Organic search traffic is one of the most sought-after traffic sources in digital marketing. Unlike paid traffic methods such as PPC and Facebook ads, organic traffic is mostly free.
It is also considered to be extremely valuable type of traffic because it can help you build up an authority in your industry.
In this article, we will go over what exactly is organic traffic, why it is the type of traffic you need to aim for and also the best ways to increase your organic traffic to your website.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic is the term used to describe coming traffic to your website via a search engine query.
This happens when the user is typing a query in a search engine like Google or Bing and then they click on one of the non-paid results.
When the users click on one of the results this visit is counted as organic traffic on Google Analytics or other similar platforms that measure your website’s performance.
Why organic traffic is the traffic you need to aim for?
Organic traffic is one of the best ways to measure the success of an SEO or a content marketing campaign.
Actually, it is safe to say that the amount of organic visitors who enter your website is even a more important metric than simply the rankings of the website, for example.
The reason for this is very simple.
Imagine that one of your important keywords suddenly drops in the rankings.
On the other hand, your website could now rank for dozens or even hundreds of other keywords that may not have much search volume on their own. But when they are put together they will more than make up for the traffic lost from a single big keyword.
Also, organic traffic is extremely targeted traffic.
When the user types a keyword or a phrase in the search engine, they will have a certain intent.
If your website provides them with a good enough solution, then they can become a customer and a subscriber. In other words, organic traffic can be a direct way to gain more sales.
In addition, organic traffic increases the authority and trust towards your website. When the website ranks consistently on the top spots for various industry-related keywords the chance that more and more visitors will click on it becomes higher.
As a bonus, the website becomes more memorable for the users due to the fact that it constantly pops up for various search terms and therefore they will become less hesitant when making a choice which website to trust.
The best ways to increase organic traffic levels
Step 1: create valuable industry-related content
One of the best ways to increase organic traffic is by creating quality content on a consistent basis.
There are several content formats that are deemed to be effective by SEOs and content marketing specialists.
- Long-form blog posts:
Long-form blog posts are highly-detailed blog posts that are designed to educate your target audience on a certain topic.
They typically have at least 1500-2000 words and sometimes may even reach around 5000 words or even more.
Although this may seem like a bit too much, you should really aim to create such content for your business.
The reason for this is very simple.
Many years ago when content marketing was still taking shape the norm was writing blog posts that were around 500 words at most. What is even worse, these blog posts provided no actual value at all.
Nowadays, many businesses are still using the old practices. And some businesses are not even using content marketing at all.
And this is where your business has the chance to stand out in the marketplace.
By using long-form content marketing, you will be able to stand out from the competition, build a brand recognition and help potential customers build up their trust in you.
- Power Pages:
Power pages are piece of content that are designed with link building in mind. The idea is that you will have to create the best possible piece of content on a certain topic within your industry.
Also, you will have to make sure that the content is designed in a premium way, has plenty of custom graphics and data and really has a certain WOW factor that will help with link building.
On a side note, we recently produced a power page for one of our own websites. Here is what it looks like:
And we can do the same for you and your business.
Step 2: perform optimizations on a consistent basis
You wrote an amazing blog post and you just hit publish. Well done, you are already far ahead of the majority of your competitors.
However, getting a blog post published is just part of the battle. What comes after pressing the publish button is the content promotion and optimization.
In this section, we are going to explain why you need to regularly optimize the already published content.
But first, what exactly is content optimization?
In simple terms, content optimization is the process of tweaking the already published content over time in order to gain the maximum possible results that could be gained from it.
For example, you could login into the search console and use it to see what type of keywords users are using to get to your website.
Then, you could integrate these keywords into the relevant articles and expand on by providing more information about the topic.
Another way to optimize your already published content is by increasing its’ click-through rate.
In this case, you can play around with the blog posts’ title tags and consistently tweak them until you see that the CTR is improving.
This should also help you improve your rankings.
Conclusion
Now you know what organic traffic is, why it is important and how to get more of it.
Of course, there are much more nuances to organic traffic and many more ways to increase it.
However, given that we are strapped for time as it is, it would be best if we just focus on the basics until we master them.
And these basic tactics will still be good for the foreseeable future.
