Below is a transcript of this video.
So I’m going to talk about the how organic traffic is dominating the trackable web traffic that you are getting, and the why that is, and then what this means to a business.
Let’s first start by talking about what exactly I mean by organic search. Now I’m in Columbia, Maryland. So let’s say for example, I’m looking for a dentist. What I would do is, if I want to get some ideas from Google, which most people do using a Google Search, I would go to Google and search for something like this, “Columbia dentist.” Now what to say here is the results that you get, and let’s go down what is known as the search engine results page. So on the top or what to see here are paid ads. That clearly identify by this ad symbol. And then below that, you have this map ranking areas. That’s also ad. And then below that, these are part of the organic results that I’m talking about. These are not ads, these are organic results. And below that also, all of these are the part of the organic results that I’m talking about. So we have quite a number of organic results as we scroll down. And then towards the bottom of the page, again, these are paid ads. So the organic results that I’m talking about is what is in the middle of this page.
Now let’s look at the stats when it comes to these organic results in terms of the traffic that websites are getting. I’m going to talk about the data that was collected from a research done by Bright Edge in May 2019. And then they is the link to the original research and this will be available below this video. Now what I see in terms of looking at the Google analytics stats of my clients is the same thing, and then I show that also. But let’s look at the stats that were collected by this research.
So this is the distribution of the web traffic by industry. So these are the different industries. We have retail, media and entertainment, B2B, technology, and then travel and hospitality. And these are the percentage of traffic the websites in this industries are getting. So this is the average organic visitors. This is the average social media visitors as a percentage of the traffic. And then this is the average paid search visitors to the websites in these industries. And this is all of the rest of the type of traffic that the websites are getting. What we see here, on average for all of the industries, about 53.3% of all of the traffic the websites are getting is from organic visitors. And this is by far the largest percentage of traffic in terms of the source that the websites are getting.
Another thing is that if you look at the B2B, B2B is getting even a higher percentage of traffic from organic visitors, followed by technology. So these two industries are even higher than the average, but even if you consider the average, most amount of web traffic that is coming to your website is by organic searches.
Now let’s look at the distribution of the traffic based on revenue. Again, the same industries, and then the same sources of traffic we are looking at. We are looking at the same sources of traffic. What we see is that when we look at the amount of profit that a website makes from these different sources of traffic, still on average, the largest percentage of profit is made from visitors that are coming from organic search. It’s a 44.6%. And then if you look at some specific industries, if you look at technology, about 58.8% of the profit that they’re making from visitors to their website is from organic search. And B2B is also higher than average at 52.7%.
Now one thing to note here that is this 44.6% is lesser as a percentage from the overall traffic that we’re getting. This is the profitability of the traffic. So the overall traffic percentage for the organic searches were 53.3%, but when we are talking about the revenue is 44.6%. So it’s a little less than the percentage of traffic. That is because a part of the organic visitors that are coming to our site is they are just doing initial investigation and exploration, so they actually not buying when they come to a site. But still, given that a large percentage by far of the profit that is made from visitors to a site is from organic searches.
Let’s look at the trends. Now, what the research found is that in 2019, the percentage of organic search visitors was 53%. When the same research was done in 2014, it was 51%. So the organic searches are not totally the [inaudible 00:06:55] highest percentage, but this trend is actually increasing in terms of the percentage of visitors. Now paid search, those paid ads that we’re looking at, that is also growing, but the percentage of social media traffic that is coming, is flat at about 5%
So this is kind of what I see by looking at my clients’ Google Analytics also. We are looking at the Google Analytics of one of my clients. And if you see, the distribution of the sessions, the sessions are the interactions, the number of interactions a visitor is having on a website. And if we look at the distribution based on the sources of traffic, most of the traffic is coming from Google organic. And then this is for another client. So this direct means people are typing the company name directly into Google. So this is a popular brand. So a lot of people are typing the brand name directly into Google, but after that, most of the traffic is coming from Google organic. Let’s talk about why this is happening. Why most of the traffic by far that is coming to our website is by Google organic.
One thing is that people are becoming more and more skeptic about ads. According to a research done a few years ago, about 40% of people that are using laptops in the US are using ad blocker. So when you use ad blocker, that means the ads, when you do a search or when you go to a website, are blocked. And about 15% of people who use a mobile device block their ads. This is based on the research from this particular website. And then I’ll have a link to this below the video. And then the global trend for people using ad blockers is also growing. Again, this research was done a few years ago, but you will see that the trend is clearly trending up in terms of the number of people using ad blockers. So that is the skepticism in terms of ads.
And then the other thing is that Google is heavily investing to make sure that the search results that they provide for visitors is really good. Because that’s how they make money by making people happy when they search on Google, by providing them good relevant results. Recently, for example, they made a change in the algorithm called RankBrain. RankBrain is a machine learning, where not only the keyword that the person that is searching in Google is taken into account by the algorithm, but also the search intent. What is the reason behind the search? Is taken into account by machine learning by the Google algorithm. Also they’re making use of the location much better. So Google is continuing to make the search much better and more and more people are happy with that.
Then another big problem is click fraud in terms of paid ads. Click fraud means that people are just clicking on ads just to get revenue. So if we had an ad on your particular website, if we just keep clicking on that using a bot, then that will generate revenue for you. So also there are bots that go around clicking on ads just to do harmful competitor’s ad campaigns. And this is quite a big problem, probably a bigger problem than you realize. There’s billions of revenue lost each year based on click fraud. And then I will put this link to the research that is indicating this. So, people who are advertising are moving away from paid advertising because they are losing money for some of that paid advertising because I’ve click fraud..
Now the other thing is Google as a brand is really popular. In 2019, Google was the second most popular brand in the US, and very close to Amazon, which is the most popular brand. So if you are showing up in the organic results, that means it’s thumbs up, it’s a stamp of approval from Google, which is one of the most reputed loud brands all over the world. So this is basically getting more and more people to take those organic search results seriously. Those are a couple of reasons why organic search is by far dominating the traffic that is coming to a site, and it is continuing to grow.
In summary, organic search is bringing the most trackable web traffic to a website. And then not only that, organic search is also bringing by far the most amount of revenue in terms of the different types of profits that is coming to a site. And this trend is continuing to increase. So hope that helps in terms of some ideas about organic traffic and why it is important, and then the amount of organic traffic that we can expect. If you have any questions, let me know.
