If you have a website, web or mobile application, or social media platform, your success will depend on how effectively you can attract traffic, and particularly well-targeted traffic, to your platform. The more targeted traffic you attract, the more likely you are to increase sales, leads, and your overall online presence. However, all traffic is not created equal.
While all traffic has value, organic traffic is generally going to be preferred over paid traffic (traffic generated through paid advertising), because organic traffic tends to attract higher-quality visitors. It’s more sustainable, it’s more cost-effective. Organic traffic can continue to grow without the need for ongoing costs, whereas paid traffic will stop the moment paid advertising stops. This means that the value of organic traffic can be calculateby comparing it to the same volume of traffic acquired through paid ads. If you are a digital marketer, understanding how to calculate the value of the organic traffic you can attract for your clients, or, in other words, how much it would cost your clients to attract the same traffic through paid advertising, is critical to effectively communicating the value of your services and their ROI.
How Different Tools Calculate Traffic Costs
There are several tools that calculate traffic costs including Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, and SpyFu. But they each estimate traffic costs a bit differently.
- Semrush: Semrush calculates its Traffic Cost metric by combining information about the keyword’s SERP position and its Google Ads cost-per-click (CPC). They also use clickstream data to determine the average click-through-rate (CTR). Then they take the average monthly search volume and the average CTR to calculate the total traffic a keyword gets. Finally, they combine these totals for all keywords that a site is receiving traffic to determine the total Traffic Cost.
- Ahrefs, Moz, and SpyFu: While there are slight differences, each tool uses similar approaches to Semrush when evaluating the value of organic traffic.
Key Takeaway
- While each SEO tool has its strengths, the comparative data size of Semrush’s keyword index (over 20 billion keywords) and its accuracy in providing search volumes that are closest to Google Search Console versus other tools, leads me to conclude that Semrush is the best source for getting the most accurate traffic cost results.
Semrush Traffic Cost Metric
Semrush is one of the most popular and industry-leading marketing platforms with tools for SEO, content marketing, competitor analysis, PPC, and social media management. Semrush Traffic Cost is a metric that estimates how much it would cost in paid ads to generate the same traffic through paid search ads. As a result, Semrush not only helps you create effective strategies but also allows you to measure the value of your organic traffic in dollars using the Traffic Cost metric.
The Semrush Metric Explained
Semrush Traffic Cost estimates the monetary value of your website’s organic traffic by calculating how much traffic a site gets from specific keywords and then calculating the average cost-per-click that advertisers pay for the keyword in Google Ads.
Key factors include:
- SERP Position: Your rank for given keywords.
- Average CPC (Cost-per-Click): The cost if you were running paid ads.
- Average CTR (Click-Through Rate): How often users click on your site after seeing it in search results.
These factors are combined to provide you with a clear picture of what your SEO efforts are worth.
Importance in Digital Marketing
As mentioned previously, understanding Semrush Traffic Cost is a key factor for communicating the value of digital marketing services and particularly regarding SEO services. As a digital marketer, this metric can also help you evaluate the success of your SEO strategies and by knowing the value of your organic traffic, you can make smarter decisions.
The traffic cost metric plays a role in:
- Budgeting: Allocate funds to SEO based on its estimated traffic value.
- Strategy Adjustments: Understand which keywords are worth investing more effort into.
- Competitive Analysis: Compare your traffic cost with competitors to find areas for improvement.
Using Semrush Traffic Cost can enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and help you drive more relevant traffic to your site.
Deciphering Organic Search Traffic
As mentioned previously, all traffic is not equal. But this doesn’t only refer to organic versus paid traffic because there are differences in the quality of organic traffic as well. Like all traffic, organic traffic has less value if it’s not targeted since non-targeted traffic will not bring you more leads and sales. So it’s equally important to evaluate the quality of the organic traffic you or your clients are getting and not just the volume.
To analyze this traffic, consider the following metrics:
- Total Visits: Total Visits provides details of your website’s traffic volume which includes both new and returning visitors within a specific time period.
- Session Duration: Longer sessions typically indicate that users find your content engaging.
- Traffic Sources: Understanding where your traffic comes from helps you optimize your targeting strategy.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR shows the percentage of users who clicked on your link after seeing it in search results. CTR is often associated with your Google Search Engine rankings with #1 rank results averaging between 25%-30% of all web traffic.
- Keyword Rankings: Utilize keyword analytics tools Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz for position tracking of targeted keywords to see how they impact your traffic.
- Bounce Rate: This is a key metric in understanding how targeted your traffic is. A high bounce rate most likely means that your landing page isn’t meeting the expectations of your visitors.
Products like SEMrush and Google Analytics are among the best tools to help you gather insights into the quality of your organic traffic and overall search performance. Also, website traffic analysis tools, like Google Search Console, can help track these important metrics. By consistently monitoring these details, you can refine your SEO strategies and improve overall website performance.
Building a Solid SEO Strategy
Building a successful and sustainable SEO strategy requires that you have effective tools to gather valuable insights and make informed decisions. Focusing on keyword research, solid SEO foundations, and using historical data will help you understand your organic traffic’s value and improve your results.
Comparing PPC Ads and Organic Traffic
While organic traffic is usually the best long-term strategy, PPC ads, especially Google Ads, provide instant visibility and produce faster results. When you run PPC campaigns, your ads can appear at the top of search results, attracting clicks almost immediately. For new businesses with little or no domain authority, competing with established sites for organic traffic can be challenging. Depending on the industry and the level of competition, it could take 6 months to 2 years (or longer) of consistent SEO efforts to build enough domain authority to compete for top-ranking positions.
It’s often a good idea for new businesses is to leverage Google Ads as an initial strategy while simultaneously building domain authority with a content strategy focused on targeting low-competition keywords as part of a consistent and methodical SEO strategy. Also, paid advertising can have the added benefit of improving domain authority by driving a steady flow of traffic to your website. Over time, the organic traffic gained through consistent SEO efforts could make it possible to reduce or completely eliminate the need for paid advertising.
When PPC Ads Can Be the Right Fit
PPC can be an effective way to drive traffic, but it’s essential to analyze its cost-effectiveness. By measuring the return on ad spend (ROAS), you can determine if your PPC campaign is worth the investment.
To assess this, calculate your total spend on Google Ads against the revenue generated from those campaigns. Keep an eye on the CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and adjust your bids based on performance.
If your budget is limited, focus on high-converting keywords. Use tools within SEMrush to identify these keywords’ performance, helping you allocate resources more wisely. Balancing organic efforts with PPC can maximize your results while keeping costs within budget.
Conclusion
Whether you are someone looking to improve your domain presence or a digital marketer looking to justify the value of their services to prospective clients, understanding the value of organic traffic is necessary.
Utilizing tools like Semrush that provide these types of insights with metrics such as Traffic Cost can help you quantify the true worth of a website’s organic traffic or the services you provide. Not only will this allow you to effectively communicate the value of your SEO efforts but this type of information can be used to help refine your marketing strategy.
It’s also important to consider that, while organic traffic will usually be the best long-term strategy for most businesses, paid advertising like Google Ads, can provide immediate benefits, especially for new businesses. In these cases, a balanced plan that makes use of Google Ads and SEO can combine the benefits of more immediate results from one with the consistent growth of organic traffic from the other.
