Website traffic is the number of visits a website receives in a given time period. Naturally, any website is looking to get a steady pool of visitors and consistently grow. More than that, businesses are competing for not just any traffic but targeted traffic that can bring them qualified leads and loyal customers.
Major Websites Traffic Sources
You might want to get clicks from various channels from ads and from social media to personal recommendations. All the sources require separate efforts and you need to understand which of them work for your business and which are the most important to focus on.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic means getting clicks from searches. To attract users looking for answers on Google or another search engine, You’ll have to make it to the top 10 results and make your page stand out among all others.
How to increase website traffic from organic search
- You need to start by building an SEO strategy and the number one task here is keyword research.
- You might need a keyword tool with a huge database to find what queries users type to find your competitors and information relevant to your business.
- After collecting a website’s keyword list, filter all your queries to have manageable groups divided by search intent, formulation, specification, or any other criterion.
- Analyzing the competition is also a part of SEO basics.
- Find out what pages of competitive domains are top performing in search for your target keywords and visit them to get the idea of why they are ranking high and how you can do better.
- All of the above falls short if you don’t take care of technical SEO. Secure your site with the latest protocol and encryption, make all your important pages easily accessible for search bots, and optimize page experience factors so that it doesn’t take long for your content to load and become interactive.
Pros
- This source of traffic significantly outperforms all others.
- It offers durable results
- You can do SEO on a small budget.
Cons
- It takes time for your SEO efforts to pay off
- There are many aspects to take care of and different specialists to involve.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic means visitors that come from advertising like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Unlike other sources, paid traffic comes at a certain price and the more you pay, the more likely you are to win new customers.
How to maximize paid traffic
- Make sure your landing pages are relevant to your ads.
- Use ad extensions to better structure your ads and make them more appealing
- Decide which advertising platforms work best for your business
- Regularly review your keyword list and segment it to create more effective PPC/Google ads based on groups of keywords.
Pros
- You can reap the benefits really fast and can start getting clicks the same day you launch the ads.
- It allows for precise targeting you can set the exact demographics to get your ad shown to and receive highly qualified traffic as a result.
Cons
- Its results are temporary
- It is expensive
Email Traffic
Email traffic means users were brought to your website from your email marketing efforts. To do so you need to grab attention in the subject line and keep the emails informative, engaging, and personalized.
How to grow email traffic
- Consistently grow your email list and make sure that your website offers an opportunity to subscribe whenever it’s relevant.
- Working on each email.
- Craft personalized messages in the emails.
- Experiment with frequency and be consistent in your email communication.
Pros
- This traffic source has the highest ROI.
- It helps build trust and loyalty with customers
Cons
- It’s traffic source has the beginning when you have to collect an email list
- It takes a lot of effort to segment
Social Media Traffic
Social media traffic is users from social networks. As an important part of inbound marketing, social media helps gain prospects by engaging with the audience through the content.
How to boost traffic from social media
- Develop a publishing schedule with regard to each platform’s nature.
- Make your posts as engaging as possible.
- Automate when it makes sense.
Pros
- It allows for direct communication with the audience and increasing loyalty to your brand and to what your are offering.
- It helps build a website authority.
Cons
- Social networks are unpredictable and content may get viral for no justifiable reason.
- A lot of social media traffic is left trackable.
Referral Traffic
Referral Traffic means visits from other websites. Getting sources to refer to you and place your links in their content relies on link building practices and PR activities.
How to generate referrals
- Submit your business to relevant listings and directories.
- Research opportunities to get mentioned on review platforms.
- Contribute to authoritative sources to share expertise.
- Cooperate with industry experts.
Pros
- It expands your reach for the target audience.
- It has lots of free opportunities to grow traffic.
- It opens up new connections and facilitates relations with media.
Cons
- There might be speculative link placements so you have to monitor if low quality or irrelevant websites refer to you.
- You have no control over who sees and follow your links.
Important Traffic Metrics
Besides knowing the differences between traffic sources and the methods of benefiting from them, you need to know how to track your web site visits. Here’s the list of the metrics you’ll see in Google Analytic.
- Users and new users
- Sessions
- Source and medium
- Bounce rate
- Average time on a page and session duration
- Events and goals
- Demographics
- Interests
- Technology
Most importantly, continuously analyze your sources and spikes in traffic to define what approaches are most successful and what potential markets there are to explore. Get a Google Analytics report on traffic emailed to you so that you never miss a thing and stay on track with your traffic strategy.
