What is Organic Traffic? This is a question that you are led to ask yourself when you analyze the flows of Internet users arriving on your web pages. This very often leads to other questions: do search engines allow me to reach my target?
How to appear in the first results of Google? Is it essential to increase my natural traffic? Let’s discover together the answers, clear and detailed, which will allow you to understand the nature and the importance of this source of visits.
Definition of Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the volume of Internet users who arrive on a web page by clicking on one of the links offered by a search engine (excluding advertisements). It opposes paid traffic. The latter represents all visitors who have clicked on an advertising link.
On Google and Yahoo, for example, these links can be recognized by their mention of “announcement”. They are generally placed above the natural links to offer maximum visibility to the advertiser.
To get visits, websites also rely on other sources of traffic acquisition:
- social networks;
- advertising banners present on the web;
- links inserted in other websites, as well as in newsletters, e-mailings and e-books;
- links to the pages of the site put in favourites by the user on his browser;
- Offline channels such as the press, television or even word-of-mouth.
If the traffic flows are numerous and diversified, it is the natural traffic curve that you should seek to increase. Becoming Google’s friend is indeed essential to reach its audience in the long term and guarantee the sustainability of its website.
The importance of organic traffic
Natural traffic has 2 advantages that distinguish it from other sources of acquisition. It brings to your site qualified Internet users, that is to say, ready to take action, whether it is a question of buying a product or subscribing to a newsletter. In addition, the volume of visitors is, as a rule, acquired over the long term.
An audience that converts
Google’s natural results provide much better-quality traffic than other channels. Why? Quite simply because the Internet user trusts the search engine. The latter sorts for him the web pages relevant to his request: magic! Increasingly precise, Google’s algorithm pursues a crazy ambition: to understand the human brain.
The results thus regularly gain in finesse. Conclusion: the user clicks on a natural link because he will have a good chance of getting what he wants. It can be the answer to a question or a product he needs. Your eyes are starting to shine… Yes, organic traffic brings your target audience to your conversion pages, i.e., those generating revenue!
A thought may come to mind: “So what about Google ads? I thought they were the best and ideal ghostwriting agency for increasing my conversion rate! » Keep in mind that ads create an artificial flow of traffic.
Worse: Internet users turn away from them, even though they are placed at the top of the SERP (that is to say at the top of the search engine results page). Do you frown? The figures are however eloquent: an advertisement on Google collects on average only 4% of clicks while the first natural result captures nearly 32%.
Additionally, three-quarters of searchers go to one of the top 3 organic results. In a word: Internet users are wary of advertisements and turn end masse to the first non-paying links. Moreover, it is important to appear on the first page of the results. Indeed, less than 1% of Internet users click on a result appearing on the second page.
A volume of visits that tends to become permanent
When a web page is put online, the Google robot detects and indexes it. In other words, it saves it and stores it carefully in its databases. The search engine then decides to display this page if it deems it relevant to the searches carried out by Internet users.
The latter will therefore potentially have the opportunity to see the link and click on it a large number of times. Visibility in the natural results of Google can therefore extend over months or even years. The key: regular organic traffic or, better yet, growth over the long term.
This durable display is lacking in all other sources of acquisition. For example, when an advertising campaign stops, the featured web page disappears from search results and no longer generates any visits. In the case of social networks, visibility is even more reduced.
The lifespan of a tweet or a Facebook post is indeed very short. However, who says visibility, says notoriety. A company or brand with several key pages appearing at the top of the SERP will become a benchmark in its niche. It will thus obtain a serious advantage over its competitors.
The keys to increasing organic traffic
You have understood it: a healthy website capable of developing over the long term needs high natural traffic. As we have seen, this implies that the different web pages that compose it appear in the first natural results of Google. How to achieve this goal?
The answer is in one word: SEO, for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the art and way of optimizing a web page to ensure maximum visibility in Google. We also talk about natural referencing.
Optimize content
Obtaining a well-referenced web page means in particular optimizing its content. Above all, we must keep the promise made to the Internet user. If he has clicked on the link of a page in Google after having typed “gastronomic specialities Auvergne”, the content he will read should not relate to traditional clothing from Auvergne or culinary specialities from Alsace.
Logically, the entire article will be built around the key query entered by the visitor. Also, remember that Google understands search intent. For example, when a user types in “New York time difference”, the search engine does not display several hours difference but the time it is in New York.
All this implies for you, on the scale of your website, to build a keyword strategy. In other words, you must position yourself on key queries relevant to your business. In addition, each of your texts will meet the quality criteria:
- semantic field (rich vocabulary related to the theme);
- clear and logical structure, responding to the intention of the Internet user;
- smooth reading;
- Absence of spelling mistakes, etc.
Does all this seem very complicated to you? Writing and optimizing content requires real expertise. This is where the skills of the SEO web editor come in. The latter can, for example, advise you on the key requests to work on, optimize existing content and propose new Google-friendly texts.
Thinking about user experience (or UX)
Implementing an SEO strategy involves working at all levels of your website or blog. Even if the work on the content remains the “TinyTech”, the Google algorithm takes into account several hundred criteria when it decides to display a web page rather than another. Many of them relate to UX, that is, the ease with which the user interacts with your site. A good user experience involves:
- Intuitive navigation;
- A well-structured and hierarchical site;
- Relevant internal networking;
- A responsive design site (reading adapted to mobile).
What is Organic Traffic? To remember
Let’s not go there by 4 paths: an invisible web page in Google is a doomed page. Natural traffic, that is to say, the flow of visitors from the natural results of search engines, determines the future and the profitability of your website.
It is the only type of inbound flow that guarantees you both a long-term audience, a perfectly targeted audience and a good conversion rate. It is therefore a key traffic for the increase of your turnover. In addition, the visibility offered by Google allows your business to gain notoriety, thus setting you apart from the competition.
To be one of the lucky ones, no mystery: you have to appear, and then stay in the first results of the SERP. A goal that can be achieved by scrupulously and continuously implementing a set of optimization techniques.
This SEO strategy, in which the web editor takes full part, strives to optimize each of your pages, as well as your website as a whole. The main points? The regular publication of quality content, a relevant keyword strategy and a well-built site suitable for all screen sizes. There is no more!
