When we hear the word “traffic,” we often think about the movement of vehicles and people on roads. However, it’s different with websites. Traffic refers to the users or people who visit a website. These users come from different places — for example, Google search engine, paid ads, email campaigns, and other website traffic sources.
Understanding where your visitors come from and how you can improve website traffic is one way you grow your business. 📈
The Importance of Website Traffic for Business Growth
A website serves as an online presence for individuals, businesses, and organizations that want to build an identity and market their products and services to a broader audience. This is exactly why, as a business, it’s a must to have a website of your own.
But, to experience growth, you need to understand how website traffic works and how you can increase it. 🤔
Let’s say, for instance, you want to assess the performance of your digital marketing efforts.
With that, you take a look at your website traffic data — more specifically your number of user visits, page views, and bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing one page). Or perhaps you want to know if your paid advertising campaign is getting you more website visits.
These metrics will give you an idea of how your business is doing online.
Higher website traffic means that more and more people are becoming aware of your business. If you capture their attention on your website, visitors would likely be interested in your products and services and may even provide their contact info, so you can target them later on and build a relationship with them. 😉
Generally speaking, more targeted and relevant website traffic = more opportunities to make a sale.
Moreover, a website that’s often visited by people also tends to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), such as Google.
High website traffic also serves as social proof that your brand has a good reputation.
All these benefits of having a solid online presence give you plenty of opportunities to build partnerships and gain a competitive advantage in your niche.
Different Types of Website Traffic Sources
You need to know where your visitors come from — more specifically, where to get them if you want to increase your website traffic. Using this information, you’ll be able to carefully plan a marketing strategy that works.
Below is a list of website traffic sources:
🔎Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to those who visit your website through unpaid, natural, or “organic” search results. In other words, they find your website by doing a search on a search engine such as Google (the most popular), Bing, or Yahoo. Then, they click on the most relevant resource which leads them to your website.
Here’s an example: A person looking to travel in a few weeks goes to Google and types in the keywords, “travel backpack for women” on the search box. They find your website on the search results, which tells them you’re offering a variety of travel bags. 🎒🧳
If you’re looking for free traffic sources, then this is technically one.
Unlike other sources, organic traffic isn’t influenced by promotions or paid advertising. Instead, visitors arrive on your website because they believe that you have the information they need. 😉
Tips to Increase Organic Traffic
#1: Conduct keyword research. Start with topics and questions that are relevant to your target audience, and then brainstorm keywords that are relevant to them. For example, if you sell gardening items, you might use keywords like “gardening tips for beginners” or “best gardening tools for beginners.” There are plenty of keyword research tools available that can help you, such as the Ahrefs keyword generator.
#2: Create relevant content. The next step would be to produce content that doesn’t just provide information, but also offers tons of value based on the actual needs of your target audience. Incorporate the keywords you researched in your content, and make sure to do it naturally. Common rules include adding keywords in the title tag, meta description, headers, subheadings, body content, and URL of a page.
💰Paid Traffic
As the term implies, paid traffic refers to visitors who reach your website through paid advertising campaigns. Below are some examples:
- Search engine advertising: Also called paid search advertising, this is where you pay to have your advertisements displayed on SERPs. Paid ads are typically shown at the top or bottom of organic search results. You’ll notice they’re also marked as “sponsored” or “ad.”
- Social media advertising: This involves placing paid promotional content on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. They could be in the form of text, videos, or images. Your advertisements can reach your ideal audience’s demographics, behaviors, and interests.
- Display advertising: Display ads are usually displayed to users while they browse the internet. These could be shown on websites or mobile applications. For example, banner ads are often displayed at the top, bottom, or side of a webpage. Video ads can also appear before, during, or after you watch an online video.
Other than these, paid traffic can also come from other channels, such as shopping ads, app install campaigns, and affiliates! 🤓
Tips to Increase Paid Traffic
#1: Identify your target audience. Know your target audience’s interests, behaviors, and online habits so you can decide on the right advertising channels and messages.
#2: Conduct keyword research. Similar to increasing organic traffic, finding relevant keywords is also important for search engine advertising.
#3: Create eye-catching ads. Tailor your messaging so that it resonates with your target audience’s needs and desires!
#4: Optimize landing pages. A landing page is where people who’ve clicked your ad take action, such as purchasing your product or signing up for your email list. We explain more about landing pages and which elements to include in this guide!
🧑💻Direct Traffic
Direct traffic describes the visitors that reach your website by manually typing your website address directly or using a bookmark for easy access. As you can tell, a large portion of these people are already familiar with your business, products, and services. They could also be previous customers or people who’ve heard about your brand through word-of-mouth marketing.
This is why an increase in direct traffic could be a sign that people are actively seeking your business. 👏
Tips to Increase Direct Traffic
#1: Choose an easy-to-remember website address (domain name). This will help people remember your brand and website more easily. Keep it short and simple, use your brand name, and make it pronounceable as well!
#2: Include your branding and website address in all your marketing materials. This includes your email newsletters, email signatures, social media posts, business cards, flyers, and brochures.
#3: Make use of offline advertising channels. Take advantage of television, radio, print media, billboards, and events to promote your brand. Include your website address in your advertisements.
🗣️Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is made up of visitors who arrive at your website by clicking on a link from another website. They could come from social media platforms, online forums, discussion boards, email newsletters, and other sources other than search engines.
The reason referral traffic is highly valuable is that people are likely to be interested in your business and what you offer. One of the best ways to drive referral traffic is to run contests and giveaways!
🔥Here’s a real-life story of how you can increase referral traffic using UpViral:
Meet Terry Mitchell and his wife Shelley. They both run an e-commerce business called Sew Much Easier, where they sell sewing-related products for hobbyists. To achieve their goal of having their their buyers from eBay join their email list and visit their website, so they could build long-lasting relationships, they decided to run monthly sweepstakes using UpViral.
Thanks to UpViral, the whole process of running a monthly sweepstakes got automated. Their monthly UpViral campaigns generated over 94,000 leads, and over 15,000 of those leads were referred leads.
Above is a screenshot of their sweepstakes prize, which was a sewing machine — the exact product that their audience (sewing enthusiasts) would love to get their hands on.
To boost referral traffic, they also took advantage of other traffic sources. They put up a Facebook ad and promoted the giveaway through email newsletters.
Check out the full case study here and learn from Terry and Shelley’s success!
And that’s just one example of an amazing implementation of referral marketing through UpViral! 🔥
🤳Social Media Traffic
Last on our traffic sources list is social media traffic. This refers to the visitors who arrive at your website by clicking on links shared on social media platforms. These links can come from posts, comments, or profiles, and can lead to different pages on your website, such as product pages, blog articles, or your main home page.
Social media traffic can be categorized into two: organic social media traffic and paid social media traffic.
Whereas social media traffic comes from unpaid organic social media posts, paid social media traffic comes from paid advertising campaigns on social media platforms.
Tips to Increase Social Media Traffic
#1: Choose the right social media platform. Focus your marketing efforts on the platforms where your audience is most active. Here’s a pro tip: If you use UpViral, pay attention to which social media channels (from your campaign “Reports”) have gotten the highest interactions. This information would give you a good idea of where to focus on. Moreover, consider the type of content you plan to create and share because different platforms are suited for different content formats.
#2: Collaborate with others. Partner with influencers or other businesses to help increase your reach! If you’re interested in seeking the help of influencers in a social media giveaway, we recommend reading this guide.
#3: Engage with your target audience. Be active on your chosen social media platform and respond to questions, messages, and comments promptly. This will help you build a solid community online.
Final Thoughts
If you’re wondering what’s the best source of website traffic, know that it depends on your industry, business’s goals, and target audience. All of the different sources we discussed earlier have their own benefits.
In fact, you can even combine all of them to get the best results! For instance, using UpViral to run your giveaways involves generating traffic from different platforms — whether it’s from social media, email lists, or paid advertising campaigns.
If you’re interested in learning how UpViral can work for you, click here to see some amazing campaign examples (waitlists, sweepstakes, leaderboards, and more)!
