How to Get SEO Traffic in 2024 (Updated)

According to GlobalWebIndex, 81.5% of consumers aged 16 - 64 searched for a product or service to buy online. If you want to grow your business in 2021 and beyond, you need SEO traffic. 

What is SEO traffic?

SEO stands for search engine optimization - a collection of technical, on-page, and off-site tactics that can increase a website’s visibility in search. These tactics help websites meet the search algorithm requirements for website performance, high-quality content, and user experience.  

SEO traffic is the number of visitors a website receives as a result of SEO techniques from search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here are examples of how businesses receive traffic from search engines. 

• A person goes to a search engine (such as Google.com), searches for a target keyword or phrase, and clicks on a non-sponsored link to a website. Website analytics tools like Google Analytics will consider it as organic traffic. 
• A person goes to a search engine, searches for a keyword or phrase, and clicks on a sponsored link. Google Analytics will consider "paid search" the traffic source. 
• A person goes to a search engine, searches for a keyword or phrase, and clicks on a link to a business directory’s top business page. If your business is listed on that directory page, Google Analytics will consider the referral link the traffic source. But in reality, it’s an indirect win for SEO traffic.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics doesn’t share some key pieces of information that businesses need to find the most effective search marketing strategy. That’s why businesses serious about their SEO analytics use DashThis' SEO reporting software to get the full picture. We’ll discuss how you can track your results in detail shortly. 

Why is SEO traffic important? 

Alexa found that websites across all verticals receive 33.6% to 59.6% of their website traffic from search engines. It makes sense, considering 85.4% of internet users have entered a query into search engines. 

Google and its PageRank algorithm dominate the search market, with 91.86% of the global market share, followed by Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, YANDEX, and DuckDuckGo. Without a search marketing strategy aimed at boosting your rankings in search engine results, your customers won’t be able to find you on search. 

Instead, they will find your competitors. 

Organic SEO traffic is also important because of its sustainability. If you can reach the first page of search results organically, you don’t have to pay for search traffic. You’ll receive it monthly, based on the popularity of the search queries you target.

For example, if you have a business that offered online gift cards, you have two options. 

• You can rank organically on the first page of search results to attract traffic from a 27,000 estimated monthly search volume.
• You can bid to pay an average of $2.44 per click for Google Ads to appear at the top of search results (PPC). This doesn’t result in SEO traffic, but paid search marketing (SEM) traffic. 

While you will receive traffic with both methods, organically ranking could save your business monthly ad fees. 500 clicks from paid search would cost $1,220 per month. The cost of clicks from organic search? Free. 

How can I increase SEO traffic? 

To increase SEO traffic, you have to get your web pages on the first page of search results for search queries used by your ideal customers. There are multiple ways to get on the first page of search. 

• Implement on-page, technical, and offsite SEO to help boost your rankings in organic search. This includes editing HTML markup for meta and Alt tags, performing keyword research, placing keywords strategically to your web pages, adding internal links, building do-follow backlinks, fixing broken links, and checking CMS/WordPress settings. 
• Invest in a content marketing strategy; blogging is a great way to create content curated for your audience. If you don't have any bloggers on hand, you can always reach out to freelancers that are experienced in your field. This is particularly useful since searchers may look for long-tail keywords, such as a question about a problem you solve, and a great blog can answer the inquiry and offer your business as the solution.
• Focus on local SEO strategy to help boost your rankings in the local “near me” results. This includes getting your business listed on the top local directories, and review sites. 
• Get your business listed on pages that already rank on the first page of search results for target search queries. This may include local directories, social media, blogs, etc. Being included in different pages can also help with your backlinking strategy, but you may get a lot of nofollow links. 
• And since seeing results can take months, in the meantime, you can always invest in Google Ads to bid for a spot at the top of search engine result pages for your highest converting search queries. 

Some marketers use Google Ads to increase SEM traffic and brand visibility early in their search marketing efforts. This allows them to grow their businesses while they optimize their pages for positioning in organic results.  

Many will continue to use Google Ads to help in instances when newer small businesses are trying to outrank established competitors. Google Ads also paves the way for businesses that want to rank at the top of the page for their competitor’s branded, but untrademarked, search queries.

In addition, you can increase SEO traffic through constant improvements; editing page title tags, meta description text, and the snippets of text around your target keywords, for example, may increase the click-through-rate (CTR) on your link from search results. This would result in more organic search traffic without the need to improve your rankings. 

How can I track results from my SEO campaigns?

There are several analytics tools that help you track your website’s traffic from search. The first two, Google Analytics and Google Search Console, are free tools from the top search engine itself. 

Google Analytics is the most used website analytics software for analyzing website traffic and behaviour. Google Analytics offers several reports that measure the amount of traffic you receive from search, which search engines your visitors use, and how well visitors from search convert into leads or sales. You can use insights like bounce rate to find out which piece of content on your website need additional work to drive conversions. 

Google Search Console, on the other hand, is a tool for webmasters who want to improve their website’s performance in Google search. GSC no longer only tracks your website’s sitemaps and the number of impressions and clicks your landing pages receive from organic search. They also include Core Web Vitals - metrics that measure your website’s user experience on a mobile device - one of many ranking factors that will matter in 2021.

Companies that are serious about their search rankings can invest in premium SEO tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, Semrush, and WebCEO. They allow users to track in-depth search marketing campaign metrics, research keywords, track link-building opportunities, and get insights on your competitors' SEO tactics. 

To make tracking your search marketing results simpler, you can create an SEO dashboard. This allows you to see the data that is most important to you from multiple tools combined on one screen. So instead of having to navigate to multiple reports on Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Search Console, and your favourite SEO tool, you can gather all your data from any of these tools into one SEO dashboard. It's particularly easy to use if you start off with one of our report templates. 

Here's a short video showing how to create your SEO report in about 5 minutes with our templates. 

Now, you can consume the data that matters most in a fast, visually appealing way. Create widgets with actionable metrics to keep your search marketing moving forward. 

Sign up for a free 14-day trial and set up your first dashboard today!