What Percent of Organic Traffic Should a Blog Get?

What Percent of Organic Traffic Should a Blog Get?

This is a great question but one that’s not necessarily complete. I get asked this a lot and the quick and simple answer is this: It depends.

As we discussed in the last blog post about Adsense and organic traffic one will generally see a higher CTR (click-through rate) on their advertisements with organic traffic as compared to direct traffic and/or referral-based traffic.

What that means, naturally, is if you’re trying to make a lot of income through an Adsense-based blog and/or website you’re going to want to concentrate on developing a blog that has a lot of search engine traffic.

But here’s the catch: Concentrating too much on SEO-based traffic might cost you in the long run as the formulas change and algorithms shift – you always want a good balance between the top three: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, and Search Engines.

If I had it my way I’d try to find a good balance between the three but you can’t always have a “perfect” mix – in fact, there really isn’t a perfect mix and it entirely depends on your monetization strategy short and long-term.

For example, here’s a screenshot of one blog that I manage that is destroying it in terms of organic traffic:

With over 80% organic I’m making some great money via Google Adsense and the like (and it’s not really that optimized either).

But, what happens if Google shifts their formula and/or ranking? I might lose that entire line of financial income! I’ve banked on it continuing to be a profit center but I’m not hedging my bets, so to speak, as wisely as I could. And, I’m not building a successful long-term brand with exposure through social media, social networking, and referral sites.

In addition, direct traffic increase not only brand awareness but also long-term followers and subscribers, extremely targeted traffic, exceptional loyalty (which can be capitalized long-term), and lead-generation for products, services, and small businesses. All good, right?

The point is this: Diversifying your sources of traffic is wise idea and you should try to balance your efforts from social networking site as well as organic search and depending on your particular goal (direct monetization vs organic monetization) you’ll focus on one more than the other.

It’s up to you. Cheers!