Are you wondering how often your site pops out of the search list? Are new customers able to search for you online? A website is more than just about posting your products and services on your online pages. You cannot expect customers to come running because you have an attractive and easy-to-navigate site.
If you feel overwhelmed by everything you need to do to drive your website traffic, you’re not alone. Many businesses struggle to think of fresh and creative strategies to boost website traffic. But for you to fully understand and learn what you should do to help you with it, this article will help you answer the following:
- What is Website Traffic?
- Why is Website Traffic Important?
- What are the Different Types of Web Traffic?
- What are the Effective Strategies to Drive Website Traffic?
What is Website Traffic?
The number of website visitors over a given period is referred to as “traffic.” It can be accurately logged and is divided into two types of visitors:
- Regular Visitors – regular visitors are loyal customers who bring in consistent traffic.
- One-time Visitors – one-time visitors are looking for specific information and are frequently directed to the website via search engine enquiries.
Web traffic is the communication between your computer and the site’s server when you visit a website. For a Web-based business, the amount of traffic and the details of each visit are incredibly useful data. The server computer records every request for a Web page, allowing its operators to identify which pages receive the most attention.
Why is Website Traffic Important?
Knowing how many people visit your website isn’t enough in digital marketing. You must also be aware of where they are coming from and all the other useful data. Web traffic analysis provides you with concrete, trustworthy information about your customers’ preferences.
The number of visitors to a website is a good indicator of how engaging it is to your target audience. A website’s goal is typically to attract as many visitors as possible. Higher traffic often means more advertising revenues or sales, which is why the number of website visitors and revenue growth are frequently linked to each other.
The quality of your site is critical in sustaining consistent visitors. The content, as well as the design, must be of high quality and offer visitors value.
What are the Different Types of Web Traffic?
Some visits are more valuable than others. Understanding the different traffic sources that direct visitors to your site will help you determine how to improve it.
Here are the different types of sources of web traffic:
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic, as the term implies, refers to users who arrive at your website without first going through a search engine. This includes visits from a number of origins, including:
- People who have typed your website’s URL directly into their search bar.
- People who have visited your website through the URL in their favourites or bookmarks.
- People who have used email software to click on a link in a non-indexed document or an opened email.
Returning users and customers will make up the majority of direct traffic to most websites. After all, if a user knows the URL, they are likely to have already visited your website. In many circumstances, returning users will only need to write the first few characters of a URL, and the browser’s autofill function will take care of the rest.
Referral Traffic
This form of web traffic refers to visitors who arrive at a website via a link from another website, such as a blog or a forum. It’s also known as external links.
Participating in active link-building activities to increase referral traffic is quite beneficial. It shows Google that people are interested in linking to your site. It implies that users perceive the value of your website and desire to share it with others.
External links from trusted sources will boost your website’s online authority and provide a signal to Google that it is trustworthy. Google gives higher rankings to trustworthy websites!
Email Marketing
Any traffic that arrives on your website as a result of email marketing initiatives is known as email traffic. If you’re running email marketing campaigns, you can track how many people are visiting your site as a result of your communications.
Email marketing management software gives you a lot of data about your delivery rate, open rate, link clicks, total clicks, unique clicks, and so on.
Social Media Traffic
Visitors who arrive after clicking on a social media post are referred to as social media traffic. This kind of traffic may come from:
- etc.
Your website will receive social traffic every time a user clicks a link you’ve included in a post, image, or tweet. Understanding how much social traffic your website receives, in addition to the data offered by each platform’s analytic tools, is invaluable information.
Paid Media Ads
Visitors that arrive after clicking on a pay-per-click ad on a social network are referred to as a paid traffic.
Ads on social media can effectively attract people to your site and provide statistics on how they behave once they arrive. Social ad networks can give you a lot of information about your campaigns, such as demographics and user interests.
Paid Search Ads
Users that arrive at your site after clicking on a Google Ads or other PPC platform ad fall into this category. Search engine advertising is a great addition to organic positioning or SEO strategies for generating short-term traffic.
Offline Traffic
The majority of traffic comes through digital platforms. However, visitors may have reached at your website via offline channels such as:
- Letters
- Brochures
- Flyers
- In-store presence
Getting offline traffic to your website can be as simple as letting your audience know it exists. After that, people can browse and learn more about your business whenever they want.
Organic Traffic
The number of users who find your website through a SERP (search engine results page) without clicking on a paid advertisement is referred to as organic traffic. In the long run, this form of online traffic can account for a large percentage of total visits.
Organic traffic is frequently claimed to be free, although this is not totally accurate. Although you are not charged for each click, SEO requires an initial investment of time and resources, as well as ongoing maintenance.
What are the Effective Strategies to Drive Website Traffic?
There are a couple of free and paid ways you can use to increase your website traffic.
Free Website Traffic Initiatives:
- Optimise Your Google Business Profile
Did you know that a fully optimised Google business listing receives up to 7x the number of visits as one that is incomplete? Remember that your listing contains a link to your website, so this is an excellent approach to increasing traffic to your site.
If your listing contains all of the information a potential consumer requires to make a decision, they may choose to contact/visit your business directly rather than visiting your website–which is even better!
- Conduct Keyword Research
Include relevant keywords in your content at all times. Keywords should be used throughout the text, including in the meta description, page title, URL, headers, and a few other places. You can utilize tools like Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to conduct keyword research.
- Perform on-page SEO
The process of optimising web pages for specific keywords in order to boost search visibility and traffic is known as on-page. It entails matching keywords to page-specific elements, including title tags, meta descriptions, headings, content, and internal links.
Produce high-quality content that your audience is looking for and write concise meta descriptions for your pages to improve your on-page SEO.
- Build Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to your own. Backlinks from related businesses or industry influencers will not only increase the visibility of your company but will also drive qualified visitors to your website.
Furthermore, Google notices backlinks and will place more trust in your company if it detects other reliable websites linking to yours.
- Post & Engage On Social Media Sites
One of the most popular free marketing tools is social media. To promote blog posts and other important pages on your website, choose a social media platform appropriate for your target audience.
You can include page URLs on all of your social media posts to help drive your website traffic. Make sure to maintain engagement online. Remember, you should always be where your customers are.
- Initiate Email Marketing
You can send regular newsletters or promotional offers to your customers through email. Provide them with relevant information as well as links to pages on your website where they can learn more, such as blog posts and landing pages for specific offers. This can help in increasing traffic to your website.
- Study Your Analytics
Google Analytics is free to use, and the information it provides can help you increase website traffic. Use tracked links in your marketing efforts and review your website stats on a regular basis.
This will allow you to determine which content strategies and types succeed, which ones require improvements, and which ones you should avoid.
Paid Website Traffic Initiatives:
- Google Ads
You pay to have your website appear at the top of search results for specific keywords with Google Ads. When certain keywords are used in a search, Google evaluates all accounts bidding on those keywords and displays and ranks the paid results based on the quality and relevancy of the advertisement.
Paid search results appear first on the results pages, at the very top. This form of exposure is an excellent approach to attracting more potential visitors to your website.
- Google Maps Ads
You may also use the Google Ads platform to set preferences so your business appears at the top of Google Maps search results.
There will be a paid result indicator next to your listing, just like with ordinarily paid search advertisements, but the visibility you get from being at the top is priceless.
- Social Media Ads
While you pay to appear in the top rank for relevant searches with search advertising, you pay to appear in relevant feeds with social media advertising.
You can target the type of audience you want to appear in front of with both types of advertising, but social media enables better targeting due to greater psychographic data.
- Display Ads
Branded banner advertising that appears on relevant websites is known as display ads. If you’re a catering company and your ad is on a website about food and events, your ad is likely to bring in relevant traffic.
- Retargeting Ads
Advertisements for retargeting might appear on websites or in social media feeds. They are shown to visitors who have already visited your site and are, therefore, more likely to return.
Let’s Drive Your Website Traffic Now
After going through this post and trying the given strategies, you can expect an increase in website traffic for your business over time. While some of these strategies bring immediate rewards, others will require more time and patience.
If you think that this is a lot of work on your end and you don’t have the luxury of time to do all the initiatives yourself, hiring an SEO agency can also be a viable alternative, as they can provide useful insights and conduct audits to uncover issues that are preventing your site from being seen in search engines.
