Website traffic otherwise called traffic rank is a measurement of how many visits a website has, or how popular the site is. Based on these results, the website receives its traffic rank. and naturally, the more traffic, the higher the rank.
As expected, traffic rank is among the key elements behind a successful website. So, one of the primary goals of the website is to drive traffic, and only through traffic, it is possible to promote other goals that your website should achieve. Basically, however much you optimize your site and focus your efforts on sales, without visitors you cannot meet your goals.
So here are a few tips on how you can stay on top of your traffic rank and ensure you act as soon as your traffic starts plummeting.
1. Analyze your traffic
The first thing you need to do to ensure a growing traffic rank is to connect your site with an analysis tool that will track your visitors, where they came from and how they find your site, their activity on the site, bounce rates, CTR, and other important factors.
The most popular and most widespread tool for traffic analysis is Google Analytics, a free tool that provides a large amount of traffic information, and it connects with other important tools like the Google Search Console, as well as Google Ads. Of course, there are plenty of other traffic measurement tools you can choose from, including Coremetrics, SemRush, and more.
Also, it is important to understand where your traffic comes from, and there are 4 different sources of traffic:
- Direct traffic (direct) – the user visits the website directly, i.e. by entering a specific address in the address bar.
- Referral traffic – A user encounters a backlink to a website while browsing another site (such as social networks or a friendly site). This element is one of the off-page factors.
- Search engines (organic) – the user does not know the website or does not remember its exact shape, so he enters the keywords into the search engine (Google or List).
- Campaigns (PPC) – the user accesses the website using paid links, which are displayed either on social networks (eg Facebook) or in search engines. Such a campaign is called PPC (pay per click).
2. Know what to measure in traffic rank?
Once you learned what are your traffic sources, it’s time to understand how to track your visitors. When measuring website traffic, almost everything can be recorded, from the number of users to the visitor’s operating system. Below is an overview of the basic attributes.
- Target audience – number of visitors, users, page views, average time spent, number of pages per visit, new / returning customers, demographics (language, city, country).
- Acquisitions – traffic and its sources, traffic channels (media, links), traffic from social networks.
- Behaviour – speed and web search, interest in certain content
- Website owners can infer from these metrics, any user content wonders what they ignore, whether they click on links, download files, and so on.
3. Measure your competition
In addition to your website traffic rank, website owners can also measure competitors’ website traffic. Basic analytics of each site can be obtained using the SimilarWeb tool. This portal provides information about almost every page on the internet, from basic analytics – traffic, time spent on the site, and so on – through traffic sources, geographical overview to the target audience. Alexa web service works on a similar principle.
Measuring the website traffic, whether your own or your competition, is one of the basic steps in running a website. Quality traffic analysis tools significantly help in the administration of the website and enable continuous improvement of the website.
4. Understand who is hiding behind your traffic rank
In one word, the visitors. As mentioned before in this article, your target audience is the most considerable part of the organic traffic process. You need to provide solid content so they will want to come back to your site, as the visitors mostly know what they are looking for.
Moreover, there are types of visitors who are not aware of what their search intention is, therefore, do not rely on the chance of obtaining them as direct visitors. You should create content and publish it in places where you can directly affect the quality of your visitors.
Think strategically when creating and distributing content:
- Determine which group of visitors is important to you.
- Know where to find it and how to convince it
- Plan the creation of your content and theme accordingly.
- Focus on the media/communication channels where your potential customers are located.
- In short, it is not always sensible to headlessly feed everyone and everything available. Choose. Concentrate your energy only where it really pays off. Although that means less Instagram and more guest blogs. Or vice versa
