direct traffic good or bad for SEO

 

Okay, let’s first get into what types of traffic there are.

Beyond organic and direct traffic, you must understand the difference between all of your traffic sources and how traffic is classified. Most web analytics platforms, like Google Analytics, utilize an algorithm and flow chart based on the referring website or URL parameters that determine the source of traffic. Here is a breakdown of all sources:

• Direct: Any traffic where the referrer or source is unknown
  
• Email: Traffic from email marketing that has been properly tagged with an email parameter
• Organic: Traffic from search engine results that is earned, not paid
• Paid search: Traffic from search engine results that is the result of paid advertising via Google AdWords or another paid search platform
• Referral: Traffic that occurs when a user finds you through a site other than a major search engine
• Social: Traffic from a social network, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram
• Other: If traffic does not fit into another source or has been tagged as “Other” via a URL parameter, it will be bucketed into “Other” traffic
  

Now that we have a general basis for all web traffic sources, let’s dig into the specifics of two very important sources: direct and organic traffic.

Direct traffic is defined as visits with no referring website. When a visitor follows a link from one website to another, the site of origin is considered the referrer. These sites can be search engines, social media, blogs, or other websites that have links to other websites. Direct traffic categorizes visits that do not come from a referring URL.

Traditionally, we’ve attributed this traffic to visitors manually entering the URL of the website or clicking on a bookmarked link. Today, however, the story behind direct traffic is a bit more complex, and the number of visits from direct traffic seems to be growing for many websites, especially sites with growing organic traffic.

To test fully understand direct traffic, back in 2014, Groupon ran a test in which it de-indexed its site for six hours. When Groupon did this, it was able to conclude that 60 percent of direct traffic was actually organic because de-indexing its site and halting organic traffic also dropped its direct traffic.

Organic traffic is the primary channel that inbound marketing strives to increase. This traffic is defined as visitors coming from a search engine, such as Google or Bing. This does not include paid search ads, but that doesn’t mean organic traffic isn’t impacted by paid search or display advertising, either positively or negatively. In general, people trust search engines, and sayings such as “just Google it” reinforce that humans are tied to the search engine. Thus, paid search, display, or even offline campaigns can drive searches, which may increase organic traffic while those campaigns are running.

That said, we also know that organic search traffic as a whole has been negatively impacted by the layout changes Google made to search results last year, which caused some websites such as Wayfair to see 25 percent of clicks on desktop and 55 percent on mobile be lost to paid search results.

To sum up all of this information, even organic traffic, like direct traffic, has some gray areas. For the most part, though, organic traffic is driven by SEO. The better you rank for competitive keywords, the more organic traffic will result. Websites that consistently create content optimized for search will see a steady increase in organic search traffic and improved positioning in search results. As a marketer, it is important to look at your keywords and high-ranking pages to identify new SEO opportunities each month.

Which brings me to SerpEmpire

- A tool that can help you out with SERP and CTR in order to increase your rating and by extension organic traffic, and it is a generally well-rounded SEO tool. Be sure to check it out!