Organic Traffic or Paid Traffic

The debate continues on whether you get better results from Organic Traffic or Paid Traffic. With both of them having the same aim, what is going to be best for your business? We have put together a guide and some suggestions to which may be best to utilise and when. 

What is Organic Traffic 

• Organic Traffic is traffic which is generated via search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Generating Organic traffic can be difficult as it requires people to know who your business is, or at least the products and services that you offer. 

Organic Traffic has a clear advantage over any other is that it is higher qualified potential leads. If Organic Traffic approaches your business this is because they have found you via a basic search, or even word of mouth. With referrals being a real importance for businesses now, utilising this is a great way to generate business. 

As mentioned Organic Traffic is very much aimed at people knowing your brand. Using Social Media, Content Marketing or Referrals will all help in the starting stages. And let’s be honest the main advantage to Organic Traffic is that it’s free which is very important if you do not have adequate cash flow. 

SEO is also heavily involved with organically being found. As the traffic is generated via search engines making sure you have key phrases be that long tail or short tail in your content is very important. And remember, SEO does not just need to be on articles or blogs, but also your website content as well. 

What is Paid Traffic 

• Paid Traffic is very similar to Organic other than the major fact is that you need to invest money into your marketing channels.By promoting your business, or even the content you are producing can put you in front of potential clients you would have not usually seen or found. Paid Traffic is becoming more and more popular, it has some great benefits in being able to control demographics your content is seen by.

There are many platforms which you can use and utilise, however these are the ones we have found to be the most beneficial to our clients.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is a paid advertising source which you can generate traffic to your website by paying for clicks. It gives you the chance to select keywords which you feel your customers will search for, and in return will mean when they are clicked on customers are diverted to your site. 

Paying for clicks may not seem like the most intuitive way to generate traffic but as things go it is a relatively cheap way to get started. As with most things the more money you spend, the more you are able to generate traffic. They have also integrated a great application to use so that you are able to track your investment, and see your ROI.

Facebook Ads/Instagram Ads/LinkedIn Ads

As Facebook owns obviously Facebook as well as LinkedIn and Instagram it is easier to group these all together. All the platforms allow you to perform a ‘Boost’ on your post. This is their version of creating a paid advert.

What is great about the paid adverts on these platforms is that you can select the location, age and also other demographic options before posting your advert. A daily spending cap also exists so you can control your budget very effectively. 

All posts can be seen on your feed as well so remain as normal posts to your followers or friends. The paid ad just boosts the radius to which you are promoting to in order to generate new business for your company.

Types of Traffic

The types of traffic you are looking to attract to your website will come in different forms and will be directly correlated to the types of marketing in which you use. There is no one size fits all, and you will more than likely use a combination of them, all. The types of traffic you can generate will include the following:-

Referral- A great way to generate business is via word of mouth. It really does cement your brand as one to use as it comes from a trusted source.

Social- The traffic you generate from social media will be very much dependent on how you use specific platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or even YouTube. 

Organic- The organic traffic you generate will be from using Google, Yahoo or even bing i.e. search engines.

Paid Search- This is traffic you have attracted via paid adverts using platforms such as Google Ad’s or even Facebook Ad’s.

Email- Email marketing is a great way to convey information to your followers. This can be used to promote new products and services you offer. 

ROI?

All businesses will want a return on their investment regardless of if they are spending money or not. Both are very easy to track, and both have great platforms which you can use in order to track them as well. Every business will need to understand getting results is not instant for either paid or organic, however you do have to be in it to win as they say!

Organic traffic is a very long process, and may take some investment if you are really keen to appear on page one of google. Competing with large companies and brands is also relatively simple when using organic traffic.

This is because you just need to focus on doing what they do better, not on the amount of spare cash they can throw at a project. Overall ROI does take time, but it is an essential part of the marketing plan.

Paid Traffic on the other hand is very unpredictable, and sometimes risky if you are investing large sums of money. Equally on the other hand though, you are generating traffic relatively quickly which is a bonus if you are building a brand. Not to mention how hands off it can be to create an ad then just let it run for a period of time also.

If you need more information on calculating the ROI on marketing investments then check out this handle tool. How to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a marketing campaign

To Conclude 

Overall using generating paid and organic traffic is going to be the best way to operate. Even though both generate traffic, paid will give you the option to potentially attract customers who you are not aware of. Using social media and content that is not sponsored is always a really good way to generate organic traffic to your website. Ultimately some will work, and some will not so in the beginning it is a trial and error process.