Did you know 55% of Americans use the internet every day? That’s over eighteen million people! These ranks of people are changing the landscape of the economy.
Investing in a good website isn’t just necessary for businesses that use eCommerce anymore. The reality is that if your business isn’t prioritizing an increase in website traffic, then you’re losing out on valuable new customers.
Sadly, many business owners aren’t confident in their website-building abilities, let alone tracking metrics on how successful it is. So, to help you out we’ve made this guide on how to check website traffic.
We’ll also go over some tips on how to increase it. But first, let’s learn more about the concept before diving in.
What Is Website Traffic and Why Should I Analyze It?
Since computers began to boom in the 1990s website traffic has been a metric to measure performance for the sake of eCommerce.
However, the method of performance analysis has come a long way since it first started being used. Many people think that website traffic is still simply the number of people that have visited a website.
These days, that’s too simple of a metric. In addition to the total number of visitors, website traffic analysis will also look at:
- The amount of time that the user stayed on the website
- The actions that the user completed while on the website
- The number of users that made a purchase or signed up for something
- The average cost to bring in each visitor
- The results of online promotion or change in website optimization
So, why is checking this amount of information around website traffic important? Because it helps paint a clearer picture of how successful your business is doing. For example, let’s say that your website is getting 10,000 monthly visits.
You might think this is pretty good if you’re just looking at the number of visits. However, if you pay attention to the number of sales you’re making you see that you only made 80. That means that your business has a dismal conversion rate of .8%.
Compare this to a business that made 80 sales with only 1,000 monthly visits. With a conversion rate of 8%, this business is more effectively targeting its traffic. A complete analysis of website traffic helps reveal this kind of information to businesses. Then, they can adjust their strategy accordingly.
Terms You’re Likely to Hear When Looking At Website Traffic
When you get into analyzing your website traffic you’re going to encounter a lot of terms that you might be unfamiliar with. It’s important to have a basic understanding of these so you can apply them to your marketing strategy. Here’s some that you’re likely to encounter:
- Sessions — the number of visits that your website get over some time
- Pages/sessions — the depth of the visit, or how many pages the user selected on the website
- Average sessions length — the average amount of time each session lasted
- Channels — the way that the visitor found your website
- Bounce rate — the number of users that clicked out of your website within fifteen seconds or less
- Users — the specific number of unique individuals to visit your website (no counting repeat visits)
- Average position — the position that your website appears in search results
- Devices — the method that your visitor is using to access your website (mobile phone, PC, tablet)
- CTR — click-through-rate, or the ratio of impressions to follow-through visits
- Clicks — the ways that users interacted with the different elements of your website
How to Check Website Traffic
The good news is that there are many different ways you can check your website traffic. One of the most popular methods is Google Analytics. This, along with Search Console, are free services offered by the search engine.
They allow you to do things like promote your website, optimize its SEO, and improve its performance. However, learning all there is to know about Google Analytics can take a lot of time and effort.
Luckily, SEO experts like The Hoth offer a more simplified website traffic checker. They also offer great services to improve your rankings and boost all areas of your website traffic.
Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic
If you checked your website traffic data and it was less than ideal, then don’t panic. The good news is that there are a variety of ways that you can increase your traffic. Here are some effective methods at improving your metrics:
- Research keywords that your target users are searching and blogging about them
- Link share to your website through guest posts and article submissions
- Create informative articles
- Engage with your target audience of social media
- Create a newsletter
- Make video marketing using platforms like Youtube
However, many of these methods are only effective if you have the time and resources to devote to them. SEO work doesn’t need to be expensive, but it does need to be well done. And, in order to be well done the writer needs to be trained and skilled enough to attract the user’s attention. And, on the internet, attention can be a difficult thing to grab.
As such, if you don’t have time to write a bunch of articles and study a lot of metrics, then consider outsourcing the work to professionals.
Want More Content? Keep Exploring
We hope this article helped you learn how to check website traffic. As you can see, the process doesn’t need to be confusing. However, it is a lot of work, especially when you take the necessary actions to increase your traffic.
As such, you shouldn’t be afraid to let an expert internet marketing team help you out. As long as you go with the right professionals, then you’re sure to see a return on your marketing investment.
Did you enjoy this article? If the answer is yes, then you’re in the right place. Keep reading to find more content that you’re sure to love.
