The Truth About SEO and Incrementality

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often viewed as “free” traffic. Because of this, businesses rarely scrutinize its incrementality the way they do with paid media. They celebrate when traffic graphs go up, regardless of where that traffic comes from or what it does.

But not all organic traffic is created equal. To drive sustainable growth, we need to apply the lens of incrementality to SEO.

The Branded Search Trap

The most common inflation of SEO value comes from branded search.

If a user searches for “YourBrandName” and clicks the first organic result, that is not an SEO win. That is a navigational query. The user already knew you; they were just using Google as a shortcut to your homepage.

If you pay an agency to “optimize” your site and they report a 20% traffic increase that is entirely driven by people searching for your brand name, they haven’t generated any incremental value. They’ve just ridden the wave of your brand awareness.

Incremental SEO: Non-Branded Intent

True incremental value in SEO comes from non-branded queries. These are users searching for a solution, a product category, or an answer to a question—users who didn’t know you before they searched.

• Non-Incremental: User searches “Nike running shoes” -> Clicks Nike.com.
• Incremental: User searches “best marathon shoes 2026” -> Finds Nike article -> Decides to buy Nike.

Capturing the second user is infinitely more valuable because it represents a net-new customer acquisition.

Quality Over Quantity

Authority-driven SEO focuses on high-intent topics rather than high-volume keywords.

It is better to rank #1 for a specific, high-intent query like “enterprise data warehouse pricing comparison” (100 searches/month) than to rank #1 for a broad term like “what is data” (10,000 searches/month) if your goal is B2B sales.

Measuring Organic Lift

Measuring SEO incrementality is harder than paid because you can’t easily run holdout tests (you can’t “turn off” your ranking for a control group). However, you can:

1. Segment Performance: rigorously separate branded vs. non-branded traffic in your reporting.
2. Measure URL Lift: When publishing content targeting a new non-branded cluster, measure the lift in total site conversions that correlates with traffic to those specific new URLs.
3. Watch the Baseline: Monitor your direct traffic and branded search volume. If organic traffic rises while these stay flat, you are likely capturing incremental demand.

Stop optimizing for “traffic.” Start optimizing for the queries that bring strangers into your funnel.