Successful High Organic Traffic Sites We Can Learn From

There are websites which enjoy incredible traffic volumes and most of it is derived via Google’s search engine. And as you’ll see below, the traffic these sites enjoy represents a huge cash value and has a PPC estimated equal value too.

What’s happened is Google changed its algorithm and shifted traffic to the largest corporations, news sites, and non-profit websites.

The corporate success story with Google is unfair, but it still provides us with valuable ranking insight we’ll need to grow our own big ranking success story.  One of those elements may be your budget.

The Building Blocks of Big Success

And when you combine big promotional budgets with strong original content creation from expert creators, along with a strong value proposition, you can generate real significance with both search engines and consumers. It seems unfair that companies with the biggest budgets enjoy high Google rankings. Their money creates awareness, buys skill and production of content and promotions, which gets reach and hammers home their value proposition.

If this list shows us anything, it is the power of big budget marketing topped off with strong search engine optimization. Previously, big monied corporations were oblivious to organic rankings and traffic, but today this huge added traffic (taken from smaller companies and publishers) has changed their perspective.

Many including Citibank, discovered that Google organic traffic was a huge source of leads, but that these consumers tended to convert better to sales and revenue. It’s value multiplied.

Now you’re wondering, can a small to mid-sized businesses copy the marketing strategy of large companies to win a keyword niche? That’s a question a lot of business owners fail to ask. They assume you can’t. In fact, you can compete and win against the organic traffic behemoths. Take a closer look at the posts on Advanced SEO, Advanced SEO strategy, content strategy, and backlink building.

Any startup in Fintech, Realtech, or for travel companies or digital marketing can enjoy stellar results. A good sized budget gives you the expertise, time and resources needed to launch a spectacular effort, and to win allies and important connections.

Big brands rarely have time or will to build an organic traffic machine, and this lack of drive and strategy gives small businesses the opening on the free traffic battlefield.

10 Top Organic Traffic Websites for 2022

Wikipedia.org

As the graphic below shows, Wikipedia is likely the world’s number one organic traffic website. It had 3 key things that created this phenomenal traffic flow:

• user-generated content where people contributed information they were experts in
• spam content generators who linked to it to confuse Google’s spam team and algorithm
• students visiting as an easy info resource for their homework and linking to it from their college or personal website

Internet users need a resource they can link to for many reasons, and Wikipedia fulfilled all of those user needs. The end result is a billion SEO clicks per month and rankings on 177 million keyword phrases. The lesson for us is that relevant content, on a site that is significant to users (branding) and one supported by content creators and those the site exalts, draws a lot of support that Google takes notice of.

Fandom.com

Consumers are fans of movies, games, TV, videos, and more. Fandom is a popular wiki which draws a staggering 196 million free organic clicks per month. It’s success is likely due to video games, movie characters and anime stars which many young people became familiar with as they play games and watch movies during the pandemic.

Fandom tells us about the power of popularity and entertainment and that fun and engagement are deliverables via content and search engine optimization. Corporations are often not topical, fun or entertaining which gives smart startup entrepreneurs an opportunity to enter the SEO battleground.

Yelp.com

When consumers need a go to resource to find small businesses like plumbers, electricians, salons, restaurants and service shops on Google, they find Yelp.com. 1.5 million search engines click on links to Yelp pages, which generally act as a huge directory of local businesses.

When Yelp built it’s power and presence as an updated directory just when Google was beginning to favor local search, Yelp was in the driver’s seat. We must always remember that local is relevant to consumers and B2B buyers and being in many places can help a lot.

Tripadvisor.com

For the past two years, the online travel market has been subdued but now, post pandemic, travelers are looking to find a great vacation experience. As the most well-trafficked travel website, visitors find the hotels, vacation packages, flights, cruises and travel information and reviews they need. Tripadvisor is part of group of related business websites that likely give it its ultimate ranking strength. Having allies and support websites is powerful and an advantage businesses don’t utilize enough. It’s an unfair advantage.

Webmd.com

Consumers are afflicted with all sorts of health issues and they’ve been going online for some time now to sites such as Webmd.com, healthline and the mayoclinic. It’s another site that utilizes medical experts to answer questions about health problems (expert content) and does some fact checking and background checking to ensure the answer is from a doctor or medical expert. With 47 million SEO clicks per month, they seem to have gotten it right. The lesson for us is that expert content with credibility and trustworthiness is important. Expertise inspires hope, confidence and brings focus for customers.

Indeed.com

Indeed is the leading job search resource ahead of Linkedin and Monster.com. 50 million job hunters and employers visit it via search engines each month. Indeed’s success came from its large database of jobs, nice layouts and well described job descriptions, salary ranges, skills, and more. It’s clean, professional appearance and specialization make it preferable for many to Linkedin and Monster.com. This tells us that good, clean presentation helps with user focus and experience, which is why people recommend it, share it, link to it and return repeatedly.

Apple.com

Apple is the world’s favorite mobile computing brand name. Although they have little of interest on their website, they do have a lot of customers. And Apple has a lot of reason for them to visit and return. Whether it’s the Apple App store for a mobile app, or their main marketing pages displaying their many products, having a loyal customer base pays big dividends for their SEO efforts. 117 million people visit via search engines and many more go direct to their website. Building and nurturing a customer base can generate stronger Google rankings and build an engaged audience that can impress Google’s ranking algorithm.

Allrecipes.com

Consumers love to cook, bake and eat and 12 million of them click through from search engines to allrecipes.com. There they find a big searchable catalog of food recipes including appetizers, deserts, breakfast ideas, along with full scale dinners. What allrecipes shows us is the power of good photography. Bloggers and journalists along with Pinterest users love to snip out and share a lot of their visual gems. For SEO, the lesson is clear that good visuals generate  ranking power, and reach and visibility across the web and onto social media.

Realtor.com

Well down in the top traffic sites in the US, at number 62 overall is Realtor.com. It has established itself as the first data resource for the US housing market with its monopoly on real estate data. It enjoys 23 million visitors per month with half of that coming from listings on search engines. The companies related sites include homes.com, moving.com, Barrons, Mansion Global, Harper Collins, MarketWatch, Storyfull, and Wall Street Journal. Thousands of Realtors and MLS associations link to Realtor.com as their home base touchpoint and source of credibility. The lesson for SEO’s is to have a website that provides an anchor of credibility, authority and trust for your audience.

Weather.com

The last in our series of high traffic websites we can learn from is weather.com. Every month, possibly every day, people check the weather forecast. Weather.com is relevant because they provide a forecast for today and for longer periods. That makes them relevant to almost everyone. Weather.com enjoys 16 million search engine clicks out of 20 million monthly organic referrals. That tells you most users go to Google to search, not necessarily direct to their site. The lesson for us is to have a content and a business service that is useful to people every day, to blog frequently, and have content they need to access a lot.

Each of top organic traffic websites listed on the ahrefs website gets their traffic and prominence different ways. Each offers a different lesson for us to incorporate into a sophisticated advanced SEO campaign.

It’s important to note that SEO isn’t magic. First and foremost it involves intelligent research using a variety of info sources and SEO software. After that it is the practice of building a formidable strategy that guides keyword choices, content topics, writing styles, benefits offered, resources utilized, and promoted strongly online.

Limits of Advanced Search Engine Optimization

There is only so much Advanced SEO can achieve on its own. SEO afterall is not a content creator, it is a technique to manipulate assets and messaging (brands).  As high ranking, high traffic websites often show us, strong value propositions, monopolies on assets, constant exposure, and wide business partnerships can compensate for weak, shallow content.

Small businesses do have an advantage in targeting niches, and building more interesting content for specific audiences. Power that up with a good sized budget and you can compete well above your weight class on Google. Find out more about Advanced SEO and content strategy and get pumped up about success on Google.

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