Issue 06
Nathan Gibson · about five minutes
Organic traffic is visitors who arrive without you paying for the click. They come from a search, from a link on someone else’s page, or from a share. You did not bid for the visit. The page, the title, and the person who passed it on did that work earlier.
Search
Someone types a question. A search engine lists pages it expects will answer that question. Your article is on that list when the words on the page match the question and the address is readable. A title that promises an answer the page does not give will lose the visit on the way out.
Write the answer in the order a person would use it. Say what the thing is. Say what the person has to do. Say what does not count. A page of slogans answers a question nobody typed.
A link or a share
Another page links to you. A person sends your article in a text. Both count as organic when you did not pay for the placement. One friend is one visit. A link from a page that nobody reads is almost no visits. The number starts small because each visit is a choice.
You earn the share by being specific enough to forward. “Read this, it explains the steps” is a reason. “You should see my page” is not. The same rule as word of mouth applies here: the words have to travel without you standing next to them.
The visit is not the result
A person landing on the article has not completed an offer and has not joined anything. If the page does not say what to do next, they leave. One next step is enough. Read the method. When they are ready to use a tracked link, the offers page lists the invites and the steps beside them.
Count the visit, and count the next action separately. A hundred arrivals and zero people opening an offer means the page was found and the ask was missed. Fix the ask. Buying more visits copies the same miss.
Keep paid visits in their own count
An ad click is a visit you paid for. Fold it into the organic number and you can no longer see which pages earn their own readers. Count search, links, and shares on their own.
If that number stays near zero, the page is not being found or not being passed on. The work is the page: a clear title, a useful explanation, and a link someone can share. Pay for a click only after that page already tells the truth about the steps.