Traffic is an English term and means “traffic” in German. In online marketing, website traffic is the number of visitors to a website within a certain period.
What does traffic mean?
Traffic refers to visitor flows, i.e., the number of different visitors who are on a website. About online marketing, traffic does not only mean traffic jams but also visitor traffic. While we prefer as little traffic as possible when driving, website operators and internet companies try to generate as much traffic. In the Internet language, this indicates how many visitors are on a particular website. More precisely, the term “traffic” stands for the volume of data transferred between the server and the Internet when Internet users access web documents. A high number of visitors means that the website is popular, which increases advertising revenue, and sales can be earned.
Where is the traffic coming from on your website?
It is essential to know where your website visitors are coming from. From this, you can draw conclusions about which traffic-increasing measures have been successful and where you can still improve a little. Please keep in mind that the proportion of visitors per source is different for each website and website. We would like to show and explain the various visitor sources briefly:
Direct traffic
The term “Direct Traffic” is understood to direct visits to your site. This means that the visitor has entered the web address of your respective page in the address line and has consequently reached you directly, i.e., without any intermediate stops. These are also returning visitors who have saved your website as a favorite. This can either be because they have already been visitors or because they heard or saw your domain name somewhere. This type of traffic is precious because most of the time, as already mentioned, it is returning, or new visitors recommended to your website by others. Experts also speak of so-called word-of-mouth propaganda here.
Organic Search (search engines)
Anyone who came to your website via organic Search previously clicked on a search result. According to this, Organic Search includes all search engines and search services such as Bing, Google, and Google Image Search.
Paid Search and display
This term refers to sources for which you, as the website operator, pay to display advertising in search engines and partner networks.
Referral (links)
The term referral is understood to mean general visits via external links. If a backlink to your website is placed on another website and a visitor clicks on it, this is considered a so-called referral visitor. Accordingly, links to your site ensure better rankings and bring you more visitors at the same time.
Social media
Social media refers to traffic coming from social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Also Read: Top 17 Effective SEO Techniques To Increase Organic Traffic In 2021
Generate website traffic – this is how you increase your visitor numbers
If you run an online business, traffic is vital for you and your business. This goes without saying because if you don’t see any traffic, no one will find your company or website, let alone make you money. This is precisely why it is all the more important to pursue several strategies at the same time. This is the only way you can bring new visitors to your website, keep existing customers interested and increase the likelihood of a new purchase. As complex as it all sounds, there are numerous ways and means to attract even more visitors and potential customers to your website. It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is. In the following, we will show you.
Create new content and optimize existing ones
Content marketing is one of the most important and, at the same time, most sought-after marketing activities today. In 2017, it was rated by numerous marketing professionals as the essential method for increasing sales, so it is becoming increasingly popular. But what exactly does the term content marketing mean? It’s a type of marketing that involves creating online materials and content. However, these should not advertise a brand but arouse interest in your products. In principle, it is essential to know that content marketing can by no means be equated with classic advertising because you are not advertising your brand but offering your readers and interested parties added value.
The most common forms of content marketing include social media content, blogs, newsletters, and case studies. Of course, it’s tough to compete with the content published every second, but as long as you keep delivering new content that adds value to your readers, this approach is likely to bring you more traffic. In addition, you should optimize your existing website as best as possible. For example, think about including new blog articles, images, videos, and infographics. Keep in mind, however: Google is more excited about new content than old.
Paid Traffic: Put more money into campaigns and optimize ads
As already mentioned, the term paid traffic includes all marketing measures for which you pay for website visitors. This includes advertising campaigns in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook advertising. But AdWords ads, video advertising, advertising banners, and popups are also part of paid traffic. At this point, you are probably wondering whether advertising on social media is even worthwhile? We can answer this question with a resounding “yes.” Social media offers a valuable advantage over pay-per-click ads. They allow you to target potential customers that you want to reach with your content and products.
Get more backlinks
Under backlinks is meant to direct links on your website. These not only ensure better rankings but also bring you more visitors. The prerequisite for this is that the link is visibly placed on a well-visited website. References or backlinks to your site are therefore precious and also serve as good traffic. Backlinks form the nerve pathways of the World Wide Web and are enormously helpful and essential for users and Google to develop new content. For this very reason, every web admin should familiarize himself with the most critical link-building measures. Of course, there is also the possibility of acquiring individual backlinks, but Google will probably notice this sooner or later.
Activities and posts on social networks with links to the website
Social media is the easiest way to push your SEO-based content. Although the inbound links from your shared posts do not have the same influence as authentic backlinks from high-quality websites, they are still able to influence your bounce rate and length of stay positively. If your content adds value to readers and lingers on your site to read it all, then Google will recognize your page as valuable. Social media can also mean that you get authentic, high-quality links from influential websites.
Reduce loading times and optimize the website for mobile devices
Many website operators assume that the loading time of their website does not matter. But this assumption is wrong because a 1 second delay in loading a website leads to around 11 percent fewer page views. But that’s not all, because, at the same time, you have to expect almost 7 percent fewer conversions in this case. A shorter loading time, therefore, improves the conversion rate of your website and gives you more organic traffic, among other things. For these reasons, minimizing the loading time of your website is essential for you.
Optimize your website in terms of SEO and SEA
Through search engine marketing, you can generate more traffic and potential customers. A distinction is made here between SEO and SEA. We’ll explain to you now what these two terms are about:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and in German for search engine optimization. SEO is primarily concerned that your website from major search engines like Google and Co. will be better found. The higher your place in the search result ranking, the better.
SEA, also known as search engine advertising, is a sub-area of search engine marketing and belongs to the online marketing category. Search engine advertising encompasses paid ads, which are primarily displayed on search engines’ results pages such as Google, Bing, and Co.
Affiliate marketing
You can place your offers on the Internet on other great sites within your marketing concept through affiliate marketing. This is how you ensure that new visitors come to your website through your affiliate partner. Since the generation of visitors with affiliate marketing is highly dependent on the respective affiliate partners, you should understandably use several channels for your online marketing. Nonetheless, affiliate marketing is a great way to generate lots of new, interested visitors.
Measure and analyze traffic
How many users visited my site in a certain period? How many of them were new visitors, and where did they come from? Via organic Search or advertisements? Which way did you go on my website? Practical web analysis tools will answer these and many other questions. We’ll show you different ways you can measure and analyze website traffic. We also go into why traffic analysis is so crucial for online marketing.
Importance for online marketing
The traffic of a website shows how popular the content and offers are. As a website operator, the corresponding value also clarifies how much traffic needs to be generated to achieve similar success.
Suppose you want to build a profitable blog on a particular topic, then you should know how much traffic the most successful and well-known blockers in your desired area generate. Based on a detailed analysis of the competition, you can then estimate which measures work for the competition and tend not. In the end, this results in numerous conclusions that you can use for your website with a clear conscience.
Or maybe you would like to use third-party websites for advertising? With well-placed ads on websites and blogs that suit your target audience, that’s no problem at all. Therefore, it is also instrumental in this context to analyze the traffic of corresponding websites in advance. The following applies here: the more visitors come to the website, the more people will contact your ad. However, it would help if you kept in mind that high traffic is not a one hundred percent guarantee of success for a website. Although it plays a vital role, the conversions generated by website visitors are even more significant.
Tools to measure traffic
Many websites don’t publish their traffic numbers. It is, therefore, often difficult to obtain precise values here. However, a few commercial websites offer their media data as PDF or an extra advertising page. There you will find all relevant traffic figures and, with a bit of luck, even demographic data on the visitor group. Valuable information about traffic and target audience is essential.
This is especially true for companies that want to advertise on a wide variety of websites. For this reason, website operators publish their traffic figures simply out of self-interest, as this makes it much easier to convince potential advertising partners. If the desired data is not published, you can use external tools fall, i.e., using other web services. In the following, we would like to introduce you to the five most popular and free tools:
Google Search Console
The complimentary analysis tool Google Search Console supports you in search engine optimization and provides you as a webmaster with all available data and reports.
Hubspot
Hubspot is a platform for marketing, sales, and customer service that supports you as an entrepreneur in growing sustainably and, above all, effectively.
Google Analytics
With Google Analytics, you can carry out a continuous analysis and statistical evaluation of your website.
Piwik
The Piwik tool is used to collect statistical information about a wide variety of websites.
Conclusion
You should know that generating traffic understandably doesn’t work overnight. If you want to increase the number of your website visitors, you should make a concrete plan. The best thing to do is set it up directly for half a year or even a whole year. Good content tailored to your target group serves as the basis. As soon as the first visitors are noticeable, you can take practical steps step by step to generate more traffic.
