5 Types of Web Traffic

As a website owner or digital expert, you already know the importance of web traffic. However, web traffic differs. In fact, you should be aware of five distinct types of web traffic to understand your web visitors better.

In this article, we’ll explore the different types of web traffic and their impact on your website’s usability (UX). From direct traffic to referral traffic and everything in between, we’ll provide insights and examples to help you optimize your website for maximum results.

But first, let’s talk about the importance of web usability and design in attracting and retaining visitors. With non-targeted traffic coming to your website, improving your website’s usability and design is a constant process during website creation and SEO. In addition, analyzing micro and macro conversions (CR) and user behavior is key to achieving your ultimate goal: increased sales.

Are you ready to dive into the world of web traffic? Let’s get started!

Exploring Different Types of Web Traffic for Business Success

An improvement in website traffic is a cornerstone of any successful online business. A steady and growing flow of visitors to a website ensures a business successfully develops, wins the market, and leaves competitors well behind.

Maybe not all of our readers understand some specific terminology, so let’s first clarify what is “traffic”. To make a long story short, traffic is visitors who come to the website from various sources such as Google Search, Facebook, other social media, mailouts, etc. Consequently, different types of website traffic will be discussed in our article.

A website is a point of contact between potential customers and businesses. Visitors who visit the page buy some products and services. So if you find a way to increase web traffic volume, you will increase profit.

Regardless of how well-thought-out and visually appealing the website is, metaphorically speaking, it is more dead than alive with no traffic. Even for online marketing professionals, increasing web traffic on commercial topics may be a real challenge. Entrepreneurs who have to care about developing their businesses instead of focusing on online marketing may fail altogether?

Understanding what types of traffic and channels can attract visitors helps you build a strategy and makes a campaign more organized. The most successful marketing strategies combine several ways of attracting customers.

Website Traffic Definition

Website traffic info shows how many users visit a website. It is measured in website views (sessions) and reflects website reach. The website viewership helps understand the popularity of the website, website audience geography, channels, and other valuable details about your web resource.

You can use domain traffic details to enhance your marketing, compare web traffic for competitor research, and track your business growth.

How to Check Monthly Traffic on a Website

Check the video for instructions:

As the digital world becomes increasingly competitive, understanding your website traffic is more important than ever. A website with high traffic volume increases your potential for sales and leads, helps you analyze user behavior, and improves your online presence. However, finding the right tools to track and analyze your traffic can take time and effort.

This article will guide you through two powerful traffic tracking tools – Plerdy and Google Analytics 4. With Plerdy’s heatmap feature, you can easily see what users click, how far they scroll, and which parts of your website are the most engaging. And with GA4’s traffic acquisition report, you can track where your visitors come from and how they find your website.

To use Plerdy’s heatmap, select the time range for analysis and view website engagement statistics. You can then access the heatmap view to see where users click and how they interact with your website. Plerdy’s heatmap also includes scroll depth and mouse movement reports to help you determine user behavior and make informed decisions.

Google Analytics 4’s traffic acquisition report shows you the most recent source/medium before a session and helps you understand how users find your website. Additionally, you can track UTM links in GA4 to customize your URLs and gather more specific information about your campaigns.

Using Plerdy and GA4, you can understand your website traffic and take actionable steps to improve your online presence and stay ahead of the competition.

10 Tips to Increase Website Traffic

Increasing website traffic is an ongoing challenge for website digital marketers. There are many tactics you can use to increase traffic to your website. Here are ten tips to help boost your website traffic:

1. Conduct keyword research and use relevant keywords in your website content, meta descriptions, and titles.
2. Create unique (every green), informative, and engaging content that provides value to your target audience.
3. Post your website content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to increase interactions with your brand.
4. Build a targeted email list and send regular newsletters or promotional emails to drive quality traffic to your website.
5. Write guest posts on relevant websites to reach new audiences and increase backlinks to your website.
6. Run targeted ads on platforms like Google Ads (based on keywords) and Facebook Ads (based on audiences) to increase the visibility of your offer.
7. Partner with relevant influencers in your industry to increase your brand exposure and drive traffic to your website.
8. Use internal links to direct users to other relevant pages on your website and increase engagement.
9. Create and share engaging content like videos (YouTube), infographics, and images to increase engagement and drive traffic.
10. Use tools like Google Analytics 4 or Plerdy to monitor your website traffic and identify areas for improvement.

By implementing these tips, website owners can drive more traffic and increase engagement with their target audience.

What is The Impact of Traffic Type on Website User Behavior?

Examples of how web traffic channels impact user behavior:

• Direct traffic: Consumers may be more likely to interact with the products on a website if they are more familiar with the page’s elements. This type of traffic can result in higher conversion rates (CR).
• Referral traffic: Users who visit a website through a referral source, such as a blog (Forbes, CNN, BBC, etc.) may be interested in the specific content that brought them to the website. These users may spend more time exploring related content.
• Organic traffic: Users who find a website through Google may seek specific information or solutions. These users may leave the website faster if they see irrelevant information or message (H1) on the first screen.
• Social media traffic: Visitors who browse a website from social media (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and so on) may be interested in a certain offer or campaign. However, these users may also be more likely to leave the website if it’s not a spontaneous purchase or they need more time to decide.

By understanding the impact of each traffic channel on user behavior, website owners can analyze data from GA4 and Plerdy tools to optimize website usability and improve conversion rates (CR). In addition, click data segmentation by traffic channels can provide deeper insights into user behavior and help website owners make data-driven decisions to drive sales.

5 Main Types of Web Traffic

All channels are equally important as they may have an additional positive impact on business development. For example, you can buy SEO traffic, use web traffic software to grow organic reach, and ensure the highest number of visits to a website from various channels through other means.

Below are the main ways to grow your web traffic and get more website hits.

Organic Traffic

These people have found your website using a specific query in a search engine. For example, a user can type “leather cases for iPhone” in a search bar, see an online store’s website in the results list and click to visit the page. Generally, Google Search is the most popular globally, but people widely use other search engines in some regions.

Organic traffic can greatly scale up your business, as proven by Plerdy’s case studies. The more effort you put into attracting visitors, the better return you will get. Of course, the results won’t arrive fast, but they can have an exponential character.

The number of visitors that come to the website from Google search depends on its ranking in search engines for different keywords. Therefore, to improve its visibility for target queries, you have to do search engine optimization of separate pages and the whole website. Therefore, you should regularly work on external factors influencing web traffic rankings.

Website visibility in search results is crucial for organic traffic growth. To improve website traffic, you must research keywords, optimize existing pages and create new ones, add high-quality and unique articles, and make other websites and social media users link to its pages. It’s tireless work that takes time but is fully rewarded.

SEO is a full-fledged study, a complex of difficult tasks. These tasks ensure better website compliance with the quality criteria of search engines. To achieve success, ask for professional help. You will save time and avoid possible negative consequences.

Check our article “27 DIY Ways to Promote Site” to optimize your website yourself.

Paid Web Traffic

You can hire a specialist or use web traffic services to buy web traffic that converts. This kind of website traffic is called paid and includes visitors that come to the website from online ads. For example, Google Ads, ads on Facebook, display advertising, and other similar channels. Google Ads, a contextual advertising network, is one of the world’s main paid website traffic providers.

The main advantage of attracting visitors through paid traffic is that you can fully control flow by various parameters. For example, decide how many conversions the website gets and when to use geographic and other types of targeting.

A disadvantage is the need to pay for conversions and displays. For websites working on commercial topics, driving traffic is expensive. And when you run out of money, conversions to the website (and customers) will also disappear.

In Facebook news feed:

And during video playback on YouTube:

Advertisers’ ads can be displayed in different formats, placed in search, various areas of pages, text, and other types of content.

Direct Web Traffic

Direct traffic is when a user types your website URL in a browser’s address bar and clicks on a previously saved bookmark.

Direct traffic can comprise a relatively small part of the total conversions, but it is extremely important. It is an indicator of users’ loyalty and brand awareness.

The main share of such conversions for informational projects consists of returning readers. For example, customers return to view arrivals in a catalog and make a repeat purchase.

You must be more active in online and offline marketing to drive direct traffic. For example, use display ads for brand promotion, organize special offers and contests, and print and distribute flyers or brochures.

Referral Web Traffic

Referral traffic mainly comprises people who visit the website through different links on other resources (including crowd marketing). So, for example, if you publish a press release with a link to a website on a third-party resource, and somebody clicks on it and comes to the page, this will be a referral conversion. In Google Analytics 4, you see such conversions in Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

You can add backlinks in articles and comments, thematic discussions, active users’ signatures, emails, forums, etc. Yet they must be relevant. For example, The readers of a culinary website will likely need to pay attention to the link to a page about construction.

Backlinks are originally the foundation of the Internet, and users will trust companies often mentioned on reputable websites. The impact of backlinks is similar to reviews in online stores we discussed.

When you try to increase the number of backlinks to a website, ensure you benefit the page instead of accidentally harming it. You may get punishment by search engines for attempts to manipulate search results. That’s why you’d better contact SEO professionals.

Social Web Traffic

By creating a strong community with highly involved and active subscribers, you can get a “piece of the traffic pie” from platforms with millions of users. This is a challenging task, and you will likely have to use the assistance of third-party contractors.

When you start implementing a marketing strategy and actively work with social networks, you will soon notice that some social platforms bring more traffic than others. Go to Google Analytics 4, Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition to check information.

When you get to the web traffic assessment, reorganizing your marketing strategy based on reliable website data is a reasonable solution. Redistribute efforts and budget towards the social networks that bring you the most traffic.

What kind of traffic do you primarily promote?

When promoting website traffic, it’s important to understand the different types of funnels. Any traffic channel should be divided into BOFU (bottom of the funnel), TOFU (top of the funnel), and MOFU (middle of the funnel). The type of funnel you target depends on your niche and the type of business you run.

If you’re starting, a good place to begin is with Google Ads. It allows you to search for potential clients based on specific keywords. However, promoting on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok can also be effective, particularly if you have a product you can easily promote visually.

By understanding your audience and focusing your promotion efforts on the appropriate funnel, you can increase website traffic and attract the right kind of customers.

Note These Several Recommendations

Understanding the peculiarities of a certain type of traffic helps develop a marketing strategy for business promotion online. However, we cannot say that only one traffic source can become a single and best channel to attract customers.

Potential buyers can come to websites from an absolute variety of places. By increasing multiple kinds of traffic, you can cover a broader audience.

Here’s how assisted conversions in Google Analytics UA look like:

We deal with two main types of traffic: traffic management and the one which completely depends on a third party. So a logical conclusion is that you should focus on what you control and discard everything else.

That approach will be only partially correct. The best option is to work with traffic strategically. SEO – the increase of uncontrolled but free website traffic – will be the best strategic choice. Paid traffic should still be a great tool to attract visitors.

Bottom Line

Regarding web traffic, there are five types to distinguish: SEM, inbound, referral, social, and direct. Knowing these types can help you give your website the best possible chance to succeed.

Inbound traffic can increase ROI, as it naturally attracts potential customers. In addition, utilizing landing pages and optimizing your website for search engines can greatly improve your SEM traffic rate.

PPC campaigns can bring quick traffic but come with a cost. Referral traffic can come from building relationships with other companies and sharing links.

Social traffic is great for branding and building a HubSpot, but it can also be costly if you are not careful. Finally, direct traffic comes from people who know your website already.

You should use the right website versions to maximize your web traffic and have a strong CTA on each page. Most of your traffic will come from inbound and referral sources, so it’s important to focus on building those. Plerdy is a great tool to help you analyze your website’s performance and improve your CTA. Happy optimizing!