Traffic Sources: What Do They Mean to Your Site Performance?

Traffic Sources: What Do They Mean to Your Site Performance?
April 11, 2016 Itamar Gero
Traffic Sources - SEOReseller.com
Itamar Gero
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Website traffic is more than just the amount of visitors going into your site. The data you can derive from your traffic sources make a great starting point for your search marketing initiatives and conversion parameters.

Many website owners know they have traffic, but what they fail to acknowledge is where all of that is coming from. If you don’t know what’s driving all that traffic, how do you move forward? To maximize your site’s performance and rankings, you need to know which areas to tweak.

In this blog post, we’ll provide you with key insights on your traffic sources to help you make actionable goals and implement conversion-driven strategies.

Where Does Your Traffic Come From?

Think of your traffic sources as a breadcrumb trail. You can follow this trail to obtain leads and touch opportunities that you might have overlooked.

Siteoscope categorizes your traffic sources into the following campaign mediums. You can find these under the Acquisitions tab of the Analytics feature:

Acquisitions - SEOReseller

  • Direct – Traffic from users who go directly to your site by typing your domain in the address bar of their browser
  • Organic Search – Traffic from users who click on your site when they make a query on search engines or use a relevant keyword
  • Email – Traffic from users who click on your website link that you have included in your email
  • Referral – Traffic from users who click on your link on referring or third party sites
  • Other – Traffic from tracked URLs that do not have a specific category
  • Paid Search – Traffic from users who go to your site by clicking on your search ads
  • Social – Traffic from users who click on your website link from a social network
  • Display – Traffic from users who click on your display ads
  • Adroll – Traffic from specific pages with UTM parameters

How Do You Use Your Traffic Sources to Your Site’s Advantage?

Knowing which traffic sources to adjust can help you get a clearer perspective of how you want your campaigns to go. This will make it easier to understand which aspects of your marketing efforts are paying off or which need more work.

Here are a few pointers to maximize your traffic sources:

1. Compare the data with your metrics

All the data from your traffic sources will not provide any insights if you don’t put them into context. Look at your campaign mediums and select a metric to compare the data for your traffic source analysis.

For example, if the Social Traffic Source has the highest number of users, check the domains that yield the most traffic. From there, you can determine the traffic sources that bring a high level of engagement, which make search users click on your site. This will make it easier to amplify or change the direction of your social strategy.

2. Keep an eye on trends

One of the benefits of digging deeper into your traffic source is you can identify emerging trends and fuse them with your campaign strategies. For instance, the sudden surge in traffic from Pinterest and Twitter would make you want to look into your social marketing efforts and check for possible marketing opportunities.

3. Be open to conversions

Your traffic source can provide insights on how you can open rooms for conversions. Your campaign mediums can show which visits converted, or which visits did not meet the conversion goals of your site.

For example, you have a high number of visits from your Direct Traffic Source, but its goal conversion rate is low. From here, you can think of ways to boost your conversion rate, such as adding more calls to actions on your copies or using a customer form on your site.

4. Know where your new visitors are coming from

It’s not enough to look at the campaign mediums that provide traffic; you have to look which drives the highest number of new visitors. After all, it’s the goal of every website owner to get new visitors that convert.

By tying all the data together, Siteoscope can give a new perspective on generating traffic. We make it easier to diversify your traffic sources so you can get the results you want for your site.

Get an in-depth look at your traffic sources with Siteoscope. Our tool provides Google Analytics Integration, making it easier to track the right metrics for website performance. Sign up today!