Organic Traffic: What It Is & How to Increase It (6 Ways)

Growing your website starts with reaching the right people.

Not random traffic.

People actively searching for the solutions you provide.

That’s where organic traffic shines.

Unlike paid advertising or social media, organic traffic attracts visitors with clear intent.

At Backlinko, organic traffic brings us over 571K monthly visitors—each one specifically interested in SEO and digital marketing.

In this guide, you’ll learn all about organic traffic, including how to measure and increase it.

Let’s start with what organic traffic is and how it differs from other traffic sources.

What Is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on your website or blog from unpaid search engine results.

Think of it as people finding your content naturally when they search for information, products, or services.

These unpaid clicks are organic traffic.

For example, if someone searches “seo competitor analysis” on Google and clicks on a regular (non-ad) result, that counts as organic traffic.

The key word here is “unpaid.”

While you might see “sponsored” or “ad” results at the top of search results, clicks on these aren’t organic traffic—they’re paid traffic.

You earn organic traffic by creating high-quality content that matches what people are searching for (search intent) and optimizing it for search engines (SEO).

Understanding Organic vs. Other Traffic Sources

Search engines aren’t the only way people find websites.

Visitors might come from social media, email newsletters, or by typing your URL directly.

Here’s how different traffic sources compare:

Why Organic Traffic Matters

Organic traffic isn’t just about reaching your target audience.

It’s about building assets that continue delivering value long after you create them.

Here’s why investing in organic search makes sense for businesses of all sizes.

Cost-Effective

Organic traffic is one of the most affordable ways to attract qualified visitors to your website.

This is especially true when you compare it to paid advertising, which costs anywhere from $0.11 to $0.50 per click, according to a WebFX survey.

Now, let’s consider a leading home improvement site, The Spruce, as an example.

They attract 9 million organic visitors monthly.

This traffic would cost them an estimated $7.1 million if they paid for it through Google Ads.

Pretty impressive, right?

As you can see, organic traffic can deliver incredible ROI compared to the ongoing costs of paid advertising.

Builds Authority

Consistently ranking for search terms helps establish your site as an industry leader.

NerdWallet demonstrates this perfectly.

With 13.2 million monthly organic visitors and 5.2 million backlinks, they’ve become the go-to source for financial advice.

Their approach?

Creating comprehensive content that displays E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) signals:

• Author credentials and expertise
• Regular content updates with accurate information
• Citations to credible sources
• Real-world experience and testing
• Clear website policies and contact information

When they rank #1 on Google for terms like “best high yield savings account” or “how to invest in stocks,” it reinforces their position as a trusted voice in personal finance.

And helps them build website authority and confidence with every click.

Drives Targeted Traffic

When someone finds your site through organic search, they’re currently looking for what you offer.

Think about someone searching for “how to optimize a blog post.”

They’re not casually browsing—they’re sitting at their computer, working on content, and need guidance right now.

If your site ranks highly for this search, you’re reaching them at the perfect moment:

When they’re most likely to read your advice, implement your tips, or purchase a solution that helps them succeed.

That’s the power of organic traffic.

By consistently appearing in these high-intent searches, you connect with people precisely when your expertise matters most.

Generates Long-Term Leads

While paid campaigns stop delivering the moment you pause them, organic traffic compounds over time.

The key is creating content that matches what your audience is searching for at every funnel stage.

Including when they’re researching a problem, comparing solutions, or ready to make a purchase.

This builds a sustainable pipeline of qualified leads that continues growing long after you publish the content.

The best part? You don’t have to depend on daily ad spend.

How to Check Organic Traffic

Tracking your organic traffic reveals which content drives visitors and growth opportunities.

It also proves your SEO ROI.

These three tools make it easy.

Organic Research

Semrush’s Organic Research tool goes beyond basic traffic metrics to show you the full picture of your organic performance.

Start by entering your domain and clicking “Search.”

For this example, I used Sweet Peas and Saffron, a meal prep site.

Right away, you’ll see interesting data on your site’s organic performance.

For example, I learned that Sweet Peas and Saffron has:

• 88.8K ranking keywords
• 110.2K monthly organic traffic
• $33.8K in traffic value

Click the “Positions” tab to discover every keyword you rank for.

Filter by “Positions,” “Volume,” “Intent,” “SERP Features,” and more for deeper insights into your search performance.

I filtered Sweet Peas and Saffron’s results by “Position #1” and learned they have 791 organic keywords in the first spot on Google.

Terms like “air fryer chickpeas” and “asian salad dressing” drive consistent organic traffic to this site every single month.

The “Position Changes” report shows where you’re gaining or losing ground in search results.

This helps you spot trends and react quickly to ranking drops.

For example, Sweet Pea and Saffron’s post, “Easy Homemade Fajita Seasoning,” has recently seen a 2.6K decrease in traffic.

When you see drops like this, you can:

• Check if your content needs updating
• See if competitors have published better content
• Look for technical issues affecting the page
• Review if the search intent has changed

The sooner you identify these issues, the faster you can fix them and recover your rankings.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) shows you where your organic traffic comes from and how visitors behave on your site.

Here’s how to check your organic traffic on this platform:

Click “Reports” in the left-hand menu.

Click “Life cycle,” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic acquisition.”

Now, you’ll see an overview of your site’s performance, including organic search.

For a breakdown of which search engines drive the most organic traffic to your site, scroll to the traffic acquisition report.

Next, click the plus sign to add a secondary dimension.

Select “Session source.”

Now, you’ll see an organic traffic breakdown by search engine.

Google Search Console

While GA4 tracks all search engines, Google Search Console (GSC) focuses solely on Google traffic—giving you detailed data about your Google search performance.

Start by opening your GSC account and clicking “Performance” > “Search results” in the left sidebar.

Scroll to see the top queries and pages that attract organic traffic to your site.

You’ll learn how many clicks and impressions each one gets.

And each term’s position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

How to Increase Organic Traffic in 6 Steps

There are dozens of ways to improve organic traffic.

But these six high-impact tactics consistently deliver the best results.

1. Fix Technical Issues

Technical problems can limit your organic traffic growth.

This is why it’s important to identify and fix them.

First things first:

Make sure Google is indexing your content.

Go to Google Search Console and click “Indexing” > “Pages.”

If you see lots of non-indexed pages, don’t panic just yet. This number will vary for every site.

And preventing certain pages from being indexed can actually be a good thing.

What matters is that your most important pages are properly indexed.

View the “Why pages aren’t indexed” report to check for issues.

This helps you distinguish between:

• Intentionally excluded pages, such as duplicate content, form submissions, paginated pages, or anything else you don’t want indexed
• Important pages that should be indexed but aren’t due to redirect errors, accidental noindex tags, and other issues

Click any error to get details and request immediate indexing if needed.

This can be a fast and easy way to recover lost organic traffic.

Next, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s loading speed and Core Web Vitals—Google’s key metrics for measuring user experience.

Slow, poorly performing pages drive visitors away and hurt your rankings.

The tool will tell you if your site passes or fails the assessment.

It’ll also tell you what went wrong and how to fix it—like resizing images and reducing JavaScript execution time.

For a complete technical health checkup, use Semrush’s Site Audit to scan your entire site.

It uncovers hidden issues that could be limiting your organic growth:

• Crawlability problems
• Internal linking errors
• Performance issues
• Site structure problems

Review the list of “Errors” first—these are critical issues that could have the biggest impact on your organic traffic potential.

Like duplicate content, broken internal links, and returned status codes.

2. Select Keywords with Low Difficulty for Your Site

Want to know the secret to ranking faster?

Don’t go straight for keywords with the highest monthly search volume.

Start with lower-difficulty terms that are easier to rank for.

Here’s how to do it with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool:

Enter a broad term like “LinkedIn marketing” and click “Search.”

The tool will return a long list of keywords and metrics for each one.

Including:

• Search volume: How many times per month a keyword is searched
• Keyword difficulty (KD): This is a score from one to 100, showing how hard it’ll be to rank in Google’s top 10 for the given term
• Intent: The reason behind a user’s search: they want information (informational), they want to compare options (commercial), they’re trying to find a specific site (navigational), or they want to buy something (transactional)

“LinkedIn marketing” gets 4,400 searches per month but has a daunting keyword difficulty of 95.

Let’s filter the results so we can find terms with lower difficulty.

Click “KD” on the menu and enter “0” and “49.”

Now, you’ll see only terms that are “easy” or “possible” to rank for.

As you review the list, look for terms that have:

• Search intent aligned with your content type (how-to, product reviews, etc.)
• Realistic competition levels for your site
• Enough monthly searches to be worth targeting

3. Refresh Existing Content

Want faster results?

Update existing content instead of only creating new posts.

Since Google already knows these pages exist, you’ll be more likely to see improvements quickly.

Your first step is to identify underperforming content that could benefit from a refresh.

Head to Google Search Console and click “Performance” > “Search results.”

Filter for pages with a low click-through rate (CTR) (under 3%).

Click the filter menu icon in the right-hand corner and select “Clicks.”

Select “Smaller than” and enter “3.”

Click “Done.”

Now, you’ll only see pages on your site with a 3% (or less) CTR.

Take note of the pages that have decent impressions.

Keep in mind that what’s decent for you will depend on your site, but think 500+.

These pages should have the highest potential to gain ground quickly because Google is showing them to users already.

Next, create a tracking spreadsheet for this project.

This can be a simple Google or Excel spreadsheet.

Then, search for your target keyword and analyze the top five ranking pages.

Look specifically for:

• Search intent: Does their content better match what searchers want?
• Visuals: Do they use more helpful images, tables, infographics, or pro tips?
• Content depth: What topics, examples, or case studies do they cover that you don’t?
• Updated information: Are they citing newer stats or trends?
• Metadata: Are their title tags and meta descriptions more compelling?
• Structure: Is their content easier to scan and understand, with descriptive subheads?
• Writer expertise: Do they show more authority on the topic?

Make targeted improvements based on your findings.

Some pages might need a complete rewrite, while others may only need updated statistics or better examples.

Track your results in Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Look for increases in:

• Organic traffic
• Click-through rate
• Average ranking
• Time on page

4. Target Evergreen Topics

Unlike news articles or trend pieces that quickly fade, evergreen topics maintain consistent organic search volume because they solve timeless problems.

Think about searches like “how to tie a tie” or “how to cook quinoa”—these questions never go out of style.

Case in point:

The search term “how to cook quinoa” gets 33.1K monthly searches.

If you search Google for this term, you’ll see countless articles.

But one of the top-ranking articles is from a recipe site called Love & Lemons.

Love & Lemons gets 149K organic visitors every month from this single article.

So, how’d they turn one evergreen topic into a massive organic traffic source?

They chose a topic they knew would interest their target audience: cooking quinoa.

And created a guide that included:

• Clear explanations of quinoa basics and nutrition facts
• Detailed, tested cooking instructions
• Expert tips from real kitchen experience
• Multiple cooking methods for different preferences
• Strategic internal links to related quinoa recipes

This comprehensive approach works because it answers every question a reader might have about cooking quinoa.

How can you do this, too?

The key is choosing topics that solve ongoing problems and answering fundamental questions.

(Decent search volume helps, too.)

Find keywords like this for your site by using tools like Exploding Topics, Google Trends, and Google autocomplete searches.

5. Add Internal Links

Internal linking helps Google find, index, and understand your content.

Which is why it’s helpful for increasing organic traffic.

But it can also keep visitors around for longer. Meaning you retain more of the traffic you worked so hard to get.

Start by looking for pages on your site with no internal links (also called “orphan pages”).

Use a tool that automates the process of finding orphan pages, like Site Audit or RankMath.

But don’t add just any links.

Your internal links need to:

• Match the context of the surrounding content
• Use descriptive anchor text that explains the destination
• Help users find related information they want

For example, instead of “click here,” use specific anchor text like “AI writing tools” for an AI writing tools comparison page.

Or “keyword research guide” for a keyword tutorial.

This helps Google and visitors understand what they’ll find on the linked page.

Bonus Step: Optimize Your Link Flow

• Prioritize link equity by linking from high-authority pages to newer or lower-performing ones
• Use topic clusters to organize related content into silos that strengthen overall relevance
• Ensure crawl efficiency by avoiding excessive links on a single page

6. Build a Backlink Strategy

Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals.

The more relevant sites that link to you, the more organic traffic you can attract.

But how do you earn these valuable links?

Start by creating content that naturally attracts them.

The most linkable content types we’ve found include:

• Original research and industry studies
• Comprehensive how-to guides that fill knowledge gaps
• Free tools and templates
• Expert roundups with unique insights
• Attractive visuals (like infographics)

For example, we created a detailed analysis of Google’s ranking factors that has attracted 33.7K backlinks to date.

Why did it work so well?

Because it’s a comprehensive resource with over 200 ranking factors.

And we constantly update it to ensure it features the freshest information and studies.

But creating linkable assets isn’t your only option for boosting backlinks and organic traffic.

Build genuine industry relationships by joining relevant Slack, Facebook, and Reddit communities and participating in discussions.

Focus on adding value first—answer questions, share insights, and build real connections.

Only include links to your site when relevant and helpful (and if allowed by the community).

Want to accelerate your link building?

Study what’s already working in your industry.

Use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics to monitor your competitors’ backlinks.

When studying competitor backlinks, look for patterns.

Do certain topics or content formats consistently earn more links?

Use these insights to create similar (but better) resources.

And reach out to those same sites to start building your backlink profile.

Future-Proof Your Traffic Strategy

You now have a proven system for growing organic traffic.

But this is just one part of a successful traffic strategy.

Relying solely on organic traffic is risky, even for the most experienced SEO or marketer.

Here’s why:

• Algorithm updates can instantly impact your rankings
• Core updates happen multiple times per year
• Industry shifts can change how people search
• New competitors can push you down in search results

The smarter approach?

Building a diversified traffic strategy that includes everything from organic and social to email marketing.