There’s a verb we use every day that didn’t exist before 1998. It was originally a noun, but the Oxford English Dictionary says “google” is also a verb; as in, “I’ll google it.” For Southeast Texas business owners, this means Google makes most digital media rules and sets website marketing and search standards. Google can send internet explorers your way or down the road and across the street to your competitors’ businesses.
If you think SEO-driven website management is a complex process, you’re right. It’s a job, and few business proprietors, no matter how tech-savvy, can keep up with it.
Website Search Categories
To know where your traffic is coming from, you must evaluate your current website operations. Performance data tells you if Google sends more traffic your way than social media. It reveals if Facebook is a more effective driver than Instagram or Twitter.
Types of Traffic are:
- Direct – Users input your website’s URL in their browsers to connect.
- Display – Visitors see your website ads elsewhere; other websites or apps.
- Email – Users click an email link to land on your site.
- Organic – Visitors find you after posing a query on a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.)
- Paid – Users land on your website by clicking on a search engine ad.
- Referral – Visitors reach you by clicking another website page’s link.
- Social – Users access your website by clicking a social media link.
Website Marketing Analytics
Google Analytics is a platform that evaluates your website’s performance. Based on its analyses, Google may route traffic to your site. To develop GA traffic metrics for your website, the steps followed by Google are:
- Collection – Values are sent to GA using tracking codes.
- Processing – Collected values are processed to populate the final report.
- Reporting – Campaign/traffic metrics are sent to the web interface.
GA metrics can tell you how many users landed on your website within a certain amount of time. To learn more about where those website visitors came from, you need GA data descriptions or “dimensions.” Those session-scoped dimensions can tell you how much traffic came from Google, Facebook, and/or other marketing campaigns.
Once you’ve determined the major sources of your website traffic, you can improve pain points. Follow with a deeper dive into Google Analytics that includes customer persona (DIYers can try HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool.), customer behavior, and evaluating customer feedback.
Increasing Website Traffic in 2024
You can’t control the economy or the consumerist attitude of a particular culture or geographic area. But you can control much of what influences traffic to your website:
- Content quality – The State of Marketing 2023 Report reveals superior blog and social content placement can deliver high ROI. Your site content should reflect use of:
- Evergreen
- GEO targets
- Internal linking
- Long tail keywords/long-form content
- Tantalizing metas
- Titles that match searches
- Load speed
- Structure and design
Digital marketing strategies to increase website traffic can include:
- Advertising/marketing campaigns
- Contests
- Email marketing
- Groupon, Reddit, etc.
- Hashtags
- Newsletters
- Rich snippets
- Social media ads
- Backlinks
- Influencer relationships
Your website can be a positive, profit-generating tool for your business if you understand the importance of website traffic and ongoing analytics.
Before we develop your website, our team of media marketing professionals will take an in-depth look at your organization, its culture, and goals. We’ll discuss ways your website design, advertising, and social media can fulfill your objectives.
If your Northwest Harris County business could benefit from our website design experience, let’s talk: Call 512-632-5662 or contact Modern Marketing & Media.
Next month, learn more about ways advertising can attract potential customers to your website.
FAQs
Two of the frequently asked questions we receive about website traffic are:
While SEO is critical and one of the first areas we develop for your website, we believe pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will generate the fastest response. In 2022 and 2023, PPC generated $2 in revenue for every $1 spent. But a successful PPC marketing campaign takes a lot of planning and work. Content and strategy must be carefully structured. Landing pages should be upgraded and user-friendly to convert website visitors into customers.
Look at the higher-ranking pages in your niche market and area. What are they doing differently? To improve your search engine ranking you must first:
- Create more content.
- Create better content.
- Update old content.
- Make sure all content is mobile-responsive.
Write compelling metas to describe web pages and blogs. Ensure landing page load speed is under 3 seconds. There’s much more, but these tips can make a big difference.
