What is organic traffic?

Organic traffic means visitors who find you through normal, unpaid search results, for example on Google. Example: someone searches “bakery near me”, clicks your listing (not an ad) and lands on your site. You earn these visits with good content instead of paying per click.

Definition

Organic search traffic comes from search engines without a paid ad. Searches for your brand name and searches for general topics both count as organic, as long as nobody paid for the click.

What organic is not

Organic is not the same as direct, social or referral traffic. Paid search ads with UTM tags should be counted as paid campaigns, not organic. Ads without proper tags can end up in organic and make your SEO look better than it is.

SEO workflow

Use PureMetrix to see which landing pages get visitors from search and whether those visitors convert. Connect Google Search Console to see which search terms people used. Guide: Search Console and analytics.

Keep the measuring script light (under 3 KB) so your speed work for SEO is not undone by heavy tracking code.

Reporting tip

Report organic landing pages with their goal rate, not only visit counts. If SEO brings visitors who only browse and never convert, the content itself needs to change.

Searches for your brand and searches for general topics behave differently. Look at them separately when judging what SEO brings you.

Brand vs non-brand searches

People searching for your brand name usually land on the homepage; people searching for a problem land on specific articles. Look at the two groups separately when judging SEO return, and compare Search Console impressions (how often you appeared in search) with goals on your site, so rankings without enquiries do not look like wins. Organic is a channel label, not proof that your content got better.

Visits from Google News or Google Discover are not always labelled clearly as organic search. If you publish news-style posts, judge those landing pages separately.