What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic refers to visitors that come to a website through unpaid search engine results, as opposed to paid advertising. It occurs when people search for content online and find a website that matches what they’re looking for, without the website paying for placement in search results.
Different types of organic traffic:
– Search engine traffic – Visitors who find a site by searching Google, Bing, etc. This makes up the bulk of organic traffic.
– Social media referrals – Traffic from social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
– Direct navigation – Visitors who directly type a site’s URL into their browser or have bookmarked it.
– Referral traffic – Visitors who arrive at a site via links on other websites.
Examples of organic traffic in everyday language:
– Searching for “best pizza in town” and clicking the first website that comes up in Google (not an ad). That’s an example organic search traffic.
– Clicking a news article shared by a friend on Facebook that takes you to a publisher’s website. That’s social media referral traffic.
– Typing a book retailer’s URL directly into your browser because you want to check for a new release. That’s direct navigation traffic.
Why is organic traffic important?
Organic traffic is extremely valuable because it represents people actively seeking out your content and brand.
Since it’s unpaid, the cost to acquire each visitor is essentially zero outside of SEO efforts.
High organic traffic indicates your content resonates with users.
Benefits of organic traffic:
– Increased brand awareness and discovery of your products/services
– Higher conversion rates than paid advertising
– Improved ROI compared to other acquisition channels
– Gain customer trust and loyalty through content quality
– Compound growth over time as content continues to rank
Technology related to organic traffic:
– Search engine optimization (SEO) tools like Moz and Ahrefs used to boost rankings
– Website analytics platforms like Google Analytics to measure and track organic traffic
– Social media management tools like Hootsuite to expand social referral traffic
– CRM systems to capture and analyze traffic/customer data
– Content management systems like WordPress that allow SEO optimization