Website visitors who arrive via unpaid search engine results.
Organic traffic refers to visitors who arrive at a website by clicking on unpaid search engine results (as opposed to paid ads). It is tracked in analytics platforms like Google Analytics as the "Organic Search" traffic channel. Growing organic traffic is the primary goal of SEO, since it represents free, scalable, and long-term audience acquisition.
Unlike paid traffic, organic traffic doesn't stop when you stop spending. Companies with strong organic traffic have a compounding competitive advantage — each new piece of content or backlink compounds the previous investment.
A blog that ranks in the top 3 results for 500 keywords with 1,000 monthly searches each receives approximately 50,000–100,000 monthly organic visitors without any ad spend.
While there's no per-click cost, organic traffic requires investment in SEO: content creation, technical optimisation, and link building. It's "earned" rather than "paid" but not truly free.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation — improving a website's visibility in organic search results.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page — the page Google (or any search engine) returns in response to a query.
Backlinks
Hyperlinks from external websites pointing to your site — a key SEO ranking signal.
CTR
Click-Through Rate — the percentage of people who click on a link after seeing it.