Website traffic is an important metric that indicates the popularity of a resource on the Internet. Shows how many people viewed pages per day, week, or month. By analyzing this indicator, you can understand what measures to attract the target audience are working.
Website traffic can be found using services such as Google Ads, Similar Web, PR-CY, etc. Some of them provide statistics for free, while others require payment.
Website traffic rate
Website traffic is the number of users who visit the resource in a certain period. The term “traffic” is often used. Traffic is data about site traffic for the reporting period: day, month, or year.
The site traffic metric lets you understand how interesting your resource is to users and whether it can compete with other sites.
The analogy between online and offline business is obvious:
- Online stores and selling sites can be compared to offline outlets. If you have ten customers daily, and competitors have 100, their sales will be higher.
- Information portals and news sites are also comparable to print media. If your magazine is bought by three people a week, and a competitor’s magazine by 200 people, then its materials are more interesting to readers. He will be able to earn more from advertising and selling his publication.
Through traffic research, entrepreneurs and marketers can:
- Conclude the saturation of the market and the demand for the product.
- Understand which companies are the strongest competitors.
- To identify traffic to competitors’ sites and find out where customers come from to rivals.
- Adopt methods to attract customers to the site.
- Develop an action plan to increase website traffic.
Pay attention to the following points:
- It is important not only to determine the site traffic but also to know the traffic trends.
- To attract visitors to the site, it is necessary to conduct advertising campaigns and other marketing activities. A website does not guarantee a high demand for a product.
Why is website traffic analysis important?
First, the traffic indicator shows how many customers were interested in your site at a certain time. It would be correct to include in the assessment of site traffic data where users come to the site from, what key queries they enter, and how much the implementation of advertising campaigns affects traffic. It is important to understand how customers behave after switching to a web service and how the number of new visitors changes over time.
- Website traffic and popularity data
Checking site traffic is necessary to assess its popularity and understand the volume of basic and paid traffic and its sources. When you get data on how the number of visitors changes over time, you can understand what influences their behavior and make the necessary changes.
- Characteristics and behavior of the target audience
It is important to know the needs of your target audience and their response to certain types of influence. If you can track the behavior of site visitors, then it will be easy for you to establish why they leave the web service or, conversely, make purchases.
- Benchmarking
It makes sense to find out the traffic indicators of a competitor’s website. You can use this data to determine your market position and the possible traffic amount. In addition, you will be able to observe the reaction of customers to the innovations that a competitor introduces and draw conclusions about their effectiveness. If a competent marketer works for you, he most likely owns several tools that allow you to analyze the semantic core of someone else’s site. This information can increase your portal ranking and improve your SEO results.
- The practicality of cooperation
It is important to know where customers come to your site. This information will be useful for organizing advertising campaigns.
Main sources of website traffic
In modern Internet marketing, there are several main traffic channels:
- Direct traffic (Type-in, Direct)
This metric gives you an idea of the number of customers directly landing on your website. That is, they typed the name or address of the portal in the search bar or got to it through bookmarks. It is this traffic that shows how many regular visitors your site has. These people know your company and use its services, not for the first time.
In any enterprise, advertising campaigns and other marketing influences aim to attract new customers and retain old ones. Accordingly, if the indicators of direct traffic do not grow over time or even fall, something urgently needs to be changed.
- Organic (search) traffic (Organic Search)
This type of traffic does not require investments on your part. People go to the site after seeing its information in the search results for a specific query.
In this case, the system concludes which sites best respond to a person’s request.
- Advertising traffic (Paid Search)
Shows the number of customers who came to your site thanks to advertising companies. This can be targeted advertising, media publications, contextual or banner advertising, CPA and teaser networks, and trading platforms.
- Traffic from social networks (Social)
This indicator means the number of customers who came to you from any social network. It can be Facebook, Pinterest, I In recent years, such platforms are gaining more and more popularity. People on them communicate and listen to music, buy various goods, order services, and get acquainted with the news.
Therefore, the importance of traffic from social networks must be considered. You must properly design your blogs and groups and maintain interest in them. Refrain from spending money on SMM. Some companies and online stores have completely transferred their activities to social networks. The psychological factor also plays a role here, that a person actively using such services is a priori ready to perceive new information.
- Referral traffic
It involves placing a link to your site on third-party sites. For these purposes, you can use the media, mutually beneficially exchange links with other services, and link to your portal in thematic groups, forums, and bulletin boards. Some organizations offer affiliate programs for participation in which certain bonuses are awarded to attract new customers to the company.
- Traffic from email newsletters
It has long been a known and popular method of attracting traffic. Customers receive emails and go to your site to learn more about the offer.
By identifying which traffic sources bring the most customers to you, you can understand which direction should be given more attention.
Four popular services to check website traffic
You can turn to specialized analytics services to learn how to view site traffic and identify traffic sources.
Similar Web
A great traffic analysis tool. It differs from analogs in that it provides its users with the following information:
- Traffic changes over several months. When using the free version, you can see the dynamics for the last three months and when paying for the tariff for the last year.
- The number of customers who use mobile phones or desktops to navigate the resource.
- Site traffic statistics for different traffic channels.
- The percentage of traffic from different channels. This will allow you to understand where the main number of visitors comes from.
Where does the service get traffic data from?
Similar Web management keeps most of the sources secret, but some of them are still known:
- Service search bots. They visit the site at a specified frequency and collect statistics on visits and the number of users on the site.
- Data received from Internet service providers. The analytics service cooperates with many such companies, buying information about the traffic of various sites and platforms.
- Use of own algorithms. The company has a unique technique for checking website traffic online, which makes it possible to identify various data based on general indicators. In addition, if you order a service for obtaining information for your site, you can allow Similar Web access to the counters of your site.
- Similar Web has a huge network of apps, plugins, and extensions that collect data from multiple sites.
Spymetrics
It is similar to Similarweb but still has some significant differences.
In the free version, the service provides website traffic statistics for the last six months.
In Similarweb, the use of the free version is only possible if the number of transitions to the portal exceeds 50,000 per month. Spymetrics works with any site, even those with low site traffic.
This feature saves money on research for small or new businesses.
PR-CY
A service designed for SEO analysis of the site. For this purpose, it is mainly used, but in addition to SEO data, PR-CY also shows website traffic statistics.
In addition, this resource provides information on the number of pages that rank high in search engines. At first glance, the service may seem overloaded with information. You will have to learn how to work with it, but then you can fully appreciate its convenience.
To obtain information, PR-CY analyzes publicly available sources.
Five free ways to increase website traffic
Before many owners of Internet resources, the question arises: how to increase site traffic. In 2023, this can still be done for free. To increase free traffic, you will have to make a lot of effort and spend a lot of time, but the investment will pay off after an increase in the flow of customers. You should not expect the measures taken to give an instant result: it will most likely take a long time to see the effect.
SEO – writing articles for key queries
This method seems accessible and obvious. It is important to remember that you must select topics for articles that are in demand among people. Creating a large amount of content that no one is interested in makes no sense. You can use statistics services and find out what search queries are most often typed by users. A free and popular tool for identifying this data is Yandex.Wordstat service.
To use it, you need to enter a phrase in the search box that matches the topic you are describing. The service will analyze it and show how often users request it in the search and what keywords and phrases they use.
Do not think that if you only include high-frequency questions in the article, this will help you get to the top. On the contrary, try to include the least popular key phrases in the text. The competition for them will be lower, which means that when a user types in such a request, the chances of him going to your resource increase.
You can not use the statistics service, but use the hints of the Yandex or Google search string.
Refinement and optimization of existing content/pages
You can modify the site’s existing pages to increase their ranking.
- Adding relevant queries to the text
The articles on your site may not consider all user requests. In addition, new key phrases are constantly appearing with which you can supplement the content. In the Google Search Console service, you can find out for which keywords a particular page ranks.
For you to be able to use this service, you must have a Google account and at least one connected resource.
- On-page optimization
If your site has technical problems, its chances of ranking high are reduced. Pay attention to the following points:
- Download speed. People like to start immediately. Users can close the tab and move on to another offer if your site loads slowly. You will lose potential customers and future profits. There are special services to check the loading speed of the site. For example, try Test My Site by Google. In addition to speed indicators, this service gives recommendations on how to improve download speed.
- Responsive design. Website pages should look good on any device. It is especially important to develop a mobile version of the site, as in recent years, more and more users have preferred to view information using gadgets rather than computers. You can check the site’s convenience for smartphone users using Google Search Console in a special report with “Mobile Usability.”
- The absence of prohibitions on indexing in the robots.txt file and the page’s presence in the sitemap. The sitemap.xml file gives the search engine information about which pages are in demand for crawling. For large sites, its presence is completely mandatory. The robots.txt file should not contain directives that prevent the robot from crawling important pages for the site.
In addition to all these factors, you need to ensure the site is open for indexing by search engines.
You can check which pages are indexed by Google in the Coverage section of the Google Search Console. In Yandex.Webmaster, indexing information is presented in the menu of the same name.
- Content optimization
All website content needs to be optimized for SEO. To do this, you can take the following actions:
- Check the uniqueness of the text. This can be done using free anti-plagiarism services. Content with low uniqueness scores should be rewritten or removed altogether. Search engines have a negative attitude to borrowing information to create their articles.
- Make sure that the text is easy to read. The optimal format is one in which the article has headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists.
- Add thematic pictures to the article and write the title and alt tags.
- Diversify the text with lists, quotes, tables, and video clips, highlighting important theses in color or font. Such techniques will captivate the reader and keep his attention. The search engine analyzes how interesting the article is for the user, including the time he spent reading the information. The more visitors linger on your site, the higher your ranking will be.
- Refinement of meta tags
Each page has a title (Title) and a description (Description), which make up a snippet (a block of information about the page of the site), which is important for search results. These elements are usually written manually, as this approach allows you to take a higher place in the ranking.
The title of the site and its description should be attractive and, at the same time, concise to make the user want to learn more about the product.
The Google Search Console Performance report shows examples of weak snippets. To view them, go to the “requests” tab and rank the results in ascending CTR.
If the page you are interested in has a large number of impressions but, at the same time, a low CTR, then you need to analyze its snippet. The whole point may be in an incorrectly formulated title or an unattractive description.
- Adding microdata
Such a tool helps search engines understand what content your site offers. Traffic potential increases due to the appearance of new elements in the snippet.
mailing lists
Email marketing has existed for many years and has not lost its position. Email appeals are used to attract new customers and retain old ones.
Before starting the distribution, analyzing users’ needs and formulating a proposal are necessary. You may want to offer them participation in promotions or a bonus program. Access to exclusive information or useful checklists can also attract customers. Create email templates that make users want to visit your site and learn more about the offer.
Email newsletters with invitations to free training or webinars have recently become very popular. It should be noted that such letters will interest only those who want to get acquainted with the proposed topic and develop it. Other users are likely to unsubscribe from the annoying mailing list. Analyze your target audience and conclude what might be of interest to them.
Strengthening important pages with internal links
You can use a tool such as linking. These are internal links on the pages of the site that allow visitors to navigate to the necessary information with one click. To identify weak pages, you can use the Google Search Console service.
The most popular content can be used to strengthen weak pages. Place attractive information in the article and a link to learn more about the issue of interest.
External links
This tool increases the company’s ranking and brings it closer to the top of the search results. In addition, it provides additional visitors to your resource.
Links can be placed in a variety of places. Here are some of them:
- Publication on large external sites (VC.ru, Pikabu, Reddit, etc.). Before posting content, please read the rules of the site and the users who visit it. Your content must be interesting to the audience. It is necessary to make sure that the information offered evokes a response from site visitors and a desire to leave a like or comment.
- Guest blogging. You can negotiate with popular bloggers to post your article on their portal. It is optional to look for a resource with a million subscribers immediately. You can start by collaborating with a small blog. The information will likely be posted for free or in exchange for a return service.
- Forums. Find a site with high traffic and a good reputation. It is necessary to familiarize yourself with its rules and consider a link placement strategy. You may have to pay for the service, so the site moderators do not delete the information. It is important to post links to the relevant topic. If you are offering a gardening site, offering it to people discussing rock music would be inappropriate.
- Creating a channel on Zen. This option will require long and detailed work. Connecting your site directly to Zen is very difficult, so the main method of attracting users is to post articles on a topic of interest to them. Of course, you can add links to your site to these texts. For your articles to rank highly, they must be interesting for customers and constantly in demand.
- Analysis of competitors. Research traffic sources from competing sites.
The mindless use of all the above tools needs to be clarified. You are just wasting your time and energy. Only some people can competently apply link building, the purpose of which is to motivate the user to go to the site. Do not get involved in dubious ways to cheat site traffic. If you need more time to figure out how to increase traffic, hire a competent specialist in this field.
Five reasons why website traffic is not growing
There are several reasons why the site traffic counter has stopped at the same level or started to show lower results than before.
Your content needs to be updated or more attractive.
Major search engines such as Yandex and Google are very good at recognizing content quality. If it is not attractive to users or has several technical flaws, you will not be able to achieve high rankings. Accordingly, the site traffic per day will fall.
Until recently, there were “gray” schemes with which you could bypass the requirements of search engines. Now they have lost their relevance and have ceased to have the same effect.
What characteristics should content have to attract a large number of visitors?
- Usefulness. Content should answer the user’s questions and solve their problems.
- Expertise. It is important that the reader sees that the author understands the topic under discussion and is familiar with the issue firsthand.
- Matches the page title. If the information offered does not correspond to the topic of the article, then the client will immediately leave the page because it was the title that attracted him.
- Good SEO performance. These include the amount of water in the article, nausea, etc. You can check these indicators using anti-plagiarism services.
- Publication on a resource that has a large number of quality pages. If you have created a new site, traffic will increase gradually. At the top, older portals will always be in high stable demand.
- Uniqueness. Search engines perfectly recognize rewritten texts and do not allow them to take a high place in the ranking. Originality and a competent approach to business will help you achieve the desired top positions.
- Actual. Consumers want fresh information that meets their needs. Outdated content will not be popular.
- Normal optimization indicators. If you use too many repetitive key phrases or links in the text, this will discourage site visitors from wanting to get acquainted with the information.
Too frequent semantics
As mentioned above, using something other than high-frequency questions to optimize the site is better. The competition for such keywords is very high. If your site is on the tenth page in the search engine, users will unlikely get to it. It is best to use low-frequency queries that will allow you to reach the first lines and attract new customers.
Enter long key phrases into the text. For example, you write about cooking. If you create an article with the title “How to cook duck,” then this post is unlikely to attract a large number of users. When you enter such a query in the search bar, the system will give you many links to reliable and popular sources.
Let’s say you’ve chosen a long keyword phrase as your title, such as “How to cook the juicy duck in coconut flakes.” Such a request is rare, meaning there will be many more chances to get to the top.
Use specialized services to search for the key phrases discussed in our article.
Slow download speed
If your site takes a long time to load and works slowly, it will decrease its ranking in search engines.
In addition, such a shortcoming will repel visitors. Customers are more likely to return to a site that loads well. This rule also works in the opposite direction: if the resource does not load within a few seconds, users will leave it without paying attention to its content.
Analyze this issue and think about what can be improved. All three Core Web Vitals should be in the green zone.
Website assimilation
Most often, this situation arises as a result of the actions of competitors. Unscrupulous competitors post spam links to the site, which create a negative response from search engines. But another situation is also possible: you have committed a series of actions that led to assimilation. Go to Google Search Console or Yandex.Webmaster, and make sure you don’t have any warnings from the search engine about lowering your rating as a punishment for your violations.
Poor optimization
Your SEO specialist may not be qualified to create compelling content. Selecting a competent employee in this area is necessary to get positive traffic.
Remember the importance of social media. Low-quality content will not receive a response from users, which means it will not increase traffic.
You must regularly check website traffic for your company to develop and get new customers. If negative changes are detected, taking measures and correcting the situation is urgent because profit directly depends on traffic.
