How to Get More Website Traffic By Understanding Your Visitors

Website traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Understanding where your visitors come from and how to get more of them is critical to growing an engaged audience and boosting conversions.

This guide will explore key methods for monitoring your website analytics, evaluating traffic sources, benchmarking performance, and ultimately – strategies to dramatically increase your visitor numbers.

As entrepreneur Bill Gates summarized: “Website traffic is the lifeblood of any online business – understand where it comes from and how to get more of it.”

Checking Website Traffic From Multiple Angles

Gaining visibility into your website traffic is the crucial first step towards growth. There are several complementary approaches to assessing your visitor data:

Using Website Analytics Platforms

Website analytics software provides insights into your visitors – how many people come to your site, what content they consume, engagement metrics, and more.

Google Analytics: The Most Popular Free Option

Google Analytics offers a free and powerful website analytics option used by over half of all websites. With Google Analytics you can:

• Track the number of visitors including total users, new vs returning visitors, and countries.
• See detailed audience demographics like language, location, and technology used.
• Understand traffic sources bringing people in such as direct, referral, social, search, and more.
• Identify top landing pages and how people navigate through your site.
• View engagement metrics like page views, average session duration, and bounce rates.

Setting Up Google Analytics: Getting started is relatively straightforward – simply sign up for an account, install the Google Analytics tracking code on every page of your website, and begin viewing reports in the interface. Google provides a detailed Guide to Get Started with Analytics for reference.

Popular Reports in Google Analytics: Some particularly useful reports include Acquisition reports to analyze traffic channels, Behavior reports to see how people navigate your site, Conversions reports tracking goals and e-commerce, Audience reports with visitor demographics, and Real-Time reports to view the activity as it happens.

There are also options to create custom reports, set up dashboards, integrate Google Analytics with other applications like Google Ads, use the mobile App, and more. The breadth of data can seem overwhelming, so focus your analysis on metrics aligned with your business goals.

Alternative Paid Analytics Options

While Google Analytics leads the free website analytics space, there are also paid options that offer additional capabilities for more advanced users:

• Adobe Analytics provides enterprise-scale capabilities, data visualization, predictive intelligence, and integration with marketing and advertising suites.
• Mixpanel specializes in product analytics tracking complex user journeys across platforms and conversion funnels.
• Amplitude is strong at behavioral analysis, funnel optimization, and segmenting high-value user cohorts.
• Heap offers simplified web and mobile analytics to track user actions with automated event capture.

Paid platforms can provide additional flexibility, integration, or predictive insights, but require more significant investment. Weigh your specific analytics needs vs budget when evaluating options beyond Google Analytics.

Checking Server Access Logs

Your hosting server automatically generates access logs recording all visitor traffic to your site. These log files register every page request along with the visitor IP address, browsers/devices used, statuses, and more.

While access logs capture a wealth of raw traffic data, the entries require parsing to be usable. Log file analysis tools are used to process the logs to filter bots, identify unique human visitors, chart traffic graphs over time, break down top pages, highlight errors, and showcase other valuable traffic insights.

Some popular log analytics tools include:

• GoAccess – Open source real-time analyzer for Linux servers
• Webalizer – Fast web server log file analysis
• Awstats – Powerful logfile analyzer across platforms
• Matomo – Open analytics platform with log analytics

Access logs provide an unfiltered perspective into all traffic hitting your server. Comparing log metrics around human users, bandwidth, statuses, etc. against your website analytics can help identify discrepancies or issues.

Monitoring Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings have an outsized impact on website traffic, with over half of clicks going to the top 5 organic results. Tracking your search rankings manually or via automated tools reveals opportunities and benchmarks for SEO progress.

• Manually checking rankings periodically for target keywords provides ground truth into current positions.
• SEO tools like Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush estimate rankings across keywords and track changes over time.
• Rank tracking software like SERPBot auto-captures rankings to monitor performance.

Understanding your search visibility and which terms drive traffic or conversions guides where to focus SEO priorities. Aim beyond rankings alone – monitor click-through rates (CTRs), optimize pages for user experience signals, and craft content aligned to searcher intent.

As tech visionary Larry Page summarized: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure – accurate website traffic data allows targeted optimization efforts.”

Boosting Website Traffic Through Multiple Strategies

Armed with clear visibility into your existing website traffic, attention shifts to growth. There are several key ways to effectively increase your website traffic:

Optimizing On-Site Content

Your on-site blog, landing pages, and content represent pivotal opportunities to engage visitors, earn trust signals, and convert readers. Core elements for on-site optimization include:

1. Focus On Creating Well-Structured and Keyword Optimized Pages

• Craft compelling title tags and page headlines that quickly communicate the core focus and value to the reader.
• Include meta descriptions that generate click-throughs by distilling your unique value prop.
• Follow on-page SEO best practices like optimized page structure, effective integration of target keywords, useful internal links, and supplementary media like images.

2. Develop Content That Captivates Audience Interest

• Understand searcher intent for target keywords to create truly useful content that answers questions and helps the reader.
• Adopt a visitor-first perspective examining user experience – is your content scannable, does it facilitate understanding, are calls-to-action visible?
• Include compelling statistics, quotes from influencers, and real-life examples to bring concepts to life.
• Close content gaps where competitors rank well to seize search visibility.

3. Technical Site Optimization

• Optimize page speed by minimizing load times through image compression, reduced server requests, browser caching directives, lazy loading, and code minification.
• Ensure site responsiveness adapting layouts seamlessly for mobile devices.
• Facilitate user experience via clear navigation, prominent calls-to-action, and reduced steps to conversions.
• Set up analytics and session recordings to uncover usability issues and conversion barriers.

Crafting remarkable content tuned to audience needs builds trust and earns links over time – fueling sustainable organic growth.

Building High-Quality Backlinks

Gaining authoritative backlinks remains one of the most decisive drivers of search ranking success. Leverage these proven link-building tactics:

1. Contribute Guest Posts to Industry Blogs

Identify blogs already ranking well for your keywords and proactively pitch contributory articles to site editors. Ensure content delivers unique value before politely asking for a backlink.

2. Interview Leaders From Related Websites

Conduct relevant interviews with influencers in your niche to create syndicatable blog content. Share the final piece with the website you interviewed requesting a backlink in return.

3. Promote Your Best Content

Repurpose your evergreen content through social channels and paid ads to maximize visibility. Outreach personally when others organically share your content requesting they link back.

4. Secure Directory & Aggregator Sites

Submit your website to niche directories like Best of the Web and make sure to grab a backlink where possible. Identified relevant aggregation sites that compile “best of” resources in your industry to be featured.

The key is securing backlinks from credible sites to signal trust and authority to search engines. Balance building links via outreach, earned media, syndicated content, directory listings, and other strategies.

Distribute and Promote Content To Drive Referrals

Creating remarkable content is only half the battle – next comes distribution. Getting your content in front of receptive audiences sparks viral sharing, social engagement, and referral traffic to your site.

1. Repurpose Content Across Multiple Platforms

Adapt evergreen posts into video explainers, podcast interviews, slide decks, or infographics. Feature these asset types on the respective platforms where they gain traction like YouTube, Spotify, and SlideShare.

2. Leverage Brand Advocates and Industry Influencers

Identify power users sharing your content or brands with aligned audiences. Proactively pitch them new content for sharing or collaborating on co-created assets to tap into their reach.

3. Promote Content Through Paid Social or PPC Ads

Consider paid amplification periodically promoting your best guides or resources to relevant audiences beyond organic reach. Continued testing refines audience targeting and messaging.

Getting your content in front of those most likely to share, link, or reference it stimulates viral traction across the internet.

Apply Search Engine Optimization Best Practices

Evolving search algorithms increasingly prioritize pages that excel at satisfying user intent and delivering engaging experiences. Core SEO fundamentals still apply:

1. Technical On and Off-Site Optimization

• Ensure site architecture enables indexing of new pages via xml sitemaps.
• Set up analytics and Search Console to uncover issues impacting crawlability or indexation.
• Fix indexed pages showing errors, warnings, or significant mobile usability issues.
• Build links from diverse domains with contextual anchor text and editorially given.

2. Keyword Research and Targeting

• Identify search queries aligned to products with sufficient search volume via Keyword Planner.
• Assess difficulty to rank for target keywords based on current page strengths.
• Prioritize SEO initiatives around keywords driving conversions from available traffic.

3. Stay Up-To-Date on Latest SEO Trends

• Monitor annual algorithm updates from Google like helpful content update and passage indexing.
• Leverage AI for optimizing content structure or assessing page experience factors.
• Shift to video given YouTube’s prominence – optimize meta-data and captions.

Balancing proven SEO fundamentals while adapting to the latest algorithm changes sustains organic visibility over time.

Pro Tip: Start link building and guest posting early when launching sites to build domain authority signals that boost rankings.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Driving higher-quality traffic is just one element – you also need visitors to convert once they arrive. Conversion rate optimization focuses on maximizing desired actions from site visitors through two core tactics:

1. Page-Level Optimization

• Craft SEO-friendly, compelling page titles and meta descriptions that generate clicks.
• Spotlight unique value proposition in optimized on-page content and clear calls-to-action.
• Show social proof and credibility via client logos, testimonials, and featured in the press notices.
• Use visitor recordings to pinpoint usability issues impacting conversions.

2. Analytics and User Testing to Improve Experiences

• Set up goals and ecommerce tracking to uncover conversion leakages by traffic source or campaign.
• Analyze behavioral flow reports to see where visitors lose interest and abandon.
• Talk to customers directly via surveys, NPS feedback, or user testing observations to guide page changes.
• A/B test landing page elements like headlines, testimonials, and call-to-action placement to lift conversions.

With a testing and optimization mindset, minor tweaks can generate +10-30% conversion gains over time.

Tracking Website Traffic Growth

With your entire conversion funnel optimized for higher traffic and improved conversions, the final step is measuring impact over time.

Establish Performance Benchmarks

• Set volume-based targets for overall visitors, organic search traffic, referral traffic from outreach campaigns.
• Benchmark conversions like email sign-ups, content downloads, free trials, purchases.
• Factor in industry averages around website conversion rates by vertical. For example, average conversion rates are 1.58% for B2B lead gen and 2.95% for ecommerce.

Monitor Channel Contribution to Traffic Growth

• Organic search should drive a significant share of acquisitions from SERP wins. Assess growth across target keywords.
• Referral traffic should escalate from outreach, syndication, social shares, and UGC integration.
• Owned channels like email, paid ads, and direct bookmark visits contribute as well.

Key Website Traffic Metrics to Track Over Time

1. Organic Search Traffic
2. Referral Traffic
3. Bounce Rates
4. Page Conversion Rates

Compare weekly and monthly performance to benchmarks and prior periods. Plot trends to visualize growth trajectories over longer time horizons.

For declining metrics, dig deeper into underlying factors – page experience issues, technical problems, ranking declines for target keywords, loss of referral partners, seasonality impacts, and more. Course correct channels showing backslides with targeted initiatives.

Closing Thoughts

In summary, checking and amplifying website traffic is foundational to growing an impactful and thriving online presence. Monitor analytical insights around current visitor profiles, engagement, and outcomes to pinpoint optimization opportunities.

Build high-quality content tuned to audience needs and prominently showcase unique value. Distribute your content across channels tapping into viral sharing and expanded reach.

Measure traffic growth tied to benchmarks while staying nimble adapting to changes in algorithm factors, competitor dynamics, and audience interests over time. The strategies outlined in this guide set the stage for sustaining an upward trajectory in expanding your website’s reach and impact through more visitors.