content on the page and use eye-catching call to action. This prompts the users to take the desired action. With organic website traffic, users who once engage with your business have chance of staying in touch with the business. It helps build brand awareness and a relationship with the target audience. The better the relationship with the users you can offer them discounts & coupons, ask them for ratings & reviews, etc. As in e-commerce PPC ads, you offer discounts in the same way; you can offer these users discounts so that they always avail of products or services from your website.
How to increase organic traffic?
1. Use people also ask sections - To increase organic traffic to your website, you need to use people also ask questions. As you may be familiar with the ‘People Also Ask’ section in the Google search results, they include questions related to the initial search query. So, you can consider optimizing the keywords for the search terms used in these questions. Once you optimize your SEO campaign for these terms, then the website visibility increases. It helps increase the number of clicks on the website, which ultimately leads to increasing organic traffic.
If your content is already ranking among these queries entered by the user, then you can consider performing an SEO audit and keep optimizing the content so that the ranking is maintained. Once you have a list of questions, you can target keyword search traffic so that your keywords appear in the PAA box.
2. Analyzing keyword gaps - The keyword gap analysis is essential as it helps to analyze the keywords that competitors are targeting and you may be missing. As in PPC keyword research, you focus on choosing the relevant keywords that help in lead generation, building brand awareness, etc. If you miss out on the branded keywords, then there are chances that you may miss out on quality traffic. In the same way, you need to analyze the keyword gap in SEO so that your website has relevant traffic and a high chance of taking the desired action on the webpage. To analyze the keyword gap, you can consider using keyword research tools such as the Semrush tool and Ahrefs tools.
3. Updating old content - Another essential point to focus on to generate traffic to your website is to focus on updating old content. When you have relevant traffic to your website, the chances of users taking the intended action increase. To improve the website's performance, you need to keep optimizing the images, add eye-catching images, etc., so that the website traffic is not affected. In the same way, to increase the organic traffic to your website, you need to keep updating old content so that the users feel that the business thinks from the users’ perspective. As in holiday ads, you focus on updating ad copies so that the users get to know the discounts & offers being offered by the business. In the same way, you need to focus on content marketing to write amazing content for your website. If you find content marketing trouble with some task, you can outsource SEO services and get the work done by content specialists.
4. Performing keyword research - With such a wide number of websites present on the internet, it becomes vital to perform keyword research. It helps to reach the relevant target audience. To increase website traffic, you need to focus on performing keyword research so that you get to know which keywords are to be used so that it drives website traffic. As in a PPC ad campaign, you focus on writing ad copies and the point that keywords are used in them. In the same way, you need to focus on the point that the content on the page has relevant keywords used so that your website ranking on the SERPs is not affected. Moreso, having relevant keywords in your content does not have a negative impact on your SEO and helps build brand awareness.
5. Leveraging social media - With the buzzing increase in the number of social media platforms, marketers need to focus on leveraging social media platforms in their marketing strategy. As you focus on SEO trends and PPC trends in your plan & strategy, the users do not miss out on the latest trends. In the same way, you need to leverage social media so that none of your target audience is left untouched. As in PPC advertising, you focus on running Google Ads & Microsoft Ads and also run Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, Instagram Ads, etc., so that you have paid traffic to your landing page. So, to increase SEO organic traffic, you need to include social media to increase website traffic. You need to continuously update the social media posts, title tags, etc., which helps users to have the latest information about your business.
Advantages of relevant organic traffic
a. Loyalty - One of the essential benefits of relevant traffic to your website is that you have loyal users. They stay loyal to the business and mostly choose your website for the products or services they are looking for. It may take time for you to find relevant organic traffic for your business, but once you gain them, there is a high chance that they will stay in touch with your business.
b. Users trust - The essential point to concentrate upon in digital marketing is gaining users' trust. The organic traffic associated with your business has huge trust in your business and has a high chance of staying in touch in the long run. With such a wide range of audiences, gaining users' trust in your business becomes essential. Once your business gains the users trust there are chances that the users do not have a second thought in availing of your products or services for the keywords or search tems they are looking for.
c. Peer to peer marketing - One of the essential benefits of organic website traffic is it helps in peer-to-peer marketing. The users are more influenced when they have some known person describing about a business. They trust their reviews as they believe them as they have used the products or services. When this referral traffic reaches your webpage, they are highly likely to move down the marketing funnel. E.g., Facebook is the largest social media platform to date and is used mainly by friends & family. So, the review that a user provides to another user has a high chance that it would impact them.
Round off
Whether you are already an established name in the online world or just getting started, you need to focus on organic traffic. The essential point with organic traffic is that you do not have to spend money to get them to your website. You need to focus on conducting SEO keyword research so that you get to know whether there is a keyword gap and work on optimizing them. You can also consider analyzing content gaps and optimizing them so that none of your target audience is missed. If you find increasing organic traffic a tough task to perform, you can outsource SEO services to a digital marketing company. The SEO professionals have mastery in guest posting, video SEO, enterprise SEO, small business SEO, etc., and would help you gain organic traffic.
References:
● Organic traffic basics & how to get more website visitors
● How to grow organic traffic with 5 fundamental SEO tactics