Get the most out of your top traffic sources and website traffic – discover how to optimize and leverage each source to help you compete for traffic, drive targeted traffic, and generate more leads, sales, and qualified customers.
Website traffic is the number of visits a website receives in a given period of time. Naturally, any website seeks to attract a steady stream of visitors and grow consistently. Furthermore, businesses compete not just for any traffic but also for targeted traffic that can bring them qualified leads and loyal customers.
Understanding where traffic comes from and how to track website traffic is an integral part of any digital marketing and SEO strategy. In this post, we’ll look at the main traffic sources, how they differ from each other, and how to make the most of them.
Main sourcesTo bring visitors and trafficFor websites
You may want to generate clicks from a variety of channels: from search to advertising, from social media to personal recommendations. Each source requires separate efforts, and you need to carefully understand each one, which one is best for your business or brand, and which one is most important to focus on.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to getting visits and traffic to your website through clicks from search engine results. To attract users searching for answers or information on Google or any other search engine, you’ll need to rank within the top 10 results (results on the second page have a click-through rate of less than 1%) and make your page stand out from all the other results. Search engine optimization should be your most consistent investment because it’s responsible for more than half of your website’s total traffic.
Advantages of organic search:
- This traffic source far outperforms all others.
- Provides permanent results.
- Unlimited opportunity: There is no limit to the number of pages and keywords you can have in a search.
- You can do SEO on a small budget.
Disadvantages of organic search:
- It takes time and effort to make your site compliant with your SEO standards for it to pay off.
- There are many aspects to take care of and you will need to engage different professionals to make this happen (SEO, developers, content marketers, copywriters, etc.).
Read also: Types of websites and their purpose: What is the purpose of websites ?
How to improve organic search traffic:
- You need to start building your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, and the first task here is keyword research . You may need a keyword tool with a huge database to find the queries users type or search for in search engines, to find your competitors, and to find information relevant to your business. After compiling a list of keywords for your website, filter all your queries into manageable groups divided by search intent, phrasing, specification, or any other criteria.
- Competitive analysis is also part of SEO basics. Discover which pages in competitive domains perform best when searching for your target keywords and visit them to get an idea of why they rank high and how you can do better to compete with them. See also: Most searched topics and keywords on Google .
- Useful and relevant content is the most important ranking factor . Incorporate all the insights from your keyword and competitor research into your landing pages, blog posts, and other pieces of content—make sure your web pages are authoritative and easy to read. Consistency and regular publishing are also important: For example, websites that publish more than 16 blog posts per month are 3.5 times more likely to receive search engine traffic than those that publish 4 or fewer.
- Links are another important factor for gaining search engine rankings . Build a broad network of strong backlinks by finding high-quality domains and linking to your pages. This is possible if your website’s content is unique, professional, and exceptional, and others would want to share it.
- All of the above is pointless if you don’t pay attention to your website’s SEO technical standards. Secure your site with the latest protocols and encryption, make all your important pages easily accessible to search engines, and optimize page experience factors so your content loads quickly and is interactive.
Paid Traffic
Paid or sponsored traffic refers to traffic or visitors that come from advertising, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Unlike other traffic sources, paid traffic comes at a price, and the more you pay, the more likely you are to gain new customers. Naturally, you also have expenses when working with other traffic sources, such as hiring specialists, purchasing tools, etc. But with paid traffic, you pay exactly to publish your content and deliver it to your target audience.
Advantages of paid traffic:
- You can reap the benefits very quickly and can start getting clicks and visits the same day you launch your ad campaign.
- It allows you to precisely target (reach the target audience) : You can set precise demographic characteristics such as age, interest, or geographic range for the target audience in the sponsored advertising campaign so that your ad is displayed to the target audience who may be interested in your site’s content to receive high-quality traffic as a result.
Disadvantages of paid traffic:
- Its results are temporary .
- It can be expensive : Monthly spending on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can exceed $10,000 even for small and medium-sized businesses.
How to improve paid traffic:
- Determine which advertising platforms best suit your business or website niche.
- Create an advertising strategy that includes pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media advertising, and display advertising (if these types are relevant to your business or website’s niche). Develop your campaigns around each medium: For example, with PPC, you can target precise search results , while with Facebook ads, you can better target demographics, age groups, or audiences within a specific geographic area.
- Review your keyword list regularly and segment it to create more effective PPC ads based on keyword groups.
- Use ad extensions to improve your ad structure and make it more attractive.
- Make sure your landing pages are relevant to your ads. If they don’t, you won’t get the traffic or visitor traffic you want.
Email Traffic
Email traffic refers to the users or visitors brought to your website through email marketing campaigns . When sending information about your services, news, or promotions to your customers and potential customers, you need to ensure that your emails are opened, read, and links are followed. To do this, you need to grab attention in the subject line and keep your emails useful, engaging, and interesting.
Advantages of email marketing:
- This traffic source has the highest ROI ( $38 for every $1 spent on average).
- Helps build trust and loyalty with customers.
Disadvantages of email marketing:
- At first, you may have difficulty gathering an email list or creating a mailing list.
- It takes a lot of effort to segment the audience you want to email and experiment with schedules and tactics that work best.
How to increase email traffic:
- Continuously expand your email list and make sure your website offers an opportunity or box to subscribe to emails whenever appropriate. When working on each email, segment your list according to stages in the sales funnel or another criterion to provide people with the most useful content.
- Craft personalized messages in your emails and make your CTAs clear (use action words and buttons to make them more engaging).
- Design your emails to look beautiful and work properly on any device and screen resolution. 41% of emails are opened on mobile devices, so your design should be responsive first.
- Try repetition and be consistent in your email communications.
Social Media Traffic
Social media traffic refers to the process of attracting visitors or users from social networks. As an important part of inbound marketing, social media helps you gain leads by engaging with your audience through content.
Advantages of social media:
- It allows for direct communication with the audience and increases loyalty to your brand and what you offer.
- It helps in building popularity and reputation of the website.
Disadvantages of social media:
- Social networks are unpredictable and content can spread for no apparent reason.
- A lot of social media traffic is left untracked: When users share links to websites using their social accounts, it comes as an unidentified source of traffic.
How to increase traffic from social media:
- Establish a posting schedule based on the nature of each social media platform. For example, it’s recommended to tweet 5 times a day and post on LinkedIn 2-5 times a week.
- Make your posts as engaging as possible. Use media like images and videos, ask questions, and make each post interesting. Take advantage of text-to-video tools to turn your articles into stunning videos you can share on social media.
- Automate posting when possible. There are many social media automation tools that allow you to schedule posts and display your message or posts at the appropriate time across multiple social media platforms.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic refers to visits from other websites. Obtaining referral traffic from sources that link to you and place your links in their content depends on link building practices and public relations activities. This can be through paid partnerships, earned free advertising, or mutual referrals. In all cases, having links to your website from external sources enhances your credibility and website’s standing and increases traffic to it.
Advantages of affiliate marketing:
- Expands your reach to your target audience (when links are placed appropriately).
- It has a lot of free opportunities to grow traffic and bring visits to your website.
- Opens new connections and facilitates relationships with media, influencers, affiliates, etc.
Disadvantages of affiliate marketing:
- There may be speculative link placements, so you need to monitor whether the websites you may be placing your links on are low quality or irrelevant.
- You have no control over who sees and follows your links.
How to improve and increase traffic from referrals:
- Submit your work to relevant lists and directories.
- Research opportunities to get mentioned on review platforms: Connect with websites that review businesses in your niche, and encourage your customers to leave reviews on review and rating platforms.
- Contribute to trusted sources to share experiences and mention your website in a natural way.
- Collaborate with industry experts, your niche, and influencers to introduce them to your website and share their opinions about it through their channels.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic refers to visits that occur when people know a website they need and type its address into their browser directly to visit and browse. Other types of traffic are also categorized as direct traffic in Google Analytics, including: clicks from bookmarks ; clicks from files, apps, or QR codes ; clicks from text messages or chat messages ; clicks from campaigns containing inaccurate tracking code , etc.
To gain direct traffic to your website, you need to make consistent efforts across all traffic channels and areas, including: working on search engine optimization , launching advertising campaigns , creating accounts for your website on social media , sending emails , and cooperating with referrals .
Pros of direct traffic or visits:
- It is a strong indicator of traffic and popularity.
You can also benefit from my previous article on: Bounce Rate – Improving User Interaction with Your Website.
Disadvantages of direct traffic:
- This creates tracking issues in Google Analytics and may show as unidentified traffic sources in this category.
Key metricsFor traffic and website visits
Besides knowing the differences between traffic sources and how to leverage them, you need to know how to track your website visits. Here’s a list of metrics you’ll see in Google Analytics:
- Users and New Users : The number of all unique visitors and first-time visitors in a given time period.
- Sessions : Number of visits including new and returning visitors (100 visits by the same person will be counted as one unique visitor but 100 separate sessions)
- Source and Medium : Where the user is coming from, where source refers to a specific traffic channel and medium refers to its general category (e.g., Google is the source and CPC is the medium)
- Bounce rate : The percentage of visitors who do not stay on a website but leave after visiting one page
- Average Time on Page and Session Duration : The first metric shows how much time users spend on each particular page and the second metric shows how much time users spend performing a particular action on a website.
- Events and Goals : Events are specific actions other than page views and event goals are the desired results you want to track (downloads, signups, etc.)
Apart from these metrics, you can monitor many other visitor-related attributes:
- Demographics : Age and gender.
- Interests : The categories and market segments that visitors are interested in.
- Demographics : The language version of the site and the geographic areas of the users.
- Technology : hardware, operating systems, screen resolution, etc.
Monitoring traffic metrics in relation to your conversion goals and learning more about your website visitors will help you optimize all promotional activities, generate more clicks and interactions, and bring visitors to your website. You should always understand what traffic your website generates from each specific source and how to measure your results across different channels.
Increase traffic to your website by leveraging all sources.
Making your business known and discussed, and increasing website traffic and customer engagement, are closely linked. To grow your website traffic and visitor numbers, you need to tap into all potential traffic sources and engage in activities that will pay off in the short and long term.
Expand your visibility by optimizing your website for search engines, creating paid advertising campaigns, and working on social media, emails, and referrals.
Most importantly, continually analyze your sources and sudden increases in traffic to your website to identify the most successful methods and potential markets or sources to explore. Try to regularly check your Google Analytics email traffic reports so you don’t miss anything and stay on track with your traffic strategy.
