We will tell you what traffic is, what it is for and how to increase its volume.
What is traffic and why is it needed?
Traffic refers to the flow of users passing through the site or launching an application. This is the number of visitors, measured by “visits” (sometimes referred to as “sessions”).
Each entry of a unique user to the site counts as one visit. The more such visits, the more effective the advertising campaign of the resource is considered, because it helps to attract a large audience.
Why do you need a large audience? Each visitor is a potential conversion into a sale. The more people get to the site, the higher the chances of making a profit.
Therefore, webmasters are trying to optimize all possible resources in order to attract as much traffic as possible. Optimization gives:
- increased audience coverage;
- increased number of site views (which affects sales and SEO metrics);
- increased number of likes, reposts, comments and other interactions with the resource;
- more applications;
- natural increase in brand popularity.
Types of traffic
Traffic can be divided according to various criteria, including its sources and main characteristics.
We’ll split it up:
- by the degree of usefulness (targeted or non-targeted traffic),
- on technical equipment (from which device people enter),
- by source.
Targeted traffic
Targeted traffic can be called “quality”. It means visits of people who are interested in purchasing a product / service / service sold on the resource.
Either these people initially go to the page to spend money (order something / make a purchase), or they are at the stage of thinking, looking for some product, but cannot yet decide. Such potential customers are also needed, because there is a chance to convert a thoughtful person into a real sale.
For information resources, targeted traffic will be traffic from people consuming the relevant content. If you write about music, then musicians of all stripes visiting your blog will be the target audience. This means they will generate targeted traffic.
Inappropriate traffic
These are lost souls who happened to be on the site or in the application by accident. They have no intent to buy or the desire to consume content from the page they wandered into. Their appearance is an accident.
This also includes competitors from resources similar to yours, who decided to study your advantages and disadvantages, as well as analysts who collect information on the topic with which the site is associated.
It can also be artificial traffic. Due to crowd marketing and other “simplified” schemes of obtaining an audience, hundreds and thousands of uninterested users can be brought to the resource. Yes, due to them, the amount of traffic will grow significantly, but there will be no profit from it. Therefore, such traffic can be considered “poor quality”.
Desktop traffic
The term “desktop” means a desktop PC, that is, any non-mobile computer. But in the case of traffic, it is not specific types of devices that count, but operating systems. There are Windows, thousands of Linux and macOS clones, most of which are installed on PCs. Traffic from them is considered desktop.
The amount of such traffic is gradually decreasing due to the expansion of mobile devices, but it should not be underestimated.
If the experience of human interaction with the desktop version of the site is not positive enough, then you can lose a client who is initially favorably disposed to purchase / order services after working with a mobile site.
Mobile traffic
This includes mobile operating systems. Here, everything is clear without additional explanations. Now the Internet is a mobile-first structure in which every web application or resource is initially adapted for smartphones and tablets.
A growing segment of users who do not use desktop operating systems at all. For them, the mobile version of the site is the only source of information. Therefore, this traffic is often valued the most.
Sources of traffic
Another method of dividing traffic is by source. It shows the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns used, the effectiveness of the promotion in terms of price / quality ratio and the “sinking” sources, which should be worked on more actively in order to increase the amount of traffic from all possible directions.
Search results
From the name it is clear that traffic from search results is new visitors who came to the site from a search engine in the spirit of Google or Yandex. The principle of operation is obvious. A person opens a browser, enters a request in the address bar in the spirit of “buy a jacket in Tomsk” or “buy sneakers online in Moscow with delivery.” In response, search engines show him the popular stores that are best suited to the request. A person clicks on the link and immediately becomes a visitor, generating a new “visit” to the site.
In the search results, the site that is in the top for queries wins. It’s not hard to guess that either the most popular resources or resources with huge advertising budgets will get to the top. It will take a good SEO specialist to bring the page to the first positions and do not catch the “filter”…
contextual advertising
This is where specific advertising investments come into play. Such links can be located in the first positions of search results or in advertising banners.
Such ads look much less natural than searches from a search engine. It is immediately obvious that they are trying to sell you something. Its advantage in context –the ads will be seen by really interested users.
True, this is only true for resources that have a competent targeting specialist in their staff who can customize the display of advertising for the target audience. Without careful adjustment, the benefits of advertising will be small, and the costs will increase significantly, because each click on contextual advertising is paid by the one who ordered it.
Social networks
Social media traffic sources can be divided into two more categories:
- those that come from contextual advertising,
- and those that come from posts (a more natural way).
The first option hardly differs from standard contextual advertising. These are the same mini-banners located in the sidebar, in the middle of the news feed, in individual sections of the interface or among stories. They appear on social networks of the target audience of the service or application.
The second option looks more like native advertising. Posts that are not flagged as ads and look like “personal opinion” or recommendation. There is no need to set up such advertising, it is enough to contact a “public” or a large account to which potential buyers are subscribed, and order the corresponding post there. In the future, it will generate free organic traffic.
Crowd marketing
it method of placing advertising links on forums, reviews and social networks. All of this is presented as an inadvertently abandoned advice. Let’s say the forum is discussing tires and people are looking for the best store that sells them. Suddenly, a person suddenly appears on the forum, casually describing your store and leaving a link to it. And then he repeats this procedure on another 30 forums, reviews and social networks.
Thus, advertisers grab the attention of the crowd and try to generate natural traffic from thematic forums, from groups in social networks associated with the direction of the site being promoted, etc.
Unfortunately, such posts often look pretentious advertising. People notice that they are trying to sell something, and therefore ignore the link and form a negative opinion about the brand that is trying to promote itself in such a cheap way. Therefore, to increase traffic through crowd marketing, you need a competent copywriter.
Direct transitions
This is a transition to your page without using additional sources. The user knows about the existence of your site and goes directly to it by entering the name into a search engine or a link into the address bar of the browser.
How is traffic measured?
When someone visits the site, information about the new visitor immediately appears on it.
To track indicators, you need to use specialized third-party software.
For example, Yandex.Metrica. You can connect a Yandex counter to your website and get up-to-date information about visitors, not only the number of visits, but also other important data. Among them:
- How long users stay on the site.
- How often people make a purchase or order a service on the site. Still, conversion is more important than traffic itself.
- How expensive each visitor is. If all new “visits” come from expensive contextual advertising and do not pay off, then this is a reason to think about changing the promotion scheme.
SimilarWeb service works in a similar way. It shows the competitor’s traffic volume, sources, and other metrics.
How to drive traffic to your website?
- Optimize your site for work with search engines. The resource should be fast, without excess ads, with relevant content and the right keywords, links, etc.
- Create new content (regularly). Always update your site with good articles, reviews, and news.
- Add exclusive content. Don’t just copy existing texts based on key phrases, but come up with new topics so that people will be interested in returning to your site.
- Master new formats. If you only make text-based content, you lose an audience that watches YouTube videos or listens to podcasts. Create other content options. Duplicate articles on YouTube videos, discuss them on podcasts, post on social media.
- Invite eminent personalities to collaborate on materials. Perhaps the audience will be interested in your resource after a couple of articles from your favorite author appear on it.
- Keep track of your competitors. Keep up with similar resources. See what they implement and do the same, but in your own way. That it was not just a copy, but a rethinking of the same ideas.
- Identify your target audience and create ads for her.
- Use social media. Duplicate links on social media. Create unique content there to attract even more people and entice them to the main site.
- Set up mutual ads. Agree with similar resources for mutual advertising. Write a post about them, and they will write about you in response. This way you will be sharing your traffic with each other.
- Contextual advertising. Buy banners on popular sites using the services of targeting experts.
Instead of a conclusion
Use different promotion techniques and minimize costs. To do this, you need to attract “high-quality” traffic, which is easily converted into sales and helps the further development of the site.