This is probably going to be the only time in your life when the organic option is cheaper than non. But is organic always better? 

We promised that we wouldn’t use too much jargon on our website. But, you’ll have to forgive us for a moment so we can explain what the difference between organic traffic and paid traffic is. 

What is Organic Traffic? 

Organic is the people who search for something and choose your website as a result. It’s earned traffic, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

Search Engine Optimisation is when you improve your website’s content (words, images, links - everything) to make it more visible (easily findable) when internet users are searching for something in a search engine. You make these changes yourself - organically. OR, you pay whizz-kid experts like us (humble brag) to make these changes for you. 

Good SEO can improve the natural, organic traffic to your website. 

What is Paid Traffic? 

Paid traffic is when visitors to your website have arrived on it because they clicked on a link from an advert or sponsored piece of content that you paid an advertiser like Google or Facebook to set up. 

Paid adverts, posts, content appears higher in search results. You’ve probably seen that often the top search results on Google have an ‘Ad’ marker next to them. They have been paid for! 

Is organic or paid traffic better?

All traffic is good. It’s not a matter of one is better than the other. But they are different and understanding the good bits and bad bits of both will help you to make decisions on what to invest your time, money and effort into. 

Let’s discuss with some good ol’ pros and cons lists, that will hopefully keep the jargon to a minimum!  

Pros of organic traffic:

• Cheaper - you aren’t paying for adverts

• Builds trust and authority as people have naturally made their way to your page and found what they are looking for. 

• Longevity. Organic SEO tactics keep working for you, even if you run out of money!

Cons of organic:

• Slow. It takes a while to see the impact of your SEO changes. 

• Skills and expertise. There’s a limit to what you can do yourself and how effective those changes can be.You need to get in the clever kids (that’s us by the way… humble brag) who have the skills to make SEO work really well for you. 

• Search engines are sneaky and change their algorithms (the formulas they use to retrieve information from people’s websites) so you need to keep up with the changes to know how to adapt and improve your SEO tactics. 

  
  Okay, now paid’s turn…

Pros of paid traffic: 

• Works faster than organic SEO and you can set up adverts really quickly. 

• You don’t need the same levels of expertise to create adverts. The process is easy, uses common sense and you can be good to go in no time. 

• Paid SEO tactics allow you to target a specific audience so you can get really clever about who you want to arrive on your website. And they will!

Cons of paid traffic:

• Limit to creativity - there are rules put in place by search engines as to what type of ads you can create. Maximum word counts so you have to squeeze your messages, rules on the types of images used and also limits on how specific you can target people. 

N.B: Rules are there to protect and help us in the paid SEO world and need to be respected - but they can be a bit annoying!! 

• Cost! It’s obvious, but you need a bigger budget to do paid adverts.

Organic vs Paid - who wins? 

So, how do you decide what to focus on? How to spend your digital marketing budget? Organic or paid? 

Use SEO to grow organic traffic to your website if:

• You are playing the long game. You want to increase your profits in the long-term. 

• Want to grow a reputation for being authentic, real and trustworthy 

• You don’t have much money to spend! 

Choose to pay to attract traffic to your website if: 

• You are looking for quick results

• You have a time-sensitive campaign such as a Christmas fundraising appeal that you need guaranteed results from quickly. 

• There’s a specific place you want to direct your audience to, like an information and ticket booking page leading up to a big event.  

While you’re deciding - here are some practical ideas of ways to increase organic traffic to your website. Because, we’re kind and think you can get started right away… 

1. Quick Win: 

Update existing content. How long ago did you write the content on your pages? Is it still relevant, true, interesting and accurate? Are there stats and numbers that need to be updated? Or a blog that you need to update and republish? New fresh content is always a winner with search engine algorithms!

2. Collaborative Idea: 

Write content for other people… get your website linked to from other websites by writing a guest blog for someone else. Or a post on their social media pages. Get networking with like minded, respected and trusted websites and share content with links to each other's sites. If visitors see you are liked by other people they trust - they’ll want to get to know you too! 

3. Technical Maintenance:
Improve your titles and meta descriptions - okay this is getting really jargony now. For that we’re sorry. But… for the free tips - we won’t apologise!
When you are building a new page and are asked to add the ‘meta description’ or ‘title’ make it interesting. Think about what makes your content unique and the best. Think about every little detail on your site… is your ‘cookie message’ interesting, are the buttons easy to read and understand what the audience’s action needs to be? The easier, more fun and interesting your site is to use - the higher the search engines will organically rank it! 

3. Quick Win:

Do you have some pages on your website that not many people look at? Or perhaps they look but don’t click on anything? You can improve the SEO organically by adding in internal links to other pages on your site. As long as the links are relevant and provide more information to anyone who clicks on them. 

We know you are clever and make good decisions… (obviously you do, you read our blogs!). But if you need help acting on any of the above ideas, want to delve deeper into the world of organic SEO or are ready to sign up to some paid SEO options, please get in touch!