Organic Traffic: Conversion Rates Higher than Other Channels?

Maintaining your online presence can become difficult and confusing with so many different search channels to choose from. With the use of organic traffic, your business can increase its overall conversion rate.

In this post, we will be comparing various channels and the role that SEO can play in driving organic traffic and ultimately sales.

What Are Traffic Sources & Channels?

Various traffic sources can bring a consumer to your small business’ website. Many web analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, determine the flow of website traffic through the use of online algorithms and flowcharts. Let’s breakdown a couple of the main sources of traffic.

• Social: This traffic comes through social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.
• Referral: This embodies any traffic that was not gained through a search engine. This can be through websites, links, or emails; a link was clicked that resulted in your web page.
• Paid Search: This traffic comes from search results that are from paid advertisements. Paid traffic can bring your website onto the top results via paid search platforms such as Google Ads.
• Organic Search: This traffic results from search engine results that are not paid for; these results are driven mainly through SEO.
• Direct: This embodies any traffic in which a link was not clicked to get onto your business’ website; there are no referring website or URL.

Going Deeper Into Organic Traffic

As most customers do not go past the first page, it is essential to hold one of the top spots in the search engine results page. This can be done through proper SEO. Organic traffic comes to your website when someone searches up a query and clicks on your listing in the search results. This channel uses search engine optimization (SEO) to better your website’s ranking in the search results page to produce more organic traffic. Through prediction techniques, your business can use competitive keywords to captivate your customers.

Organic traffic highly influences direct traffic. In an experiment done by Groupon, the company completely de-indexed their website for 6 hours; for this time period, their URL did not show up for any Google searches. After examining organic search and direct traffic data, it was shown that the traffic gained through organic search dropped to nearly zero (it likely did not drop completely due to other search engines such as Bing), while direct visits dropped by 60%. This shows that the majority of direct traffic comes from organic searches. We would not recommend doing this :)

High site traffic often leads to greater conversion rates; it usually takes a customer 6-8 touch-points with a brand before they are “sales-ready.” To create a positive user experience, produce quality content, and increase your organic traffic, your content should match the searcher’s intent completely, but also bring greater awareness to the reader. When using organic search to build your brand, targeting all relevant keywords for your industry allows your business to create as many touch-points as possible.

ORGANIC TRAFFIC CONVERSION RATES

In this realm of online marketing, conversions refer to any instance your customer does what you want on your website. Whether it be a purchase or a subscription to your newsletter, any desired action can become a conversion.

A conversion rate monitors the conversions that take place on your web page. Through your web site's data, a conversion rate can be calculated to see the percentage of conversions of your site’s online traffic. This rate can be easily calculated and graphed out for you in Google Analytics. Your conversion rate can be found by dividing the number of conversions in a set period of time by the number of site visits.

However, simply having the data will be unhelpful unless you know what to do with it. Knowing your current conversion rate allows you to form a starting point for your next goal.

Overall conversion rates can be increased through an increase in organic traffic via SEO. Using the data, your business can calculate the return on interest and conversion rates of specific keywords. Through this information, you now know which keywords to invest the most time in and have more information about your customers. This allows you to convert organic traffic into new customers while retaining your current ones to increase your business’ conversion rate.

BENEFITS OF ORGANIC TRAFFIC AND ORGANIC SALES

While paid search can put you at the top, once you stop paying, your visibility and ranking disappear. Organic search traffic has staying power; it’s sustainable and can boost both the quantity and quality of your website visitors. People trust organic search results, many even bypass paid search results; this is why 65.6% of desktop clicks were organic during September of 2018.

Organic search traffic brings high-quality traffic. As customers type in their search queries, they seek results that will satisfy their searches. If you create a website with keywords that embody your customer, you can market specifically to an ideal interest group. By determining search intent, SEO allows you to bring high rates of desirable traffic and even organic sales.

People who are searching tend to stick with four different keyword types. These keywords can not only attract the customer but also predict what type of customer you are attracting.

1. Informational Keywords: Customers who are on the hunt for information; “how” or “why”
2. Navigational Keywords: Customers who are looking for a particular website
3. Transactional Keywords: Customers who are willing to convert
4. Commercial Keywords: Customers who are willing to purchase; “buy” or “price”

With this information, you can choose keywords that appeal to your desired customer. The beauty of SEO is that it allows you to know your customers. You don’t have to seek a random group of people in the hopes that they will buy your product. Transactional keywords allow higher organic conversion rates and commercial keywords allow greater amounts of organic sales. Which type of online visitors are you aiming for? Unlike various other channels, organic traffic truly allows you to choose your customer through SEO techniques.

Organic Traffic Overview

Now the final question, does organic traffic convert higher than other channels? Studies have shown that organic searches are 8.5x more likely to be clicked while paid search results are 1.5x more likely to be converted through the search engine. Does that mean organic traffic has 5.66x more opportunity than paid search results?

All search traffic channels offer some form of benefit but they can also come with costs. Paid searches provide fast and expansive services. This form of traffic may be helpful if you are a new company that is just starting or has a short term landing page, but be aware of the costs that can add up over time. Organic traffic without SEO is pretty much useless. However, while organic traffic may become more time consuming, with the correct SEO approach and target keywords, your business can save costs in the long run, fine-tune their product to the customer, and build a sustainable company for the long-term.

In terms of conversion, it depends on the situation, but with the correct tricks, your business could experience greater customer satisfaction and rates of conversion through a pairing of organic traffic and SEO. Our clients typically see organic conversion rates that are at least 33% higher than all other traffic channels.