It is notorious that a major dilemma experienced by companies and professionals who want to establish a good presence on the Internet and leverage the potential of their companies is the following: "Paid traffic and organic traffic, which one to invest in?".
Both forms of traffic have their own specific characteristics and when combined can generate even more positive results. But in cases of a tight budget, it's not always possible to invest in both types.
To help you choose which one to prioritize in your strategy, we've prepared this complete article on the subject.
Difference Between Organic Traffic and Paid Traffic
O paid traffic can be defined as all user traffic to the site that has been obtained by investing in advertisements (on the various platforms available). Aiming to impact users who access the site, achieving a certain goal.
Organic organic traffic is all spontaneous access to the site by users. In general, it is built on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work aligned with content marketing. In this way, it gains relevance in user searches, with the aim of attracting visitors to the site.
As such, organic traffic is usually a longer-term investment and can provide exponential results. Paid traffic tends to generate results over a shorter period of time, but this depends on continued investment. As soon as it is interrupted, the marketing strategy suffers major consequences.
What Is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic is all the visits and all the movement of users on your site, which have been obtained spontaneously. In other words, without investing in online ads. This is because there is a search intent on the part of people and they access the site on their own initiative.
A large proportion of the organic hits on the site come from online search engines, especially Google, but also Bing and others.
At this point, it's important to bring up the following information: when you search for a term on Google, millions of results will appear on the search pages, also known as SERPs, so it's up to you to decide which link to click on.
This means that organic traffic is a sign of excellent brand positioning, allowing your site to appear better "ranked" in the results. There are various techniques for improving this "ranking", with patterns that are observed and that can be worked on using SEO techniques.
There are several reasons why people choose your site and click on it. The first thing that will attract users to click on your site is its relevance to their search. Is that content really what the user was looking for? If it is, they will be much more likely to visit your site.
There are other sources of organic traffic, such as organic posts on social networks, which lead users to want to learn more about your brand by visiting your site.
Advantages of Organic Traffic
It's worth noting here that visitors may have come to your site via direct searches on Google's search engine. However, this alone does not guarantee that the user will consume the site's content and browse it.
Therefore, for good results, it is necessary to invest in a good user experience and in the navigability of the site. As well as in content, through blog articles, for example. Below, you'll find more benefits of organic traffic.
Relevance
Organic results end up gaining credibility over paid ads. Since the latter can give the impression that they are there to capture the user and generate a sale, and most of them are.
Connecting with the public
The first step for anyone who wants to get closer and build a good relationship with their audience is to create content that interests them. It's no coincidence that this material increases organic traffic to your site, as it provides information that people are looking for.
Permanence
In paid media, the ads will be available for as long as there are credits in the campaigns. In other words, as soon as the budget runs out, the page will no longer be shown in users' searches.
With organic traffic, your content will continue to appear to people and be easily found even after months and years. Of course, if the content is out of date and no longer searched for by users, it will no longer be displayed either.
Organic Traffic Channels
Check out the main organic traffic channels and learn about the particularities of each one for your marketing strategy.
Website and Blog
In order to get good organic traffic, it is necessary to develop publications with topics that interest users, adding knowledge that is relevant to them.
Thus, your own website or a blog within your domain are places where you can gather information and content to reach potential customers. These will be displayed in organic search results.
Facebook and Instagram
This is the space provided by the two largest social networks in use. So there is a great opportunity to share content, materials and generate more assertive communication with the people who browse these networks.
Here, you can share blog pages via posts, ask for suggestions from your followers, carry out polls/surveys and use frequently asked questions as inspiration for new blog posts.
How to Measure Organic Traffic?
One of the main questions about using organic traffic is how difficult it is to measure its impact on results. However, there are various tools, such as Google Search Console which help measure the efficiency of strategies and provide insights for improving actions.
Google Analytics Google Analytics allows you to completely monitor all the pages on your site and create customized reports. You can also connect it to Google Search Console.
That's why it's important to establish one or more metrics for your business. So that you can measure and analyze your organic results.
For example, if your goal for the next 6 months is to increase traffic by 45%, you need to look at the total number of visits to the site and the ratio between new visitors and return visitors, this metric is easily found in Google Analytics.
What Is Paid Traffic?
Now, Paid Traffic aims to present your company/product/service to users of search platforms or social networks. The process is carried out by purchasing a prominent space to attract visitors to the site, i.e. through advertisements.
The ads can be aimed at people who are searching for that product/service on search-oriented traffic channels. Or the ads can be shown to users with certain categories of interest in various formats, such as Google Display and on social networks.
An example of paid traffic is a Google search network campaign for a company that provides the installation of solar energy panels. Keywords such as "solar energy panels" or "install solar energy" have a high potential for attracting users. Because people who search in this way already know what they are looking for, showing adherence to the service.
Therefore, the selection of keywords, ad communication, creatives, demographic information, among others, must be done in a planned and strategic way.
Advantages of Paid Traffic
Check out the main advantages of investing in paid traffic and how they can boost your marketing strategy.
Qualified Traffic
Ad platforms allow campaigns to be segmented to reach a certain age group, region, gender, consumer profile, etc. As a result, paid traffic has good qualification indicators according to the target objective.
What's more, the ads often appear in the top positions of search platforms such as Google, increasing click-through and conversion rates.
Various platforms available
There are several ad platforms on the market that offer the possibility of investing in paid traffic, including Facebook Ads and Google Ads being the best known, and more recent ones such as Uplify which allows you to advertise in Streaming. In this way, you can reach a more qualified audience on each of them.
Short-term returns
Given the agility with which paid traffic strategies can be executed, their return tends to generate returns in the short term. Mainly because campaigns can be set up quickly and targeted at different stages of the user funnel.
Scalability of results
It is possible to expand your market presence using good paid media planning. In this way, depending on the investment and strategy adopted, you can reach even more qualified people and generate more results.
In addition, investing in paid media can boost the content of your blog and contribute to brand recognition in the market.
Interested in the topic and want to delve deeper? See also our article on Paid Media Plan to learn how to put one together and monitor its effectiveness.
Paid Traffic Channels
Check out more detailed information on the main paid media channels.
- Meta Ads (the former Facebook Ads): advertising platform for social networks: Instagram, Facebook and partners;
- LinkedIn Ads: because LinkedIn is a professional social network aimed at communication between companies and professionals, it is possible to target various interests and specific areas that are related. It is therefore a channel with enormous potential for acquiring B2B clients;
- Google Ads: Enables the creation of ads on its various products, such as: video ads on YouTube; search campaigns on Google; app installation on the Play Store; among others;
- Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads): Despite having a lower search volume than Google, it is an excellent alternative due to its similarity in campaign configuration. It can be interesting for certain segments.
How to Measure Paid Traffic
Measuring Paid Traffic should be linked to the objective for which the campaigns were created and the related metrics. For example, in a trafficcampaign one of the main indicators is the click-through rate (CTR). As well as the landing page view rate.
In a campaign aimed at conversion, the cost per conversion (lead or purchase), ROAS and/or CPA (also linked to lead qualification) are excellent alternatives for analysis.
If you're new to metrics analysis, we have an article on Digital Marketing Indicators that can help you understand what the main metrics are and how to analyze them.
Finally, by identifying the differences between organic and paid traffic, you can understand that there is no single or ideal strategy.
In other words, it is important to plan both paid media and inbound marketing so that both strategies evolve, since both traffic streams complement each other.
Thus, the best results will be achieved by combining work with organic and paid traffic, understanding the differences expected from each. It is essential to define the percentage of budget to be applied to each strategy, as well as the expected return time for each.
