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Organic traffic is a popular term among search engine marketing or search engine optimization firms. But the reality is most people just don’t understand exactly what organic traffic is.
Organic traffic used to be traffic that was sent to your website by major search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. While this certainly still is true that organic traffic includes traffic from these sources, I think in 2020 and beyond, the term organic traffic has evolved to include so many other types of searches.
Organic traffic technically is traffic from organic search engines. This traffic is generally generated/created through SEO efforts. When a user searches for you on say Google and then clicks on your website, this is considered organic traffic.
People are searching for things online in so many places other than just search engines. From Facebook to Twitter to On-Site Searches to Niche Directories to Online Yellow Pages to Yelp and everything in between, there are literally thousands of places people can search for information online and organic traffic is simply traffic generated to your website by these searches.
Technically speaking, organic traffic is only traffic from organic search engines, and traffic from say Yelp or a similar aggregator site is considered referral traffic. However this is a technicality as organic traffic can really be considered any traffic which is generated online without paying an ad fee or slotting fee.
In the foreseeable future, the majority of organic traffic will still come from search engines, and especially search engine giant Google, so it is safe to assume in most cases that when someone refers to organic traffic, they are referring to traffic generated by one of the 3 biggest search engines. But as time progresses, this certainly could change. Facebook, for example, is playing a larger and larger role in organic traffic. If you search in the Facebook search bar for a product or service and find a company coming up for a keyword, then I certainly consider this an organic traffic source.
So what does this mean for your website and how you should go about gaining organic traffic? Again, we believe the big search engines will continue to play the largest role in organic traffic in the next several years, so we are continuing to engage in search engine optimization to continue to improve our rankings for specific keywords. The best thing to do as a small business owner is engage in a SEO campaign to ensure your site is appearing for customers searching for it.
Another important aspect to keep in mind when looking at organic traffic is that once your website ranks for the given keyword, this traffic becomes “free” traffic so to speak. There are absolutely no per click costs associated with organic traffic–the only costs are your initial optimization costs and then your maintenance costs to make sure you stay ranked for that keyword. This is attractive to many small business owners who don’t want to constantly pay $10 or even more per click for conventional advertising or pay per click advertising.
No matter how you view your small business’ marketing plan, organic traffic should account for at least 20% of your overall traffic. Once a website is properly optimized, organic traffic can account for as much as 60, 70, or even 80% of your website’s overall traffic. If you’re ready to learn exactly how much traffic is out there and properly optimize your website to take advantage of this traffic, simply request a quote below and we can help you better understand how organic traffic can improve your business’ bottom line!