Organic Traffic: Why it is important, how to generate it and reasons behind a drop

Are you a website owner or marketer wondering why organic traffic matters so much for your website's success? Organic traffic refers to visitors who find your website through search engines without any paid promotion or advertising. It's crucial because it reflects your website's ability to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs) based on the relevance and quality of your content.

In this blog post, we'll explore why organic traffic is so important for your website and provide tips on how to generate it. We'll also identify the reasons behind a drop in your website's organic traffic.

Why is Organic Traffic crucial for a website?

• It’s cost-effective: Organic traffic is free, unlike paid advertising, which requires investment for every click or impression, making it a cost-effective way to drive traffic to a website.‍
• It’s trustworthy: Visitors are more likely to trust and engage with a website that ranks high in organic search results since it's based on the quality of the content and the website's ability to rank high in search engine results.‍
• It provides long-term results: Once a website ranks high in search results, it's likely to continue generating traffic over time, without ongoing investment.‍
• It increases brand awareness: Organic traffic can help increase brand awareness by exposing a website to a broader audience which may not be familiar with the brand or its products and services.‍
• It attracts high-quality leads: Organic traffic can attract visitors who are more likely to convert into paying customers.‍
• It has higher conversion rates: Visitors who find a website through search engines are more likely to be interested in what it offers resulting in higher conversion rates.

How to Generate Organic Traffic?

To improve your website's visibility, credibility, and overall success, you need to invest in organic traffic. Here are some tips:

• On-page SEO: On-page SEO involves optimizing website content, structure, and layout to improve search engine visibility. This includes amending meta tags, using relevant keywords, improving website speed and usability, and optimizing website structure.‍
• Off-page SEO: Build high-quality backlinks to a website from external sources by creating high-quality content that people want to share or by reaching out to other websites to request backlinks.‍
• Content marketing: Create high-quality content that's optimized for search engines and valuable to your users such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and other types of content that resonate with the target audience.

Reasons Behind a Drop in Organic Traffic

• Algorithm updates: Search engines like Google constantly update their algorithms to improve search results. Sometimes, these updates can negatively impact a website's rankings and organic search traffic.‍
• Technical issues: Issues like broken links, slow page speed, incorrect canonical tags, or duplicate content can negatively impact a website's search rankings.‍
• Incorrect robots.txt rules: An incorrect change in the robots.txt file might prevent search engines from crawling and indexing important pages, leading to a drop in rankings.‍
• XML Sitemap changes: Changes in the XML sitemap (e.g. new pages are not added or old pages are removed from the sitemap without being redirected), can negatively affect the website ranking, as search engines may not be able to find and index the new pages or may continue to crawl and index old pages that no longer exist.‍
• Competition: Increased competition in a particular industry can make it harder for a website to rank high in search results.‍
• Content quality: Poor quality, outdated, or irrelevant content on a website can negatively impact its search rankings.‍
• Penalty: Websites that violate search engine guidelines, such as engaging in black-hat SEO techniques or spammy link building, can receive penalties that negatively impact their search rankings.‍
• Website redesign: A website redesign or migration can also cause a temporary drop in organic search traffic if proper steps are not taken to preserve SEO elements like URLs, redirects, and meta tags.‍
• User behavior: Changes in user behavior, such as a shift towards voice search or increased use of mobile devices, can impact how search engines rank websites.‍
• Poor User Experience: A website with a poor user experience, such as difficult navigation, too many ads, slow loading times or a website that isn’t mobile-friendly, can lead to a drop in search engine rankings.

Conclusion

To sum it up, organic traffic is vital for website success as it brings in valuable leads and establishes the website as a reliable source of information. It is also a cost-effective way to drive traffic and increase conversions in the long run.

If you’re aiming to increase organic traffic, start by creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience, and optimizing your website for search engines. Engage with your audience through social media and other marketing channels to keep them interested and coming back for more. Additionally, to maintain a high site ranking, it’s crucial to rapidly identify and resolve any potential root causes that are contributing to a drop in organic traffic.

By investing in organic traffic and following SEO best practices, you can build a robust and sustainable online presence that will drive long-term success for your business.