Direct Traffic Vs Organic Traffic: Everything You Need to Know

Let’s begin by exploring two of the most crucial types of traffic sources: direct traffic and organic traffic. The first one we’ll focus on is direct traffic because it can be quite intricate.

Understanding Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is typically defined as any traffic that directly visits your website. This includes individuals who type your URL into their browser or click on a bookmarked link. However, direct traffic is not as straightforward as it seems. A study conducted by SearchEngineLand and Groupon found that up to 60% of the traffic categorized as direct traffic is, in fact, organic traffic.

How does that work?

Sometimes, browsers fail to provide information about the source of visitors when they access a website. In such cases, analytics tools consider it as direct traffic. As these visitors do not have a referral, the analytics cannot determine their origin and categorize them as direct traffic.

Why Do I Care If My Direct Traffic Is Miscategorized?

Is it truly important that a significant portion of your traffic is not correctly classified? What is the purpose behind understanding the origin of your traffic and the effort to reduce the number of false “direct traffic” visitors?

The answer is data. In order to enhance marketing strategies and attract more qualified leads, digital marketers understand that it is crucial to determine the source and reason behind leads. Failing to identify the origins of a significant portion of direct traffic results in a missed chance for effective marketing. Without this information, it is impossible to observe the keywords or terms that these visitors are using.

So where is my direct traffic actually coming from?

There are a few specific reasons why you might be observing exceptionally high direct traffic numbers. It is important to understand that the internet is not flawless, so even though you may believe the traffic is direct, there could be other factors causing this. In order for your website analytics tool to accurately attribute referrals for each site visit, every aspect of a link must be in flawless condition, which is not always the case. Therefore, here are a few explanations for the unusually high direct traffic figures:

If your site has not been secured, it is an HTTP site. Consequently, you will not receive tracking data for visitors from secure, HTTPS sites. This is due to the secure protocol, but it can be easily resolved by obtaining a third-party SSL certificate and updating your site to be secure. Once this is done, you will be able to access all the necessary referral information for visitors from other secure websites.

When something on your end is not working, it can lead to unnecessary direct traffic. For example, if you forget to include the tracking code on a new landing page, anyone who clicks through to another page on your site will appear as a new user to Google Analytics. This gives the impression that you have referred your own visitor. If your domain has been excluded, Google will categorize that visit as direct traffic. This also occurs if your tracking codes fail or break. Moreover, bad redirects can contribute to the issue by potentially stripping out UTM parameters. Complex redirect chains can eliminate referrer data, resulting in more direct traffic for you.

Sometimes, it’s inevitable to have traffic that appears to be direct, but actually comes from various sources such as mobile apps, desktop software, and certain email clients like Outlook. These sources don’t provide any referring information. One way to detect email-related issues is to observe a sudden increase in direct traffic following a large email campaign. However, identifying traffic originating from mobile apps and desktop software can be challenging.

Legitimate direct traffic is sometimes a result of specific reasons. It could be due to an extraordinary blog that readers continuously save, or perhaps your excellent reputation in the local community leads people to directly visit your website. If you have not blocked your employees’ IP addresses, some of the direct traffic recorded in your analytics may be from their navigation. It is crucial to acknowledge that direct traffic is a legitimate source, and some of the visitors may genuinely be navigating directly to your website.

6 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

1. Content Creation

Creating content through blogging is one of the best ways to focus on attracting the right people to your company in inbound marketing.

In order to attract the desired visitors to your website, it is necessary to have a comprehension of the buyer persona you intend to target. When you have identified your audience, you will be able to generate content that effortlessly draws them to your website.

To ensure your blog post attracts the intended audience, contemplate how to write it effectively by following these five sequential steps.

• Identify your buyer persona: Find out more about your target market. Understand everything from job title to pain points.
• Conduct SEO research: Learn what your audience is searching for on search engines so you can provide the best content.
• Write a draft: Begin by drafting a post that answers your audience’s questions. Use interesting angles to make your post stand out.
• Publish: Publish your post on your blog site. Use SEO tools to optimize your content.
• Promote: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.

To implement a blogging strategy, you can learn more about it here.

2. Topic Expertise

At HubSpot, we utilize the pillar/ topic cluster model to increase the organic traffic to your site, leading to a higher ranking on Google. This model ensures that your website is perceived as an expert in the subject matter it covers, which Google highly values.

In order to establish yourself as an expert, you can generate a pillar page, which is a comprehensive blog post that extensively covers various aspects of a subject. Following that, you produce “cluster content,” or supplementary blog posts, tailored towards specific long tail keywords to demonstrate your thorough coverage of the topic. By prioritizing long-term traffic, you will enhance your search engine ranking.

According to Christina Perricone, a senior blog manager at HubSpot, the pillar cluster model is a way to structure content on your website based on a specific topic and search term using internal links. This method allows search engines to efficiently analyze and classify all the content you have on that topic, ultimately improving your chances of ranking for that search term. Moreover, when implemented correctly, this model also enhances the user experience by assisting visitors in navigating your site and transitioning between relevant pages, which consequently increases traffic for all the pages within your topic cluster.

3. Organic Social Media

Although not a new strategy, organic social media remains important for marketers to consider. In addition to regular social media posts, utilizing Instagram Stories (including the swipe up feature!), live video, IGTV, or Facebook Messenger can also be beneficial. The crucial aspect of organic social media is being an early adopter of innovative features.

Facebook has introduced a new feature on Messenger called automated lead generation, which enables businesses to create an automated chatbot experience. This experience can be used to connect with content offers on your website, making it an excellent tool for driving traffic to your site.

In order to have an effective social media strategy, it is crucial to consider using a variety of platforms, instead of solely relying on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Platforms such as YouTube or Pinterest have the potential to drive considerable traffic to your website.

Regarding organic social media, Henry Franco, a brand marketing associate at HubSpot, suggests two things. Firstly, it is important to avoid spamming your audience as they can easily scroll past your post without any cost. Therefore, if you fail to provide them with value, they will simply ignore your content. Secondly, it is crucial to understand your audience and create content that directly appeals to them, according to Franco.

“Second, stay active with community management. People love when brands like and reply to them — it’ll humanize your business, and keep people coming back for more content.”

4. Website Analysis

To ensure effective traffic generation for your website, it is essential to engage in a step-by-step analysis of your thought process. Before driving traffic to your website, it is crucial to acquire knowledge about your audience. This can be achieved by assessing your website through platforms like Crazy Egg, which enable you to identify areas where you are losing or gaining visitors. Utilizing this valuable information, you can generate appropriate content that attracts the desired traffic to your website.

5. Influencers

In order to generate strong word of mouth, it is important to understand that customers have a higher likelihood to make purchases from organizations with a positive reputation. However, the question still remains – how can one effectively establish a favorable word of mouth? The initial step involves thoroughly satisfying your customers, followed by collaborating with influential individuals.

Influencer marketing is not a temporary trend, but instead, it offers a cost-effective approach to generate website traffic. By utilizing influencers to share discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you can effectively utilize their audience to increase traffic to your website.

6. Email List Building

Utilizing your existing readers and customers can effectively generate website traffic. By sharing new blogs or content offers with your followers/subscribers, you can quickly increase traffic. For websites with substantial content, having loyal readers aids in achieving traffic objectives, conversions, and lead generation.

To begin, you can start by developing an email list or expanding your existing list. Listed below are several tactics you can employ:

One way to generate leads is by creating content offers that require visitors to provide their email address in order to access the content. Additionally, make sure to include calls-to-action for these content offers on your website.

To make it convenient for visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, make sure to place sign-up forms on various pages of your website, ranging from the homepage to the about page. If a visitor has had a pleasant experience on your site, they may be interested in receiving your newsletter and would be inclined to sign up.