Week 9: Types of Search Traffic

Today I will be defining and explaining the significance of a few different types of search traffic. Organic Search Traffic is one area that allows creators to see if their content is trending or popular. What is it? Organic Search traffic is the result of search engine results that is unpaid, in other words, it is earned traffic. It is commonly stressed to attempt to increase your organic traffic being that it is a main channel as well as the most natural.

Another channel is direct traffic. This is traffic generated through unknown sources. Examples of this would be traffic from saving the URL, bookmarking a site, adding the site to favorites on a browser or even sharing website links through emails. By using tools such as google analytics, they automatically track the sources of traffic, and if no source is found it becomes classified as direct traffic.

Paid search traffic is very straight forward, meaning that visits came from paid advertising of the website owner. How does this work? Often times, websites have paid advertisements appear at the top of searches with the help of Google AdWords. This system has creators pay for their advertising to appear given certain keyword searches. Note that paid search traffic can come from many platforms, as Google is a common example. Keep an eye out for these traffic trends, especially after major changes or new content is published!