Website Traffic 101: What Different Traffic Types Mean

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Your website is supposed to bring in new clients to your practice. But do you know how many people are visiting your website? And do you know what the different types of traffic coming to your site mean? By keeping track of who is visiting, if they’re leaving, and why they might be, you can spot potential issues and grow your traffic. In order to do that, you have to track the number of people visiting your website. Tracking your website traffic makes it possible for you to know how many visitors have actually become clients and how many have left your site without contacting you or sharing their contact information.

Types of Website Traffic

What are the different types of website traffic, and what do they mean? Here are some types of web traffic you might encounter, where they come from, and what it means if the numbers go up or down.

  • Direct Traffic – Traffic that comes to a website directly, either because these users typed in the URL, had it bookmarked, or clicked a link shared by a third party. You usually don’t have much control over this particular slice of traffic.
  • Referral Traffic – This is an important metric to focus on, for this tells you about your most satisfied and loyal clients who are recommending your services to their friends and family. Provide your visitors with a feedback form when they leave the site – and include a column about how they have heard of you. If it is through referrals, ask them to enter the name of the person who recommended your services.
  • Affiliate Traffic – Affiliate marketers play an important role in directing relevant leads to your sites. It is important to keep a track of how many people are visiting your website from affiliate sites, so that you can reward them accordingly.
  • Paid Traffic – This is traffic that comes from your paid search campaigns, such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other paid search services.
  • Organic Traffic – This traffic comes from organic search campaigns, such as SEO. These people are encountering your website within search engine results pages, clicking on your page, and ending up on your website.

Using tools like Google Analytics is an excellent way to start off tracking the number of visitors to your site.

We Can Help

Need help understanding your website traffic and what different metrics and numbers mean? Contact one of our marketing experts for a complimentary demo today!

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