Direct Traffic vs. Organic Traffic
Professional SEO in the UK includes several strategies to increase the visibility of your brand. Digital marketers are experts who have knowledge of the industries and what works best for businesses in terms of modern-day marketing. Driving traffic to the website is one of the biggest goals for digital marketers these days, whether it be direct or organic. Unless you are an expert on the topic, you won’t know the difference between the two. However, it is essential to know the differences between direct and organic traffic to ensure that you have the best strategy for your business.
What is Direct Traffic?
Direct traffic refers to the traffic that comes when the user directly comes to your website from their browser. This type of traffic is not derived through any referrals. According to Google Analytics, this traffic arrives on your website without any source. When the analytics can’t find any data on the source of traffic, it considers it direct traffic. The user can visit the website by a manual URL entry, bookmarks, getting links from a non-web document like Word, etc. Nowadays, the number of visitors coming directly to the website is increasing, and the following can be the causes.
The Employees
Your employees have reasons to visit your website, and they don’t need to use it as a source for it. Google has no way to differentiate between your employees and customers because they do not have IP filtered from web analytics. This can confuse both Google and you, so you should filter out all employees’ IPs from web analytics.
Actual Direct Traffic
Some people visit your website by directly entering your URL in the search bar or finding your link via a bookmark. There’s no way to dig deeper into this as you cannot control who searches for your website directly; you just have to embrace the fact that people know about your brand and care to visit.
Customers
When customers log into the customer portal of your website, this can also be a cause of direct traffic. In this case, it is not required to completely filter out the traffic, but instead, you can set different views to check analytics separately from this traffic.
Emails
It can be difficult to identify referring information if the customer has come through Outlook and Thunderbird. These platforms don’t pass reference information, but you can still pinpoint the traffic coming from an email by checking the time of the emails. When the traffic is coming around the time an email is sent, it is most likely coming from through them.
When it’s about direct traffic, it is challenging to categorise the traffic, which can make it harder for you. A healthy amount of direct traffic is 20%, any more than that, and you should think about ways to reduce direct traffic from your website because it will make strategising difficult for you.
Why Should You Care if the Traffic is Miscategorised?
People often have this question and misconception that all they need to do is get traffic on their website; it’s not important where it’s coming from. While it is true to some extent, as the traffic is indeed coming to your website, reducing direct traffic means the traffic on your website will be less. However, you need to understand that digital marketing strategies are created based on the data.
Data is an essential part of any strategy. You need to know where your audience is coming from so you can make effective strategies. Digital marketers know that in order to generate more leads, they need to know where their visitors are coming from, and direct traffic makes it harder for them. If you don’t know what keywords your audience is searching for and what terms are relevant, you will miss out on great marketing opportunities. Hence, you should care if your website’s traffic is miscategorised.
The Internet is also not perfect; analytics can have a difficult time identifying the source of your traffic, so make sure that you reduce your chances of getting direct traffic by checking the causes you can fix. Professional SEO in the UK can help you identify and minimise direct traffic on your website so you get better data on your visitors.
Ways to Get Direct Traffic on Your Website
Ensure Your URL is Everywhere
One of the ways of getting more direct traffic on your website is by making sure your URL is on every marketing material. When people directly search with your URL, it counts as direct traffic, but it cannot happen unless the users know the URL to your website. You can make your URL known by adding it to every marketing material so that users can easily find it everywhere.
Get Listed in Physical Books
It might sound like an outdated idea, but it could still work. You can get your URL listed on yellow books and old-school phone books. Some people still use those books and look for things as it is easier to find things in them sometimes. You can add your URL and make it more available for people who still use this method.
Run a Print Ad Campaign
You can gain direct traffic from non-web platforms like print media as well. Advertising your business on print ads can still be an effective way of gaining more audience on your website. The customers might see your URL on the print media they consume and search for it online directly.
Print QR Codes on Business Cards
Another great way to increase direct traffic on your website is by printing QR codes on your business cards. When users scan these QR codes on their mobile phones, it will directly take them to your website and generate direct traffic. It is also easier for the users, as they don’t have to type the URL to search.
What is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic is the traffic that comes to your website through the search engine or any other social media platform. Any traffic that comes to your website through a source without paid advertisements is considered organic traffic. It is the best and most steady way to grow your business. The best organic SEO company helps you in creating strategies to rank higher on the search engine to increase your website’s credibility.
Organic results are more reliable for users today as it tells them that the results are credible and are not influenced by paid advertisements. The term “Just Google it” proves how significant browsing is in our daily lives. While organic traffic is free of cost, it does get affected by paid advertisements and displays in both negative and positive ways. Paid campaigns can drive searches that also increase organic traffic on your website.
However, similar to direct traffic, organic traffic also has some drawbacks to it. It is mainly derived from SEO; the higher you rank on Google, the better traffic you will get. Most users usually find answers to their queries on the first page of Google, and the top results are also considered credible; however, this cannot happen overnight. You need to create effective SEO strategies with the help of the best organic SEO company. Generating a good amount of organic SEO on your website takes time, and you need to be backed by experts to ensure that your strategies are implemented in the right way.
Read our blog to know more about the importance of organic traffic for your website.
Ways to Get Organic Traffic on Your Website
Optimise Your Website
Optimising your website is the first step towards getting organic traffic for your website. You need to use relevant keywords, meta tags, and many other things to ensure that your website is optimised for search engines. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and user-friendly so the audience can easily find things when they are looking for information. Only a fully optimised website ranks in the top results, so make sure you get the best organic SEO company to help you.
Create Unique Content
Content is King— you cannot rank anywhere without having great content on your website. Google gives priority to user experience, so if your content fails to provide value to its users, it will be difficult for you to rank higher on the search engine and gain organic traffic. Try to create unique and creative content about your brands. Your content should answer all the potential questions users might have about your product. If it doesn’t provide value to the users, they will quickly bounce back, and Google will know.
Build an Efficient SEO Strategy
SEO plays a vital role in getting organic traffic to your website. It is basically the most important factor, as you can only rank on Google with the help of an effective SEO strategy. It can be difficult to create winning strategies on your own without having the proper knowledge of the tool. Hiring professional SEO in the UK might be the right option, as you can get expert marketers to create and implement efficient SEO strategies for your website.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
Most users nowadays browse on their mobile phones. It is much more convenient and easy to navigate, which makes it essential for you as well to create a mobile-friendly version of your website. Google considers this a ranking factor, so you need to ensure that your users can easily access your website on their mobile phones. Websites that have mobile versions get more organic traffic because most users are browsing on their smartphones now, and browsing on desktops has significantly decreased.
Ask Customers to Leave Reviews
Customers these days rely on word-of-mouth quite a lot. You will see users looking for reviews on social media every day, and when they don’t find their desired reviews, they are most likely not to purchase from that brand. You should ask your customers to leave reviews on your social media handles so more people on those platforms can know about your brand and visit your website through social media.
Read our blog to know more about SEO Tasks that are Essential to Drive Organic Traffic
Benefits of Organic Search
Organic traffic is the most important form of traffic for your website. Following are some of the benefits of organic search.
- It is driven by customer intent.
- You understand your audience better.
- It results in highly-qualified leads.
- It improves brand loyalty.
- It has a higher conversion rate.
- It has better engagement.
- It is cost-effective.
- It brings in new customers.
How to Get Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic is a result of your ranking on the search engine. The higher you rank, the better traffic you will get. The best organic SEO company creates strategies to increase organic traffic on your website. You have to optimise your website, create unique content, and focus on several other factors to enhance user experience. If you implement good SEO strategies for your website, Google ranks it higher. You can also work on your social media platforms to make sure that your brand visibility is increased on every platform. Users can also website your website through social media pages, and that also counts as organic traffic.
Read our blog about fool-proof SEO strategies to boost organic traffic on your website.
Difference Between Direct and Organic Traffic
The main difference between direct and organic traffic is user intent. If you are getting a lot of direct traffic on your website, it could be for two reasons; either you are struggling with one of the causes mentioned above, or you have great awareness about your brand, and everyone searches its URL directly. However, if you have good organic traffic on your website, that means you are doing good marketing for your business. People see your brand, and they visit your website to find answers. It means that your strategies are working and you are ranking higher on the search engine.
Let’s say a customer is purchasing leather boots for the first time, and they have no clue about it. They search for “best leather boots” on Google and click on the first link on the result page. The website will gain organic traffic as the user intends to purchase leather boots from them, and they found the website without any influence of paid ads.
Which One is Better?
It is difficult to call one better than the other. Both direct and organic traffic have their benefits and drawbacks. While organic traffic might be a more natural way of letting people find your brand and connect with it, direct traffic is more targeted and likely to convert. When a user is visiting your website directly, they are more likely to purchase from you as compared to the customers who find your website organically. They might visit your website but not like anything enough to make a purchase. Organic traffic also doesn’t come overnight and requires much more effort as compared to direct traffic. You will need to spend months working on your website and content to make sure that everything is up to the mark.
It depends on the type of business you are in and the type of traffic you want to generate on your website. Experimenting with the strategies and seeing what works for you is better. You can get help from professional SEO in the UK and work with experts to have better knowledge about SEO.
Conclusion
Organic and direct traffic are both very different from each other. Both have their pros and cons, and the type of approach you choose is highly dependent on your goals as a business owner. It is important to understand that direct traffic on your website is people who are already aware of your brand and are deliberately searching for it.
While it can be a great way to generate traffic on your website, you should also focus on adding relevant keywords on your pages and creating content for people who are not aware of your brand yet. With organic traffic, you will also need to promote your content on social media platforms so you can reach a wider audience. Both types can work for you if you create effective strategies and implement them in the right way. If you don’t know which traffic is better for your website, reach out to us.
About Trajital UK
Trajital UK is a leading SEO company in the Uk. We have expert marketers who are willing to help your business grow. We aim to build a trusting relationship with our clients and have been successful in doing so thus far. Our experience working with several niches makes us different from other marketing agencies, and our marketers allow you to discuss your vision with them. You can share your ideas and concerns with our marketing team, and we will make sure to create efficient digital marketing strategies for your business that will work wonders. You will be able to see results in no time.
So contact us now and let our marketing team take your business to new heights of success.
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