Google receives over 50 million search queries per second. So it’s obvious that all businesses need to capitalise on this to grow their business through the use of digital marketing strategies.
Organic traffic is used for referring to the visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results. Organic traffic is the opposite of paid traffic, which defines the visits generated by paid ads. Visitors who are considered organic find your website after using a search engine like Google or Bing, so they are not “referred” by any other website.
All of those Google searches should mean you have a decent chance of getting organic traffic to your website. But aren’t ads better?
Why organic search is better than using paid ads:
1. Low Cost
One of the most significant benefits of relying on organic traffic is that it doesn’t have to cost you anything. As long as you follow Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices, all you need to invest is time.
Of course, spending money to hire an SEO company is a great option when you first use SEO. However, that will still be more affordable than creating ad campaigns.
A business should ALWAYS make sure their website has its SEO setup correctly before spending money on paid advertising campaigns. After you start getting some SEO traction, you can keep using SEO for free or cheap. Then, you can get even more organic traffic.
2. More Accessible
Another benefit of organic traffic is that it’s more accessible to businesses of all sizes. Of course, major corporations have massive budgets to spend on paid traffic.
But a new business or an existing small business needs to budget revenue. Fortunately, using SEO for organic traffic is accessible to new and long-time businesses.
As long as you have a good SEO strategy, you can increase organic traffic to help grow your company.
3. Long-Term Benefits
When you pay for traffic, you have to invest time and money into creating the ad and the investment only lasts as long as your ad campaign.
Focusing on organic traffic can also benefit your business for years to come. Once you optimise and publish a blog post, it can rank well in search and get traffic. As you write more blog posts or update other content pages, you can use relevant keywords. While search rankings can change, showing up first for at least one keyword may help you show up first for others.
Then, you can get even more organic traffic to your website. Even if your rankings slip a little bit, you can make a comeback.
4. Better ROI
The return on investment (ROI) can be much better for organic vs. paid traffic.
If you have an organic search result that gets the same number of clicks as an ad, the organic result will have a better ROI. While you may have spent time on the result, you won’t have to pay for clicks, meaning your return is higher per click.
Having a good ROI is important for making business decisions. Since organic SEO can provide a better ROI, you may find it’s more worth your time than ads.
5. Build Brand Awareness
When you want to start or grow a business, brand awareness is crucial. While not everyone who knows your business exists will become a customer, having name recognition gives you the chance to grow.
Maybe someone isn’t a customer now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t buy something later. And if that’s not the case, they may know someone who would want your product or service.
The more people that know about your brand and what you do, the easier it will be to keep getting organic traffic. Then, you can grow your business consistently.
6. Add More to Your Website
If you want to focus on paid ads, you may only want to create ads for a few pages. However, you should use SEO to get organic traffic on all pages.
As long as you optimise your website content, including blog posts, Google can show that content to anyone it thinks is searching for it. However, Google can limit the reach of your paid ads if you have a set budget.
Once you reach your daily or monthly budget, you won’t get more traffic. And you can only promote so much content at a time.
7. Repurpose Your Content
After you write and publish a blog post, it doesn’t have to end there. Of course, the post itself will, hopefully, rank well for relevant keywords.
But you can easily take the post and share all or part of it on social media. Then, you can use hashtags or other organic promotion methods to get that post in front of more people.
If you share that the original format was a blog post, you can send people to your site. And you won’t have to pay to get that traffic.
8. Get More Traffic
You can get a decent amount of traffic with paid ads, but it’s only one option. Some people don’t like clicking on social media or Google ads.
If you don’t use SEO, you can miss out on a whole group of people. But if you can combine paid and organic traffic, you can get more traffic to your website.
Also, using organic SEO means you can keep getting traffic consistently. You don’t have to renew an ad campaign to get more clicks, so you can focus on other areas of your business.
9. Attract the Right People
Not only can organic SEO help you get more traffic, but it can help you get good traffic. Good traffic includes people who are your ideal customers.
They’re searching for something relevant to your business. That means they’re more likely to want or need what you sell.
When you can get that traffic to your website, you will have a better chance of making a sale. But when you pay for ads to target random people, you may get traffic from people who will never become customers.
10. Increase Conversions
When you can increase organic traffic, you can increase conversions. Perhaps you use a keyword that includes a product you sell, and you write a blog post explaining the product or its benefits.
Someone searching for that product may click on your post to learn more. At the end of your blog post, you can link to the product on your site and encourage people to buy it.
If your visitors are already looking to shop, you and your content won’t have to work as hard for that sale. The content can speak for itself and increase the chance of that visitor placing an order.
11. Improve Credibility
If you show up on the first page of search results, that can give you a lot of credibility with people using a search engine. Of course, paying for ad space will put your website at the top.
However, some people don’t trust ads, and they may not want to click on your site. But if your website is one of the first organic results, a visitor may click on your site.
Even before you get a click, SEO can help you give off a good impression to your potential customers. While not all ads are a scam, having both paid and organic results will help your business overall.
12. Build Relationships
Odds are, you probably won’t get a sale every time someone new visits your website. But you can use organic traffic to start building relationships with your leads.
If you use email marketing, you can embed multiple signup forms throughout your site. Use an incentive, like a free download or coupon code, to entice people to join your email list.
Then, you can use a newsletter to nurture that lead with the know, like, trust factor. Eventually, a visitor may return to your website and make a purchase.
13. Surpass the Competition
Organic SEO can help you beat your competition and take the first organic spot for a relevant keyword. If a customer doesn’t have any brand loyalty, they may click on your website first.
Then, you can capture that lead and either get a sale immediately or use email or content marketing to get a sale later. If you can get enough organic traffic to do this, you can grow your business to be bigger than your competition.
You may find that your business is a leader in your industry. While that type of growth can take time, organic SEO is an excellent way to get there.
14. Collect Important Marketing Data
As you grow your business with organic search, you should look at your numbers. Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for tracking website visits.
You can see how many people visit your site using a search engine and how long they stay on your site. Analytics can also tell you how much of your traffic is new or returning and what keywords people use to find you.
Make sure to review your analytics at least once a month. Then, you can see what’s working and what you need to change to get more traffic organically.
The Downsides of Paid Traffic
Organic traffic offers many benefits over paid traffic. But you should also understand the downsides of relying on paid ads specifically.
Knowing the downsides can make it easier to see the benefits of organic traffic. Then, you can determine if paid traffic is worth being part of your marketing strategy.
Consider some of the disadvantages that come with relying on paid traffic.
Big Investment
Starting and maintaining pay-per-click (PPC) ads takes a lot of time and money. You will need to budget for the ad itself and to pay someone to create the ad if you can’t do so yourself.
Each PPC ad you create will have those costs, so your ad spending may only increase with time. And if you stop spending money on ads, you could lose a lot of your website traffic.
You may also need to experiment a lot with ads to find what works. That can cost you a lot of money and time.
Not for Beginners
If you want to have a successful ad campaign, you almost have to hire a professional. When you first start your business, you may not know how to create an ad.
You may create an ad that you think is good, but it might not bring in much traffic or it will bring in the wrong traffic. If that happens, you’ll have wasted time and money that you could have spent on organic search.
Even if you’ve been in business for a while, it can take time to learn how to create effective ads. And it may not be worth it for you to learn that skill.
Potential for Irrelevant Traffic
Depending on how you set up and target your ad campaign, you may get some irrelevant traffic. You might want to target local keywords or set an negative keyword list (keywords that you don’t want your ad to be used for, like competitors etc).
But if you aren’t specific enough, you can get a lot of unwanted traffic – you still pay for it though. The same thing can happen with any type of keyword you use, and it can be hard to avoid without the perfect targeting.
Fewer Clicks and Conversions
Whether you get irrelevant clicks or not, you may get fewer clicks than if you used organic search. This goes back to the credibility that comes with ranking organically.
If you pay for your spot at the top, you may get some traffic. But people may already be skeptical of your business, which can make it harder to get sales.
And if you don’t get as many initial clicks, you won’t be able to get as many conversions, leading to a vicious cycle.
Fraudulent Activity
Another risk of relying on paid ads is getting fraudulent traffic. Some businesses might click on the ads of their competitors, partly to learn about the other business, and partly to force the competitor to spend more.
If your competitors do this to your ads, you may have to spend a lot of extra money on that traffic. Your competitors don’t want to buy from you, so that money won’t lead to a sale.
Unfortunately, you can’t predict if your competitors will use that strategy. But you can protect yourself by relying on organic traffic.
How Can You Get Organic Traffic?
When marketing your business online (digital marketing), you have multiple options, from social media to organic traffic through search results. Organic SEO is an excellent way to get good leads to your website.
Then, you can convert those leads to customers to help grow your business. And you don’t have to worry about spending tons of money on ads.
Do you need help with your SEO to get more organic traffic? Contact us for a no-obligation, free consultation.
