Every business needs a foundation on which to build, and that foundation is, usually, organic traffic. While organic traffic isn’t necessarily ‘free traffic’, a flow of interested visitors coming from non-paid sources does cost less generally than paid traffic.
Of course organic traffic does often mean website or blog traffic, but that’s not the whole picture. And in the AI-era, there are even more methods to drive organic traffic than ever before. So I’m gonna run through what constitutes organic traffic and the sources of organic referrals, an explainer of how organic vs paid is different, and a quick overview of how to grow your organic traffic.
What is organic traffic?
By definition, organic website traffic is any visitors to your online business platforms which don’t come from paid advertising. Typically this comes from searches in the main search platforms, such as Google and Bing, but also increasingly referrals from those large language models (LLMS) such as Chat GPT, Google Gemini and Claude. Traffic can also come from social media platforms, YouTube videos, external websites and even offline sources.
Lets just summarise the list:
- On-page: This usually means your website blog, which is what people typically think of when they hear ‘organic traffic’. Using traditional SEO practices can help your site to rank in the search engines and LLMs.
- Off-page: External websites such as industry or mainstream publications – often referred to as guest posts or backlinks.
- Social media: Being visible on social media is no longer optional when it comes to organic traffic, which can mean different things depending on your industry. Instagram/Facebook, Linkedin, TikTok, Reddit and Twitter can all constitute organic social media.
- LLMs: Getting referrals from AI sources such as Chat GPT and Gemini is the new goal of business, often referred to as AIO (AI optimisation) and GEO (generative engine optimisation).
- Video: This typically means YouTube, which is the biggest source of organic video traffic. However, it can also mean TikTok, Facebook and even Reddit content.
- Mailing list: Another great way to bring in traffic is using email newsletters, either from your own mailing list, or from guest mailings. Getting those emails is a whole strategy in itself!
- Offline: Not all organic traffic comes from the internet. Ensuring your brand is visible offline is still a huge play, even in the digital era, which can be hugely successful.
Is organic traffic ‘free’?
While traffic from organic sources means that you’re not paying per click or impression, there is usually an outlay in either time, money or both to build your organic foundation. The content that resonates with your niche audiences usually needs to be built around data-based research and then have a strategy to target those specific areas.
It’s one thing to just start writing content for your blog, without doing any research – yes, it can work. And it’s another thing to look into the specific niche search terms and built out content designed to meet your audience where they are.
So organic traffic is usually built on insight, some level of expertise, quite a lot of research and the hard work to put the content together. With that being said, paid traffic also requires a lot of work to create campaigns that resonate – but organic traffic is designed to bring in traffic even when you’ve stopped paying for the individual clicks.
Done right, organic traffic can start flowing within a few days, and with well crafted content you can see the results years after the initial work has been put in.
How to build your organic traffic
Whether you’re a brand new business, or you’re established but underperforming, or looking to challenge the competition, there are steps you can take to start building your organic traffic.
Lets start with the foundations:
Get your site right
Nothing will happen until your website is ready, so don’t waste time and money if your site needs work. This means focusing on the simple technicals – it needs to be mobile friendly and fast loading. Run your site through PageSpeed Insights to spot any issues.
Typical things to fix will be slow loading images, outdated or glitchy code and pages that aren’t indexed or with odd referrals.
Make sure your website also tells people what you do. This might sound obvious, I mean, of course your website tells people what you do, right…? But often websites have rambling copy or heavy jargon which puts off visitors as soon as they arrive.
Make your front page an engaging portal, explaining what problem you solve and why you’re the right solution in clear language. Ask someone who has nothing to do with your industry what they think of your website, and if they think it sounds confusing or boring, go back to the drawing board.
As well as your site, you should also…
Fix up your social pages
You need social media pages – so go sign up, add your URL and a good bio. If you already have social media pages, make sure your bios are clear and there is a URL visible.
Also, make sure your social links are on your website, somewhere.
Service pages
Your service focused landing pages are also very important. These landing pages are often used for paid ad campaigns, so are often clear and conversion driven – usually focusing on a specific search term. For example, you might be a business consultancy but then your landing pages will niche down and explain in detail a specific aspect such as ‘financial consultation’ or ‘business expansion’.
These pages will be optimised (or should be anyway) to explain this individual service in clear detail with plenty of CTAs (calls to action).
Planning your blog or on-page content
Once everything is in place on your website, you should look into answering questions for your audience. This is your on-page/blog content.
The aim here is to create a regular flow of useful content designed to both help your audience and hit those search engines (eg. Google).
The struggle for business marketing teams is often finding the right search terms, creating quality on-page content and managing the cadence. The ideal flow is one fresh blog a week, at least. More is better, but then this usually relies on capacity, budget and even the content strategy.
However, its not just what you put out on your blog…
Supporting technicals
As well as regular content, you need a plan to build internal links to your blog content, and make sure you have all the SEO elements present and connect. This means alt-tags, meta titles, meta descriptions, page schema and a bunch of other fiddly elements.
Backlinks also matter here – as building external backlinks to your content is a huge signal to Google that your content matters and is relevant to your audience. Careful with those backlinks though, as poor quality backlinks can have the opposite effect. We’ll look at that in more detail in another article.
Cross-posting on socials
Sharing your content on socials is key to ensuring it reaches a broader audience. BUT… You don’t just share a link to your latest blog, as that is pretty much the most boring way to share anything on social media.
The best way to cross post is to create posts that are designed to appeal to the audience on those platforms, but with a link to your content. Organic traffic from social media usually comes from people who have found your content entertaining, not necessarily informative, so the content strategy is usually a little different.
Updates and fixes
The ideal situation is obviously that your fresh articles rank immediately and start bringing in organic traffic in the same week. And this can (and often does) happen. But sometimes, often in fact, you’ll see that content languishes a little further down the results than you’d like…
This is where you need a regular strategy to revisit old articles and fix them for better results. Sometimes, this is a simple fix, with a few internal links, changing meta descriptions and maybe a backlink or two.
However, sometimes the fix needs a little more strategy. Improving images, adding infographics, changing whole sections, adding or removing keyword usage, looking at your internal links and technical page fixes can all make a big difference.
How to create a content strategy to improve your organic traffic
Planning your strategy and following it is the best way to grow your organic traffic. Although it looks simple on paper, it can be a laborious process and one which usually involves different specialisms such as keyword research, content writing, technical site management and social media expertise. While this is a task that can be done by individuals or small teams, especially with modern AI tools such as Gemini and Chat GPT, it is still time consuming.
An in-house employee or team is usually the choice of larger businesses with big budgets – but then you’re paying not just for the employee but all their tools too.
The most cost effective solution for content management is to hire an SEO agency to create your content. Here at Sentient Creative, we can run an audit of your website and business overall, look at the competition and help you hit those traffic goals. As you’re paying for a monthly service, you get an all-encompassing content strategy and all the tools are taken care of.
Find out more about how we can help grow your business organic traffic and book a no-obligation chat today.