When we make a query in our preferred search engine, it is normal for us to question ourselves: Why do I get these answers and not others? Aware of the millions of results (in just a few seconds) that search engines provide us, with relatively similar information. What makes a page stand out above the rest?
In this sense, the key is to understand how search engine rankings work. Understanding this, the strategies that companies carry out to reach those top positions arise.
Organic and paid traffic are strategies and ways to generate web traffic to a page. It is basically about granting visits through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or through SEM (Search Engine Marketing). These have a common objective, but the way in which they approach it is very different from each other. Below we invite you to delve deeper into these two terms.
What is organic traffic?
It is known as everything that is achieved through the results collected by search engines and their computer robots. It is the latter who classify and position the web pages and their content, according to a ranking of visits and the keywords used.
To gain organic traffic, a website does not depend solely on its content, or its optimization, to position itself among the first results. There are other important factors (technical SEO) for the website to be positioned in privileged places in Google searches.
Search engines work with robots that determine precisely those qualities in articles. Googlebot, for example, is a word you’ll hear mentioned a lot in SEO. These are algorithms that will determine whether your website is relevant or not. At the same time, they determine the position in which your page appears in the search results, for each of the keywords indexed to your website.
How do search engine robots or crawlers position a website?
Organic results appear based on the relevance of the site’s content. Its relationship with the keywords that Internet users use during their searches is also taken into account.
There are content marketing specialists, in high demand lately, who create content in an ideal way so that the positioning is “natural” in search engines, knowing very well the search intention of the targets that need to be reached.
The creation of relevant, well-structured content with a high educational component is an important task that content marketing and in turn, inbound marketing is carried out to successfully acquire this type of traffic.
What is paid traffic?
On the other hand, this type of traffic requires a monetary transaction to achieve web positioning. The results produced by this are also known as “inorganic results”. They are mainly achieved through paid advertisements that incorporate, for example, the “pay per click” advertising modality.
Anyone who wants to invest in inorganic traffic must access the different platforms available for each search engine. Once inside, campaigns are created, using a specific keyword as a means of traffic. These keywords have various costs, which depend on the volume of traffic they have.
Every time a user clicks on an ad link for a specific Google search, originating from one of these keywords associated with a campaign, the advertising website will pay the search engine. The more competitive the keyword is, the higher the amount (bid) to pay.
How long does it last?
This type of traffic is considered temporary because it lasts as long as the investment or monetary compensation lasts. In other words, it is not determined by the company itself, but by the providers who provide those visits. Therefore, the number of visits will be given to the number of transactions and payments that the company can make to achieve positioning.
In this sense, Paid traffic is a term that you will hear very often in articles that define and talk about SEM. It is precisely this search engine optimization that is achieved through paid advertisements. Google Ads is the main platform that SEM specialists use to publish their ads on Google.
This tool works the same as in the previous case, using keywords. Have you ever seen a web article that has the word “Ad” at the beginning of the title, before the meta description? Well, these are websites that turned to paid traffic to be able to be in that place. That is why we talk about inorganic positioning and, many times, artificial positioning.
How and where these ads should be deployed, to make the most of the visits they generate (Google Ads originate approximately 20% of all clicks), is an important task that companies must devise to obtain profitability (ROI) from the ads. digital marketing strategies.
How are SEO and SEM different?
Already understanding that web traffic is the number of visits that a particular website has, both organic and paid simply represents two ways of acquiring that user traffic. Therefore it cannot be stipulated that the biggest difference between one and the other is the absence or presence of investment.
SEO exists behind a qualified team that is responsible for managing this content and making it more attractive. In that sense, a salary is budgeted for these positions. Content marketing specialists, as we have already mentioned, constitute a monetary investment for companies because precisely, it is a boost to their sales.
The big difference between both types of web traffic lies in the intrinsic strategies and platforms with which they are carried out. In our attempt to separate SEM from SEO, we can also highlight that the former is a short-term strategy and the latter is not.
The importance of a good strategy
A strategy to increase our SEO can take months to be successful and generate profitability. To a positioning that seeks to be authentic, where interaction and social interest are clearly influenced. The SEM, on the other hand, is applied when you want to achieve short-term objectives.
An example of this is promoting events and/or crowdfunding campaigns. There we are talking about a quick process that requires paid advertisements to be able to meet the objectives set in terms of attendance and donor numbers (based on the example).
Another way to identify when a search result is organic and when it is paid is by observing if the web pages that you find in your results have the word “Ad” around them. This is a key indicator to know what type of positioning a particular website has. On the other hand, for organic results through SEO, there is no label and they are usually displayed immediately after the first sponsored links.
In organic traffic, the keywords are limited; and unlimited payment ones. This is mainly because when it comes to SEO, the usual thing is to work on one keyword and its slight variations (singular and plural, with and without prepositions, etc.) for each page.
If we try to use different keywords for each page, we will find that in the end, the content we want to distribute is not really relevant to any of them. This would be like trying to work on different topics in a single article when the ideal is to focus on a single topic for each one and delve into it as much as possible.
How many words to use for a paid traffic strategy?
On the other hand, In all paid traffic, since it is an auction system, you can choose all the keywords with which the company or that particular content wishes to identify itself. Of course, those keywords for which the website receives traffic will be the most effective. But as such, at the beginning, although you have an idea of what the most appropriate words could be, there is no limit to use.
Organic and paid traffic represent two methodologies for achieving the same goal: web positioning. It’s about understanding each of them and their differences, to know which one is best to carry out for a particular content or marketing campaign. Understanding these strategies in detail, according to a company’s business model, is also vital to taking advantage of it.
Indeed, both forms can be used, since they are not really mutually exclusive. However, doing so represents a deep analysis of the platforms to be used and the target audiences, in parallel with their interests, needs and motivations in order to satisfy them with valuable information.
