Direct vs Organic Traffic: What Are the Differences?
Did you know that there are currently more than 1.5 billion websites that are active on the internet? The internet is a big place, and if you’re thinking about starting your website or if you already have one, you might be wondering how you can possibly compete with so many other websites, especially those that are already very large and established. The key has to do with internet traffic.
When it comes to direct vs organic traffic, you might be wondering if one is more important than the other. What is the difference between them? Which one should you be focusing on?
Keep reading and learn more about these different types of internet traffic and why they’re so important for the success of your website.
What You Need to Know About Direct Traffic
Internet traffic, in general, is something that websites can’t survive without. If no one is visiting or seeing your website, there is obviously something amiss and, of course, a website that doesn’t get any views isn’t going to get anywhere fast. What you might not know is that there are different types of traffic sources.
Understanding these traffic sources is very important because they will give you a better idea of where your views are coming from and why. From there, you can continue to build off of that information and make it easier for people to find your website. Of course, the more traffic you get, the better.
Direct traffic is what every website owner wants. Direct traffic is exactly what it sounds like: it involves people finding your website directly. This means that people have to type in your website’s URL in order to find you, or they may click on your website through their favorites or bookmark tab.
The Details
Whatever the case, direct traffic means that people aren’t using referring URLs or anything else to find your website. Instead, they already know the name of your website and know how to type it in to find your site. However, while this may sound very simple, direct traffic is one of the most difficult types of traffic to gain, even though it is also one of the most useful.
This is because it requires people to learn the name of your URL and your brand. This also requires that people don’t find your website by accident. To make this a reality, a lot of brand awareness is required.
Brand awareness, as the name suggests, involves making people aware of your brand and that it exists. From there, people would know how to type in your website’s URL directly. The reason why this is such a good source of traffic is that it means that the people who are visiting your site actually know your brand and your site.
This also means that those people may be interested in what your site has to offer, whether it be goods, services, or something else entirely. While direct traffic can be hard to get at first, with a bit of hard work, you can eventually make it happen.
What You Need to Know About Organic Traffic
Did you know that 25% of people click on the very first result in a Google search? The rest of that percentage usually clicks on other results on the first page of Google. Very few people ever venture to Google’s second page.
Why does this matter for you and your website’s traffic, you might ask? If you don’t rank well on Google and end up where people can easily find your website, you won’t be able to get a lot of organic traffic. Organic traffic is different from direct traffic in a variety of ways.
For one, organic traffic is essentially the natural flow of viewers that comes from search engine searches. For example, suppose that you search for a certain keyword on Google like, “organic tomatoes.” Millions of search results will show up from such a search, but the most popular results will show up on Google’s very first page.
This is because those results rank very well for that particular keyword. Because those websites are right up front whenever someone searches for that keyword, it only makes sense that whoever is searching for that keyword will choose one of the results that are readily available on the first page. This is because those results already have all the information that the person is looking for, so there’s no need to score the subsequent pages of Google.
When a person clicks on a website after searching for something on Google, this counts as organic traffic. Organic traffic depends on the natural flow of a person’s online search. Organic traffic does not involve paid advertisements.
A Closer Look
Instead, it relies on the SEO factors that websites use. The better a website’s SEO score is, the better that website will rank on Google and other search engines like Bing. If a website happens to have a better search engine rank, it will have a better chance of ending up on the first page of Google.
As you can imagine, if you can get your website on the first page of Google, it will be very easy for people to stumble across your website and see what it has to offer. Organic traffic is arguably as important, if not more so, as direct traffic.
This is because it is so important to have a steady flow of organic traffic to your website if you want it to be successful. As long as people can find your website and its content in an organic manner, this is a clear sign that you’re doing something right. And the more people that come to your site, the more people will be able to see what kind of goods or services your website has to offer.
Of course, this is a clear way in which you can make your website a success. But should you focus more on organic traffic or direct traffic? Is one necessarily better than the other?
Direct vs Organic Traffic
The first thing you should know is that one type of traffic is not necessarily better than the other. On the contrary, both of these types are very important for growing your website. Relying on one source of traffic is not a good idea because you never know when that source might start to dwindle or change in some way.
In order to make sure that your website stays successful over a number of years, it is important to get your traffic from several different sources.
For that reason, you should consider how you can maximize both direct and organic traffic at the same time. When it comes to organic traffic, the main thing you need to do is make sure that your website’s SEO is up to par.
If it isn’t, there won’t be any way that it will rank well on Google or any other search engine for that matter. But if you do make sure that your website has all the necessary SEO aspects, it should rank quite well on search engines and, as a result, it will be easier for people to find your website and its content.
What to Know
Keep in mind that it can take some time to see the results of all your SEO efforts. In some cases, it may take several months before you finally start to see a noticeable uptick in organic traffic. But once that happens, your website’s success will continue to build on top of itself and it will only get easier and easier to gain more organic traffic.
Direct traffic, on the other hand, is a harder thing to gain. Even so, it is still very important to have a steady flow of direct traffic as you would with organic traffic. To build your direct traffic, you’ll need to promote your brand and make sure that your target audience knows that it exists.
As long as people know the name of your brand and your website, it will be much easier for people to type in your website’s URL directly which, of course, will contribute to your flow of direct traffic.
All About Direct and Organic Traffic
When it comes to direct vs organic traffic, you should know that one is not necessarily better than the other. However, they are both very important and can help make sure that your website gets a steady influx of views.
To learn more about how it all works, contact us here.
