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Key takeaways
- Organic traffic comes from search engines, not ads, and shows genuine interest in your content.
- Tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Semrush help track and analyse organic traffic.
- Regularly monitoring organic traffic helps you figure out what’s working, what’s not, and how to reach more people.
Ever wondered how many people find your blog because they’re actually interested in what you offer?
If so, this guide is for you.
Organic traffic is made up of people who find your site by searching for a keyword or phrase.
No ads, no tricks. Just genuine interest.
Search engines like Google — which makes up more than 91% of the global search engine market — drive this traffic.
They rank sites based on content quality and relevance.
So, if you have killer SEO (e.g. matches what people search for), you get visitors.
This traffic is gold for businesses.
It’s free.
It’s targeted.
It means your content is working.
But how do you check organic traffic?
How do you find out which keywords are leading people straight to you?
What are these people looking for that you seem to have?
With the right tools and resources (like this guide), you’ll realise it’s simpler than you think.
So… how to check organic traffic?
When it comes to checking organic traffic, there are heaps of tools available right at your fingertips.
Let’s take a look at four of the most useful.
Tool #1 — Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
If you’ve ever used Google Analytics 4 before, I know what you might be thinking:
“Oh, come on. Anything but GA4.”
Look, I get it.
And you’re not the only one who feels that way.
Since its launch, GA4 hasn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms.
Many people — marketers and everyday folks — found the upgrade way too complicated and hard to use.
I won’t sugarcoat it.
GA4 definitely has a learning curve.
But you can say the same about any tool.
Anyway, let’s keep it simple.
Here’s how you can easily learn how to check organic traffic in Google Analytics 4:
- If you haven’t already, sign up for Google Analytics 4 and connect your website.
- To view your organic traffic, click ‘Reports’ in the menu on the left-hand side of your screen.
- Then, click ‘Lifecycle’ followed by ‘Acquisition’.
- Press ‘Traffic acquisition’. This tab has all the data on your site traffic, including organic, paid, and direct traffic.
- Scroll down to see a more specific breakdown of your traffic sources.
- To only see your organic traffic, click ‘Add filter +’ and enter the following conditions:
- Under ‘Dimension’, press ‘Session default channel group’.
- Under ‘Match Type’, press ‘exactly matches’.
- Under ‘Value’, press ‘Organic Search’.
- Click ‘Apply’ and you’ll only see organic traffic.
Want to save your visitor numbers?
You can do that in GA4, too.
Learn exactly what info you can save and where to find it here.
Tool #2 — Google Search Console
Thought we were done with Google’s tracking tools?
Think again.
Google Search Console is another popular option for checking organic traffic — and for good reason.
It’s free.
It’s easy to use.
And it’s jam-packed with valuable insights. This includes detailed data on your site’s organic clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position.
It doesn’t only give you a peek at your site’s overall performance.
You can also see how each page is performing.
It tells you which landing pages are super popular and which ones are lagging behind.
From there, you can adjust your strategy as needed.
Here’s how to check organic traffic using Google Search Console:
- Sign in to Search Console using your Google account.
- From here, you should see a “welcome” message with two options. Press the first one.
- Enter your domain or subdomain.
- Verify your domain.
- Once that’s done, Search Console will start gathering data on your organic traffic.
Tool #3 — Ahrefs
When it comes to SEO platforms, Ahrefs is one of my personal favourites, largely because it offers free tools.
One of them is their Website Traffic Checker.
You can basically snoop on anyone’s online traffic.
Yours, your competitor’s, your former classmate who’s constantly bragging about his success on LinkedIn…
Anyone.
All you have to do is enter the URL in the domain field, then click ‘Check traffic’.
Ahrefs will give you an estimate of how much organic traffic that site gets.
You’ll also see other stuff like where these visitors are coming from and what keywords they typed into search to find the site.
The site tracker tool is free for website owners.
But Ahrefs also has a tonne of features in its paid plans.
Think tools like:
- Keyword explorer to find winning keywords that will help you rank and drive more organic traffic to your website
- Content explorer to find content ideas and linking opportunities in a database of over 15 billion web pages
- Images, Video, News search volume to see the estimated search volumes for different search types.
To find these bits of info, just do these
- Register for an Ahrefs account. You can view its paid plan options here.
- Add your website as a project in your dashboard.
- Verify ownership of your site by importing from GSC or with a DNS record, HTML tag, or HTML file.
Tool #4 — Semrush
Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights merges your Google Analytics, Search Console, and Semrush data all into one dashboard.
We’re talking CTR, sessions, and volume with organic keywords and rankings.
Plus, Semrush offers much more in-depth keyword insights than Google Analytics alone.
That’s because it draws on its own rankings and those from Search Console to find those keywords “not-provided” by Google Analytics.
So, Semrush doesn’t just break down your organic traffic.
It also gives you tools to bring more people in.
This is how to check the organic traffic of a website in Semrush:
- Register for a Semrush plan. You can view its paid plan options here.
- Once you’ve finalised your registration and logged into your account, you should see the home page/dashboard.
- From the menu on the left-hand side of your screen, under ‘Keyword Research’, select ‘Organic Traffic Insights’.
- In the domain field, enter the URL of the site you wish to track. Then, click ‘Get Insights’.
- This will lead you to your organic traffic report, which will include metrics like users, new users, sessions, avg. engagement time, and conversions.
- You can also check out how each of your top landing pages are doing. See which words people typed to find them, and how many people are actually visiting and sticking around.
Learn more about how to use Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights here.
Why is it important to keep track of organic traffic?
Knowing where your site visitors are coming from is like having a digital marketing cheat sheet.
Knowing who’s finding your website on their own (and keeping tabs) on them can benefit your business.
SEO strategies that actually work
Tracking organic traffic lets you see which search engines and keywords lead people to your site.
That means you can improve your SEO tactics based on real data.
Better SEO means higher rankings in search results.
Higher rankings lead to more visibility.
More visibility means more visitors.
More visitors mean more potential customers.
More traffic, less spending
Remember: organic traffic represents the people who find your site via unpaid searches.
Key word: unpaid.
Sure, you’ll need to invest in SEO to gain organic site visitors.
But you’re not paying per click (i.e. PPC) like you would with ads.
That means your return on investment (ROI) over time could be much higher.
Figure out what content actually works
Want to know if your stuff is popular?
Check out who found your website by searching.
Again, it’s not just about how busy your whole website is.
It’s important to also see how well each page is doing.
For example, let’s say you run an accounting firm.
You write a blog post you wrote called “The 10 Best Ways to Lower Your Tax By $5,000.”
It goes nuts, gaining you over 50,000 site visits in a week.
It’s a clear sign that your audience loves this kind of content.
The only logical move for you moving forward? To create more content like this.
Keep an eye on your visitors
Keeping tabs on your organic traffic isn’t a one-time job.
You need to keep track of things consistently.
Use those tools we talked about to follow the crowd and make smart choices for your website.
Whether it’s once a week or once a month, make sure to regularly check your organic traffic.
With the right tools and a bit of consistency, you’ll watch your organic traffic soar to new heights.
