Organic Traffic vs Direct Traffic: Which is Best for Your Business in 2023? - The Marketing Mompreneur • Digital Marketing Strategist

Whether your business is just getting off the ground or you’re looking for ways to get more eyes on your stuff, it’s essential that you understand the difference between organic traffic vs direct traffic. As an entrepreneur, understanding and leveraging both can be invaluable assets in meeting both short-term and long-term goals.

Regardless of what type of traffic you want to drive to your business, you want to be sure that you do the following:

Make sure that your landing page/website is optimized – provides a good user experience, is mobile friendly, looks trustworthy, etc
Post valuable epic content relevant to your niche
Create a landing page, product/sales page, or website that converts – has good copywriting, reviews/testimonies, etc
Be sure to list your landing page, product/sales page, or website URL everywhere that your business has a presence

Direct vs Organic Traffic

What is organic traffic?

Organic traffic is the unpaid traffic that comes to your website (aka product pages or landing pages) as a result of your content marketing efforts. This is when someone finds your website by coming across some type of your content that has already been published.

Most will say organic traffic is the holy grail of online marketing because it’s free, and it can be extremely profitable if you do it right. The key to generating organic traffic is creating content that people want to read, and then promoting that content through social media, email marketing, and other online channels.

This is a great way to drive FREE traffic to your business.
Even though it is free, it also takes the most time (most of the time). The exception to this is collaborating and using other people’s audiences.

Top 7 FREE Traffic Sources

Collaboration – working with others that are not in direct competition and have the same target audience is a great way to build relationships and grow your audience.
SEO – while SEO is a long-term plan, it is super effective and one of my favorite ways to drive organic traffic to my client’s businesses. Once the content is created, it’ll do what you need it to for days, weeks, months, or even years (depending on where the content is published).
Content Creation – this can be any kind of content you create with your audience in mind and that provides value.
Follow-Up – this is something some entrepreneurs sleep on. Reaching out to your existing clients and customers is a great way to obtain reviews, testimonies, and feedback.
In-person and/or Virtual Events – This is a great way to reach other people’s audiences. You’ll have the opportunity to collaborate, reach a huge audience, share your story [your reason why] and give some value.
Social Media – there are so many social media platforms nowadays. You’ll want to choose the platforms where your audiences hang out the most.
Miscellaneous – this would include things like you leaving reviews for things that you’ve purchased online and referring individuals to other trusted resources when you are not an expert on a specific topic.

Organic Traffic vs Direct Traffic

What is direct traffic?

Direct traffic is intentional and targeted. Meaning . . . it’s not a referred by some other source. It’s usually when someone is specifically looking to connect with your brand and directly types in your website’s URL, visits your website from your website being bookmarked or clicks on a direct link sent (ie. like in an email). It can also come from people who’ve typed your site into a search engine and clicked on the link from the search results page.

There are many reasons why someone might visit a website directly instead of through a search engine or social media. Maybe they’ve heard about your site from a friend or family member, or maybe they stumbled across it while browsing the web. Having a good amount of direct traffic helps your SEO efforts.

What is paid traffic?

Anytime that you pay to drive traffic to your business, this is considered paid traffic. Paid traffic is a great way to accelerate sales, brand awareness, or lead generation. Nowadays almost every platform off paid ads. Just keep in mind that once you stop paying for ads, you lose all that traffic you have coming.

direct traffic VS organic traffic?

The main difference between direct vs. organic traffic is that direct traffic is targeted and intentional. . . organic traffic is not. This basically means direct traffic is made up of people who type your website URL directly into their browser, while organic traffic is made up of people who find your website through content marketing (ex. SEO, social, etc).

How do I know if my business is getting organic and/or direct traffic?

You’ll want to track your traffic sources by looking at your analytics. The best way to do this is with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. There are KPIs (key performance indicators) that you want to keep track of and be mindful of. If you don’t track the traffic sources correctly, you’ll probably notice a high number of direct traffic listed in Google Analytics.

How to Increase Organic Traffic

I mean, who doesn’t want more traffic . . . especially when it’s FREE, right?

There are a number of things that you can do to increase organic traffic to your website. One of the best ways to do this is by creating high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. You should also make sure that your website is properly optimized for search engines, and that you are using the correct keywords and phrases. You can also promote your content through social media and other organic traffic sources.

Be intentional
Consistently publish valuable, relevant content
Choose organic traffic sources that are aligned with your brand and goals
Repurpose your content

How to Increase Direct Traffic

The best way to increase direct traffic is to provide valuable and informative content that is relevant and worth sharing. If people like your content, they will share it with their friends and family, and you will see an increase in direct traffic as a result.

Use QR codes
Make sure the URL to your website/landing page is listed elsewhere

Organic Traffic vs Direct Traffic: Which is Best for Your Business?

What is the best source of traffic?

This is actually gonna vary depending on who you ask. There are advantages to organic traffic vs direct traffic sources.

To be completely honest, it really boils down to where you are in your journey, your preference, your marketing strategy and your budget. Ideally, you want to have both traffic sources. Direct traffic is a given however it’s organic traffic that consistently gets your brand in front of more people.