Organic traffic is one of the most sought-after traffic sources when it comes to SEO and overall digital marketing.
And for good reason: if it is done properly the initial investment can continue to pay off almost indefinitely.
However, the road to building a good amount of organic traffic is hard and uncertain.
So, this is why we are going to explore the pros and cons of organic traffic in this article.
Pros:
Organic traffic is qualified
One of the best aspects of organic traffic is that it is qualified traffic. This means that people who search for information about your products and services are actually interested in making a purchase sooner or later.
Here is how it works:
Imagine you are an accounting firm and the client is looking for information on how to save taxes or for someone to do his tax returns.
So, the potential clients will search using terms like tax consulting, tax form filing tips, tax saving tips etc.
And if your website is properly optimized it will appear on top of the organic search results.
And if you are able to build enough trust to the potential client by publishing quality content on your website that answers the questions they are looking for and making sure that your credentials, testimonials etc. are properly done and visible then you have a high chance of turning the website visitor into a lead and eventually a client.
Organic traffic is consistent
Once you get your website’s organic traffic going then it is pretty much an endless stream of traffic. Unlike paid advertising, you won’t have to pay for the traffic itself.
That means even if you are not working on your publishing new content or promoting it for a while the traffic should stay relatively consistent.
In fact, in some cases the traffic may go up if you stop publishing new content consistently and do content updates from time to time on an already published content.
Organic traffic increases brand awareness
Organic traffic is also helpful for increasing your brand awareness.
Here is how it works.
We already mentioned that this type of traffic is qualified because people who are interested in your products or services are using related search terms to research the information they need.
Also, even if they don’t buy from you they might start checking out your blog from time to time especially if you publish content regularly.
If they like your content, then they may subscribe to your newsletter in order to stay in touch with your blog.
Next, they will follow you across your social media channels.
And most importantly, if they think a piece of content you produce is amazing then they will definitely share it across the platforms they use.
All of these activities performed by the users will contribute to building a better brand awareness for you and your business.
Organic traffic is cost-effective solution
Although organic traffic is considered a “free” form of traffic, the reality is that you will have to commit quite a big investment in terms of money and time.
Especially, if you are in a competitive industry.
However, this should not put you off of making the decision to invest in this marketing channel.
The reason for this is that the costs involved are simply minuscule when it comes to other forms of marketing like PPC or Facebook Ads.
And you will be able to reap the return of the investment for a long time.
Organic traffic increases credibility and trust
The Internet is a great place to do business and a lot of businesses are attracted by the fact that they can build an unlimited audience many of whom would eventually turn to a paying customer.
However, there are many scams out there as well, unfortunately.
And if you want to successfully build your business’ online presence and generate customers out of the whole effort you are putting in then you will have to build up your credibility and trust.
And showing up various industry-related terms on the organic search results is a great way to achieve this.
Cons:
Requires an initial investment
Unfortunately, despite the popular belief, organic traffic is not free and will require some investment up-front.
We already mentioned that the size of this investment will depend on how competitive your industry is on the organic search results.
Of course, you might get away with making any financial investment whatsoever and rely only on the time you invest yourself working on your own online presence.
Fortunately, there are some relatively quick tasks you can do speed up the initial traction and you could do most of them yourself.
However, if you are not technical this will not be an option for you.
So, you should bе prepared to spend at least $1200 per month or more depending on the competitiveness of your industry.
Requires some time before the initial results come in
Even though SEO is still important and strong marketing channel, one of the downsides is that the initial results are not instant and will take some time before organic traffic starts to happen.
First of all, you have to take some time to get passed the Google Sandbox. This is a term that describes the period between registering your domain and its’ indexing in the search engine. The time for this is variable and depends on numerous factors.
Second, it takes some time before meaningful traffic starts to come in. Even if you do the proper on-page work such as creating content, fixing title tags and so on it will still require at least several months before things start to happen.
And third, you have to be prepared to make an investment for at least several months ahead before you see any results. Especially, if you are in a competitive industry.
Organic traffic is affected by Google’s algorithm updates
Google employs a variety of algorithms that decide what to show to the users based on a certain criteria.
There are about a dozen algorithms that are popular to the SEO community and there is enough information about them and how they work.
However, each of these algorithms is updated from time to time.
The impact of these updates is also variable. For example, your website can be positively impacted and you can start to receive more organic traffic after a certain update. On the other hand, a competitor’s website will be negative impacted and they lose some traffic.
These things are mostly out of the SEO professionals’ control and there is not that can be done.
The SEO expert should continue with the work that is being already performed and continuously work on improving the client’s website and hopefully by the time the next algorithm update rolls out the results will be much better.
The CTR tends to decrease over time for certain keywords
In recent years, Google has moving towards an interface that allows the user to instantly see the information they look for without having to click on a website.
This means that you may lose a portion of the organic traffic you have been receiving in prior times.
Thankfully, there are still ways to go around this and these will be covered some other time.
Manual Google Penalties
Just like the automated penalties by the updates, Google also has something called a “manual penalty”.
Although the chance of getting one is quite low, there is still the possibility of getting one.
Fortunately, manual penalties are a bit easier to control since there are some guidelines on what you should do if you want to get the penalty lifted.
Of course, the best part is to simply avoid getting a manual penalty by playing to the rules and following the best practices when it comes to SEO.
Conclusion
Organic traffic is really great once it gets going on a decent scale. And like anything else in life, it has both pros and cons.
However, the pros are much greater than the cons.
And if you are wondering whether or not the efforts are worth it then yes – they are most definitely worth it.
So, start investing resources and effort in this marketing channel and you will reap the rewards sooner rather than later.
