Organic Traffic Sources, what is the best one? Every business wants more traffic to its website because that means more awareness about the brand, more leads captured, and eventually more sales.

Getting that much-needed traffic won’t be easy, though. It is a process that needs patience and hard work.

You will have to start somewhere, especially if what you are looking for is organic traffic. While paid traffic is a quick fix, it is expensive in the long run and not sustainable.

Organic traffic works for the long term and is worth the effort. It gives your website longevity and will be a source of leads for years to come. Here are 10 organic traffic sources to grow your website visitors.

Bonus: If you're unsure on how to start an organic traffic source, My good friend Adam Kemp has a blog post about ideas for beginning a fitness blog. 

While its based around fitness, it can apply to any kind of niche!

Social Media

Besides having great content on your website, being proactive on social media also helps in growing traffic. This has nothing to do with social media advertising tools such as Facebook Ads. Just sharing links to your website content on social media helps get it out to the audiences and can pay off in the long run.

Use relevant hashtags to contribute to Twitter discussions. Engage your audience on Facebook, and use photo sharing sites such as Instagram and Pinterest to share your products. You, however, have to watch out against spamming social media forums with links to your website. If everything you post is about selling yourself, your audience will quickly learn to tune you out.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is one of the most important organic traffic sources and therefore worth paying attention to. Optimizing your website for SEO doesn’t have to be a headache. There are a few things that even a beginner can do.

Create meta descriptions and internally link new content. Focus on the use of keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases people use to search for content on the internet. Adam Roseland from 814 Interactive, a Philadelphia SEO Agency says while it is much easier to go for the popular and high-intent keywords, they may not work much as they are already taken up by the other top websites.

Instead, try low competition long-tail keywords when you are first starting SEO in order to set up some easy wins for yourself.

Guest Posts

Guest posts are one of the easiest organic traffic sources you can explore. You can ask for a guest post slot on a reputable website that will help to build your brand and improve traffic.

When given a chance, publish a quality post and not spammy links back to your website. All you need is to mention your website in passing.

You can also invite leaders within your industry to do guest posts on your website. While helping build on your reputation and credibility, they are likely to share the posts and lead to new visitors to your site.

Alternatively, you can interview the industry leaders and publish the interview on your website.

A Fast And Responsive Website

This is more about making the most of your traffic than actually acquiring it. But it is worth mentioning. It is very important to have a responsive website if you are to generate organic traffic to it.

Research by 814 Interactive has shown that more people browse the internet from their mobile devices than computers. You might lose out on traffic if your website does not respond to a variety of devices. While there is no optimal speed, Google says 0.6 seconds is the best, however generally speaking, under 2 seconds is okay for most sites.

Loading speed is also important. Nobody wants to spend ages waiting for a single page to load. The faster the site loads, the easier it is to generate and retain traffic. The other organic traffic sources won’t help much without a fast and responsive website. You can use the website GTmetrix to measure the speed of your website. This is a free service.

Blog And Forum Comments

Blog and forum comments are underrated organic traffic sources. Encourage two-way communication between you and your audiences by giving them opportunities to comment on your posts. People feel appreciated if they are allowed to weigh in on subjects of discussion.

You can link social media comments back to the website. You can build a forum through which they ask questions and respond to them as soon as possible. It is important to maintain decorum so that members don’t become abusive to you or other members.

You can also make contributions to in other forums to get your brand out there. Done right, commenting becomes a way to both build relationships and acquire traffic.

Another little tip is to make sure you reply to EVERY comment that is left on your blog. A return member is great, their comment is free content for you, plus its a person who is engaging with your brand again.

Email Capture And Follow-Up

Provide an option on your website for your visitors to subscribe to new content via email. This ensures that they don’t miss out when new information is published. It also makes it easier to measure your reach. When they unsubscribe, send a follow-up email on why they left and where they would like to see improvements on.

Remember that there is a thin line between following up and spamming. Email marketing is one of the traditional organic traffic sources, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

Even if you acquire your email list through paid traffic, every email you send out thereafter is basically free organic traffic. Also make sure you use an email verifier such as Hunter.io to make sure your list is clean and up to date!

Webinars And Conferences

Webinars are a great way for your audience to learn new things. When you host them, you are likely to establish your brand as a thought leader and that will definitely result in traffic to your website. Likewise, presenting at in-person conferences both boosts your industry cred and provides you networking opportunities that you won’t find anywhere else.

Consistent Quality Content

Your website is the first impression of your business to the world. Regular posts are okay, but it is important to have quality content. Don’t post just because it is another task on your to-do list. It will drive away traffic and the damage may not be easy to undo.

Quality posts that are published consistently do not only keep your visitors on the website, but also help with search engine optimization.

While at it, keep off the temptation to stray to topics that are not relevant to your website no matter how much they are trending.

Great Headlines

Guess what? The world is full of lazy readers. Most people will look at the headline and decide whether they are clicking on the link or not. Great content may not matter much if they are preceded by lazily-thought headlines. Take your time and settle on a headline that would make someone want to open the post. Make it compelling and hard to ignore. However, stay away from clickbait headlines (unless you’re running a clickbaity site).

Data Analytics

In the long run, it won’t matter what you do if you have no idea what’s working and what’s not. Examine analytics from every aspect of your website. It will help you know which pages and posts on the website are doing well and how to strategize on improving traffic.

Data analytics also help in knowing where the traffic is coming from and at what times it is at optimum levels so that you know which topics to leverage, what resonates with your audience, and what time to make the posts.

Organic Traffic Sources Conclusion

Now you have a grasp on our top 10 organic traffic sources, you can use this to optimise or curate your existing content. What do you think of our list?

Leave a comment below and tell us some of your best ways to get traffic to your website or business!