Beginner’s Guide to Organic Traffic
Did you know that almost 45% of people don’t like ads that pop up based on their searches?
That was just one of the negative findings in a survey conducted of over 1000 online shoppers. In fact, only 10% of respondents didn’t find digital ads annoying! But, when you need to market your business, what else can you do?
Luckily there are alternatives. These intrusive methods – known as outbound marketing – aren’t the only way to get the attention of your target audience, with organic traffic being a great alternative that really works.
Find out more about this more popular marketing method in our guide.
What is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic refers to visitors to your site who’ve landed on your website through an unpaid search result. It’s good to note right now that if they land through a PPC (pay per click) ad in search engines, this isn’t organic traffic. Essentially, a visitor counts towards organic traffic if they’ve only clicked on your site after searching through an engine like Google or Yahoo, and they’re never referred by another website.
This means that the traffic is technically free. However, there are plenty of methods to help your audience find and click on your search, and some of them may have cost you money.
What Are the Benefits of Organic Traffic?
We’ve already mentioned that consumers don’t like online ads, but it runs deeper than that. Not many people like being advertised to anymore, although when done correctly it can still be a great marketing method. But, on the whole, this intrusive method of bombarding an unwilling audience with your brand isn’t going to get a good reaction.
Consumers are also becoming more immune to advertising. They know you’re trying to sell them something, they know the tactics you’re using, and they’re going to be more critical of the content. If you advertise to your market these days, you have to be very clever to get results.
By using organic marketing methods you let the users come to you but, of course, you nudge them in the right direction first. This is far less intrusive and allows consumers to make up their own minds, which is more appealing to them. Some other benefits include:
- An audience who are already looking for what you’re offering and so are more likely to make a purchase
- High-quality traffic
- The ability to create long-lasting relationships with willing customers
- A more cost-effective and sustainable approach to marketing
- Gain a competitive edge in your industry
There are so many reasons why companies are including organic traffic in their marketing strategies, and the benefits are hard to ignore!
Boosting Organic Traffic With SEO
Now you know more about what organic traffic is and why it’s so beneficial to brands, let’s dive into the methods you can use to boost yours. If you struggle to understand any of these or think it might be tough for your business to carry them out, remember that there are plenty of specialist marketing agencies out there who can help.
The main method of boosting organic traffic is known as SEO, or search engine optimization. This is the method of using the search engines’ ranking algorithms in your favor, incorporating as many of the factors they like into your website so that they boost your rank. The better your SEO, the higher you’ll be in the search results.
Considering that over 25% of online browsers click the first search result they see, this is very important! The higher up you are, the more organic traffic you’re going to get.
SEO Methods to Drive Traffic
There are tons of different SEO methods you can use to improve your rank. Here are some of the most effective:
Keyword Optimization
Keywords are the common terms that your target audience is searching for when they want to find a company like yours. For example, a pet grooming company may have dog grooming services as one of its key terms. By incorporating this word into their website, through page headers, image attributes, and page content, they can boost their rank for that term.
Link Building
Link building helps improve your relevance and authority in the eyes of search engines. There are different types of link building, including inbound and outbound. Inbound links are links to your website from others, and the more you have from high-authority sites, the better your site will rank.
Outbound links are links from your own website to others. Again, by linking to high authority websites you can help boost your own relevance. But, be careful not to overdo your links and employ black hat SEO techniques or you could find your rank drops.
Blogging
Search engines love high-quality content that’s got plenty of great keywords, and blogging is an easy way to add tons of content to your site! To make sure it improves your rank, use a few relevant keywords or terms – avoid overstuffing your content or risk being penalized – and aim for a length of at least 500 words, but the more the better. Remember to always prioritize quality over quantity, however, as bad quality content is guaranteed to send you plummeting down the ranks.
A content marketing team can help you publish frequent, high-quality blogs to your website and boost your business.
Ongoing Analysis
By analyzing your organic traffic using Google Analytics, you can identify what’s working for you and what needs to be improved. Then, tweak your strategy to keep your traffic growing and build a thriving business.
Boost Your Business With Organic Traffic
Whilst paid media ads are definitely still relevant, nothing beats organic traffic. It’s a super cost-effective method of marketing that you can scale as your business grows, and it’s ideal for driving high-quality traffic to your website.
If you’re in the property management industry and would like to learn more about how an SEO specialist team could help you, be sure to take a look at our services.