Sep 02, 2025
Casey Bjorkdahl is one of the pioneering thought leaders in the SEO community. In 2010, Casey co-founded Vazoola after working for a Digital Marketing Agency for five years in New York City. Vazoola is now one of the fastest growing and most widely recognized SEO marketing firms in the country.
If you're an agency or a digital marketer who's tasked with driving organic growth, you've likely felt the shift. Search is no longer just about rankings and keywords. AI-generated answers, zero-click results, and evolving algorithms are reshaping how visibility works.
The old playbook isn't obsolete, but it's incomplete.
Agencies that adapt quickly are seeing real gains. By combining AI-aware optimization with proven SEO fundamentals, it's possible to recover lost traffic and attract visitors who actually convert.
This guide breaks down eight strategies designed to help agencies stay ahead. From structured data to semantic keyword research, from UX audits to amplification tactics, it's all here—updated for 2025.
It's time to turn disruption into opportunity.
Key Takeaways
-
Organic traffic is still one of the most valuable channels for high-intent users.
-
AI is disrupting traffic patterns, but it’s also creating new visibility opportunities.
-
Combining AI optimization with classic SEO delivers the strongest growth.
Table of Contents
Quick Review: What Is Organic Traffic?
Let’s start out with the basics and define organic traffic in SEO. What is organic search traffic, anyway?
Organic web traffic, by definition, refers to the visitors who land on your site through unpaid search results. These types of clicks come from Google and other search engines people use to find your content when it's relevant to their queries. It’s free traffic that many times leads to long-term growth and conversions. Indeed, it’s one of the main reasons for SEO.
Unlike paid traffic, which relies on ad spend, organic traffic is earned through things like strong content, effective SEO, and consistent optimization. Organic search traffic reflects how well your site answers users’ questions, as well as if it matches their search intent.
High levels of organic traffic signal authority in your niche, especially when visitors hang around on your site, explore multiple pages, and come back for more.
How Are AI and LLMs Affecting Organic Traffic?
AI search tools like Google’s SGE and Bing’s chatbot answers are reshaping search. They give users instant responses without clicking a result.
This has spelled trouble for many bloggers and other web publications, many who experienced steep search engine traffic drops, even if they maintained a consistent search ranking.
In fact, as Forbes reported, AI-generated results have led to 60% of searches generating zero clicks. The search engine pulls its information from specific websites, but most users have little reason to visit those pages once they find their answer.
Still, AI depends on these very websites for content. If your site is trusted, it might be featured in an AI summary, which can give you a new path to visibility.
Is AI Really Driving Better Leads?
There’s a theory that AI-generated traffic is more qualified. But a study by SALT.agency analyzing over 671,000 AI referrals actually found lower engagement compared to traditional organic visitors.
What does this mean?
In short, AI-driven traffic isn’t guaranteed to convert better. Classic organic search still sends highly engaged visitors.
Why Is AI Flawed?
AI models can be inaccurate, biased, or outdated. In fact, MIT noted hallucinations—confidently wrong answers—are common in AI-generated content.
This phenomenon creates an opportunity. Accurate, well-structured human content helps users. That’s why it may be preferred by search engines and AI assistants alike.
AI tools also can misunderstand nuance or context, especially when they’re handling complex or sensitive topics. They can’t provide firsthand experience, emotional intelligence, or timely verification.
But by focusing on trustworthy, clearly written content that’s grounded in expertise, you can position your site as a reliable resource in an increasingly AI-saturated web.
How to Get Organic Traffic in the AI Age
Do you know how to get organic traffic to your website?
AI is absolutely shifting how search engines rank and display content, but that doesn’t mean it’s changed the fundamentals of good SEO.
To grow organic traffic in today’s environment, you need to pair traditional strategies with AI-specific enhancements. That means optimizing for both people and algorithms.
Here’s our comprehensive, updated approach that reflects what works in 2025.
1. Embrace AI Optimization
Let’s face it: AI isn’t going anywhere, so your strategy really needs to include optimization for its use in search. That starts with formatting content in ways that AI can easily understand: Use clear headings, defined sections, and summary boxes.
Structured data like schema markup gives AI even more clues about what’s on your page. By adding concise definitions and direct answers to common questions, you can improve your chances of appearing in AI-generated results.
While you’re at it, keep tabs on AI-driven updates in search tools so you can adjust your content approach accordingly.
Beyond FAQ and How-To schema, experiment with newer or less common structured data like Speakable, FactCheck, or QAPage to increase your chances of being featured in AI summaries or voice search responses.
2. Do Keyword Research the 2025 Way
Modern keyword research focuses on natural language and user intent.
Start by identifying how your audience speaks; look at the questions they ask on forums or in voice search. Use tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, and Trends to track long-tail opportunities.
Think about context: Keywords should reflect real-world problems, not just search volume. A good strategy is to include a combination of evergreen keywords and timely topics that speak directly to current trends in your industry.
For more tips and tricks, review our top keyword research tips.
Segment your keyword tracking to isolate queries that often result in zero-click behavior (e.g., definitions, calculators, weather, etc.). Then tailor your content to win featured snippets or AI-generated summaries by using concise, fact-first answers in the first 100 words.
3. Create Quality, Relevant Content
Helpful content is still the core of strong SEO. That much hasn’t changed. Make sure you focus on what your audience needs and provide answers better than your competitors.
Add unique insight, real examples, and up-to-date statistics to showcase your expertise. Use formatting like subheadings, images, and bullet points to make your content easy to consume. Avoid fluff… get to the point, and make each paragraph worth your reader’s time.
Check out our guide on the sort of content Google loves.
4. Follow On-Page SEO Best Practices
On-page SEO includes everything you can control within your content and site structure. A few strategic tactics for on-page SEO include:
-
Optimize your title tags with keywords, but keep them under 60 characters for readability.
-
Add meta descriptions that summarize your page and encourage clicks.
-
Use alt text for images
-
Keep your URLs short and meaningful
-
Interlink related posts.
These small technical details will help search engines understand and accurately rank your content. For more details, you can take a look at our on-page SEO guide.
Use internal linking not just for navigation but to concentrate link equity to high-value pages. Use tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to identify orphaned pages and pages with low internal link count, then strategically build internal links using varied but relevant anchor text.
5. Build Links
Backlinks are still a powerful ranking signal. Focus on acquiring links from high-authority sites in your industry. You can do this through guest posting, digital PR, and creating resources that others will want to cite.
Outreach takes time, but even one strong link can significantly boost a page’s visibility. Avoid shortcuts, and don’t buy low-quality links; those tactics risk penalties and often do more harm than good.
We recommend our ultimate link building guide to explore proven strategies that really work.
Use tools like Ahrefs or Majestic to identify backlinks your top competitors have recently lost. Reach out to the referring domains with a timely, tailored pitch that offers your updated or better resource as a replacement. Prioritize links from editorial content, as these often carry more authority and trust.
6. Do Regular Technical SEO Health Checks
Technical issues can hold back even the best content. Make sure search engines can crawl and index your pages by checking your robots.txt file and XML sitemap.
Use PageSpeed Insights to identify slow-loading pages, and fix issues like uncompressed images or heavy JavaScript.
Mobile-friendliness is another priority; test how your site performs on different devices. Regular audits help you catch problems early… before they impact your search rankings.
Learn how to audit your site in our article about technical SEO audits.
Study Google Search Console’s Indexing report to understand how long your domain typically takes to get new content indexed. Time your publishing and promotional push accordingly to maximize crawl and engagement velocity within that window.
7. While You're At It, Do Regular UX Audits
User experience is now a ranking factor.
A UX audit examines how easy it is for people to use your website. Check for things like clear navigation, logical content flow, and fast-loading pages. Watch your user behavior so you can see when and where they drop off or get confused.
Improving UX not only keeps visitors on your site longer, but it also tells search engines that your content is trustworthy and valuable.
8. Amplify Your Content
Once content is live, don’t just wait for traffic. You have to promote it.
Share your blog posts on social media, include them in email newsletters, and collaborate with partners to increase your visibility. You even can repurpose strong content into multiple formats. For example, you can turn articles into videos, slides, or even infographics. Sure, it takes a few extra steps, but the results are well worth the effort.
Remember, the more places your content appears, the more chances it has to earn backlinks and engagement… and the more likely it is to boost organic traffic.
Our guide on amplifying content has eight ways to get started.
Move beyond just publishing relevant content. Strategically develop interconnected clusters of content around a single subject to build topical authority. Use natural language processing tools to identify semantic gaps and related entities to target.
How to Increase Organic Traffic With a Modern SEO Plan
Do you know how to increase organic traffic to a website? It makes no difference if it's your own site or you're optimizing it for a client, increasing organic traffic in 2025 requires a combination of old and new techniques.
There's no question that you still need high-quality content, smart keyword targeting, and strong technical SEO. But you also have to start thinking like artificial intelligence.
Make sure you structure your pages so AI tools can understand and cite them. Improve your UX so people stay longer, and promote your content to build better awareness and trust.
If you’re serious about growing your business, there's never been a better time to revisit your whole SEO strategy. Does it stand up to current standards of SEO excellence? Is it optimized for answer engines as well as traditional search?
Start with applying our eight straightforward steps, and make sure you keep refining your process. Remember, the SEO job is never truly done.
Search engines are evolving, after all, but that means your chance to stand apart is stronger than it's ever been.
And that’s how to increase SEO traffic in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions About Increasing Organic Traffic
Can you buy organic traffic to your website?
No, you can’t buy organic website traffic. Organic traffic must be earned. Buying "organic" traffic usually means low-quality or fake clicks, which can actually harm your site. It's better to invest in legitimate SEO tactics like content and link building that lead to lasting results.
How much does SEO increase traffic?
Search engine optimization results vary, but a solid SEO strategy can create substantial growth in organic visits within about 6 to 12 months, especially for currently under-optimized sites. The actual organic traffic lift will depend largely on how competitive your niche is and how much effort you invest in SEO.
How do you determine website traffic?
It's so important to monitor how much traffic your site gets by using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These and similar tools show details like where your visitors are coming from, what pages they're viewing, and how they found your site. Make sure you focus on "organic search" to track unpaid search visits. That will measure your SEO campaign's success over time.