As any website owner will tell you, traffic is a crucial metric for the success of your digital marketing campaign. However, it’s important not to get caught up in the raw numbers when it comes to traffic. Plenty of websites underperform in conversions and sales because owners don’t know how to analyze their traffic correctly. Getting a high number of visitors doesn’t always lead to a successful campaign.
It’s clear that not all traffic is created equal. Where this traffic comes from and how it interacts with your website is just as important, if not more than raw numbers. The question is: how does one quantify the role of traffic sources in a digital strategy?
There’s no simple answer to this question, as there’s a lot of math and strategizing involved. You have to understand how traffic interacts with your website before you can make changes to increase leads and sales. Figure out where your visitors are coming from and what they want, and you’ll be able to make major improvements in a short amount of time.
It’s easier said than done, as website traffic is hardly a simple topic. Let’s go over everything you need to know about traffic and how to utilize it effectively.
Understand the different types of traffic
To analyze the data you receive from traffic statistics, you must take into account two factors. For one, there are different types of website traffic that you can track. These include: organic, social, email, direct, paid search, referral, and other traffic.
- Organic traffic is pretty straightforward. A visitor used a search engine and found your website through the search engine results page. There’s no paid advertisement involved.
- Paid search traffic comes from clicks on an ad that you financed.
- Direct traffic is a result of someone typing in the URL directly or clicking on a saved bookmark.
- If there’s no identifiable source for the visitor, their traffic will be marked as “other.”
- Referral, social, and email traffic come from other websites, social media networks, and email marketing campaigns, in that respective order.
The conversion rate of these different types of traffic will differ, depending on your website and its purpose. You must decide what kind of traffic to monitor and how to adapt your strategy to bring in more visitors.
Monitor performance
It’s important that you identify market traffic trends on your website before you adapt your strategy. To check the performance of your pages and site traffic, you should utilize tools such as Google Analytics. Use these metrics to connect traffic sources with the content that they enjoy. You can easily determine which pages require more attention and how to maximize their conversion rate using this information.
The performance of particular pages can be improved in numerous ways. If traffic gravitates towards a certain topic, you can introduce relevant internal links on the pages of the website. Showcase more examples of the content that gets visits on low-traffic pages, as they can boost numbers significantly. Make the internal links easy to follow, so that there’s a natural flow from one page to another. Connect relevant pages to entertain or draw in users in an organic way. This will increase overall traffic in addition to boosting conversions on particular pages.
Start with the right type of traffic
Your starting point is a crucial determinant when considering the traffic needs of the website. If you started out recently and don’t have a lot of visitors, you should focus primarily on organic and paid traffic. The other groups aren’t as important at the beginning, but they play a major role as your website develops.
When it comes to organic traffic, there are multiple factors that you can influence to improve your numbers. Everything from the design of the website to the internal and external links will have an impact on organic traffic. Elements such as metadata help users find the website during organic searches, while proximity lets search engines determine whether they should prioritize a result.
A Google My Business page is one of the best ways to improve organic traffic to your website. By registering this page, you can display information that is crucial to potential visitors, while improving search engine rankings. It’s especially important for local search results since Google will take proximity into account first and foremost.
Analyze your customer base
For effective traffic generation, it’s crucial that you understand what users do on your website, as well as what causes them to convert. Once you figure out what they’re looking for when they click on a link, you can adapt your strategy and improve the way you market certain products and services.
An analytics platform can help you utilize user data to create accurate buyer profiles. These profiles make it easier to target specific demographics by using various metrics. Depending on the goals of the website, you’ll need to sort customers by age, salary, location, or personal interests. It will help you tailor the marketing strategy for a particular metric and increase traffic significantly.
Location demographics are a key pillar of generating traffic to your website. They allow you to create personalized ads for local products and services. Optimizing for local searches has become a key part of modern SEO. Target the most receptive traffic stream and you’ll get more out of your strategy.
Determine your website’s needs
What most website owners ask themselves is: how much traffic does my website need to be effective? It’s not a simple question, as traffic isn’t a sufficient metric for determining the success of a marketing campaign. You must also consider your monthly, quarterly, and annual sales goals. This number will then influence your goal for website leads. By comparing these metrics, you can get closer to an accurate assessment of your website’s specific needs.
For example, if your goal is to generate a revenue of two million dollars, and the average worth of a sale is twenty thousand, you’ll need around a hundred sales for the year to reach this number. That’s your sales goal. If the close rate is 10%, you’ll need ten times the number of leads compared to your desired sales. This means you can estimate your lead volume goal at around a thousand per year. Compare the number of leads between different types of traffic and measure conversion rates. Use these numbers to calculate the rough number of visitors you need to reach the website’s goals.
These calculations can help you make specific improvements, but they are also useful when outsourcing website optimization. In Australia, website owners can enlist the assistance of Sydney SEO experts to improve website traffic metrics. With the help of experienced designers and marketers, you can improve your website’s traffic and conversion rates more quickly. This opens up further investment opportunities and allows your team to focus on other parts of the marketing campaign, which will lead to even more effective marketing.
Note and resolve errors
Site accessibility will always be a top priority for digital marketers. Any and all errors must be resolved as quickly as possible, to stop traffic from dropping. The great thing about monitoring traffic is that you can use it to detect errors on the website.
Barring any changes to on-site data, you shouldn’t expect any fluctuations in the number of visitors as time goes by. If there’s a sudden drop in traffic to the website, it might be indicative of site hosting problems or 404 messages. Duplicate and incorrect URLs could be the cause of a drop as well. If a traffic drop doesn’t correlate with changes to the website, you should look for accessibility errors. Diagnose and resolve the error immediately to avoid further issues with reduced site traffic.
The good news is that many traffic analytics platforms can inform you of site accessibility problems. They can detect anything from redundant hostnames to slower webpage loading times. You can even configure them to send you a notification whenever your website’s conversion percentage drops dramatically. This will help you act quickly when errors appear.
Final Words
Generating traffic is a complex challenge. The first step to success is getting traffic to your website. Past this point, it’s all about analyzing the data you receive and molding your strategy to get the most out of it. A high conversion rate is much more important than extreme traffic numbers, though both are desirable. Knowing where the traffic comes from will give you a better idea of what to focus on.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to your website’s needs, as there are multiple variables to take into account. The purpose of the website and the type of traffic it needs are factors that can change your strategy significantly. Once you have a thorough understanding of the traffic needs of your website, you can start making changes that will help boost underperforming pages. At the same time, you can also focus your efforts on improving pages that are effective at creating leads.
Stick to the principles we’ve outlined above and your marketing strategy will bring in more sales!
