How Much Does Your Free Organic Traffic Cost?
The Real Value Of Free Organic Traffic
Any business that depends upon free organic traffic for customers or clients must recognize the value of their organic traffic. That means the vast majority of business owners that either do organic optimization in-house or employ a vendor or agency to optimize their organic presence, know that your FREE TRAFFIC IS NOT FREE. Treat your organic traffic with the same level of intensity that you use for your paid traffic, because organic traffic has value too!
Why Organic Traffic Is Not Free
What is your time worth? If your time is valued at $50, $75, or $250 an hour, can it be better spent doing something other than optimizing your web site? Average business person spends 8 to10 hours a month on their web marketing meeting, writing, tweaking, reviewing their internet strategies. At $100 an hour, that’s $800 to $1000 of time invested to drive “free” traffic. When you review your return on investment to find that your $1000 of time investment delivered client sign ups of $10,000 then you enjoyed a 10 to 1 ROI, which is great if that was your target. But if you signed up only $2,000 of new clients and the 2 to 1 ROI is not enough to keep the lights on, then maybe it’s time to rethink how your handle your free organic traffic.
Free Stuff Is Easily Discarded
Many studies have shown that perceived value of items correlates directly to how that item is treated. The difference between your evaluation of the benefits and costs of the item when compared with other costs and benefits becomes the perceived value. If you are given a “free” roller ball pen, you may use it every single day, but if you lose it, no big deal right? Now you are given a free Acme roller ball pen that you use every single day. If you lose this pen, will you feel the same as losing the plastic pen? Not so much. Even when both are free, the perceived value to you differs. Knowing the value of your organic visitors by source is a metric most successful online businesses monitor frequently.
How To Calculate The Basic Value per Visitor
The simplest way to calculate the value per visitor is to start with your desired outcome, in most cases profit. Then all you do is divide the total online profit by the total number of your visitors.
Simple Example:
Profit / Visitors = Visitor Value
An e-commerce retail website
$150/1,000 = $0.15 per visitor value
Professional Services Example:
A personal injury law firm with a 2% closing rate on auto accident cases.
$150,000 / 1,000 = $150 per visitor value
In the professional services example when you assign the visitor value to the 200 “free” contacts (form submissions and emails), that value of those contacts is actually not zero but $30,000. Will you handle your $30,000 of opportunity differently than you would handle free? Of course you will. So stop burning up contacts or leads, build a process to handle your valuable free organic traffic opportunities!
When you use visitor value data to make smart informed business decisions, then assigning the right focus to these business opportunities is the correct course of action. With a renewed focus on the value you are receiving, defining a processes to maximize your conversion of these opportunities, your business will flourish.
A seasoned digital marketing professional with over 20 years of expertise in digital marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, brand development, conversion optimization, lead generation, web development and data analytics. He is a strategic digital marketing thought leader in a multitude of business verticals including automotive, education, financial services, legal marketing and professional services.
