Possibly you are doing everything possible to bring as much traffic as possible to your website or you have even hired an SEO or Social Media specialist so that your project gains notoriety and your visits or sales skyrocket but, as always, if you don’t measure well what It reaches you and how each type of traffic behaves, you will not be able to make the most of your efforts in time and money.
When we talk about types of traffic, we usually refer to the acquisition channel of the user who has ended up visiting your website. These channels are mainly divided into these six groups that we explain below:
Table of Contents
Types of web traffic: Social
It is the one that comes from social networks , either from the content generated and shared by your community manager or from the campaigns you are doing on networks.
A good campaign in networks can generate a lot of traffic, because the acquisition cost is lower than in a search engine campaign and allows a great segmentation so that the budget is used those customer profiles with the highest probability of purchase.
It is especially recommended for selling products with an attractive image and for very specific audiences.
Types of web traffic: direct
They are those who know you and directly type the url to enter your page. This includes current customers and users but also competitors, employees, etc. A basic recommendation for this type of traffic is to check its geographical origin.
If your company is not very local, it will be relatively easy to see if what seems like good data is mainly due to users who do not contribute to the business.
Types of web traffic: organic or organic search
The most wanted and coveted. It includes users who have searched for you in a search engine such as Google or Bing. Appearing in the Top 10, usually requires a great effort from SEO to optimize the website, including technical analysis, elimination of errors, improvement of load times, content generation, creation of quality links and choice of the best keywords for your website.
For the latter, you should always bear in mind that the best ones are not always the ones with the most searches, but the ones that provide you with a better relationship between traffic and positioning effort.
As in the previous case, in the data analysis, if your business activity is limited exclusively to Spanish territory, you should exclude visits from other countries from your potential audience, since visits from Spanish-speaking audiences are common.
Types of web traffic: paid search
This traffic will basically come from your Google Ads campaigns . As in the case of direct traffic, we recommend making geographical exclusions to avoid paying for the clicks of your employees and suppliers, especially brand campaigns or with telephone number extension.
Types of web traffic: Display
Also paid traffic, but in this case from your ads on Google Display. As you know, Google offers this option within its Google Ads platform, to be able to insert your banners for both Display and Remarketing campaigns . It is also possible to select whether to include Google partners (those pages that rent part of their space to place ads).
Types of web traffic: Referral traffic or “referral”
It is the one that comes from other websites that link you, including those with which you can collaborate or provide quality content.
This has a double value because in addition to the users that it can bring you if you get a recommendation, it can help you with your positioning strategy if the website that cites you has high notoriety and trust. At this point, it should be noted that references can have a negative effect if they come from pages with high toxicity rates, which are usually those that do not generate quality content, such as link farms.
Although you can make subgroups, these are the main types of traffic that you can find.
You can view your traffic distribution in the menu on the left of Google Analytics under the “acquisition” section
How to know which traffic is the one that brings me the most
To find out which source is contributing the most to improving your goals, we recommend that you review two main metrics: the bounce rate and the conversion rate.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate, or percentage of users who leave your website within seconds of entering, measures the traffic that has not found what they were looking for . A bounce rate, especially high on a paid channel, is a clear indicator that your campaign should be reviewed. Do not forget that you are paying for each visit, therefore we are interested in getting quality visits, who are really interested in what you offer.
Bounce rates of 50% to 70% are within normal limits and depend a lot on how specific or generic your product is. Assuming that the Landing Page has relevant content and is related to the keyword, the more precise it is, the lower the bounce rate you will have.
Conversions
On the other hand, the most important metric is conversions. You can find the distribution of your conversions through the different channels in the same menu, but for this, you must first have defined what a conversion is.
This can be reaching a thank you page after a purchase, sending a contact form, or simply viewing a page. If you want to define your conversions you can do it from the configuration menu.
And how does Analytics know which channel is responsible for the traffic that reaches our website?
It really is a complex thing. It is impossible to know, in the case of a customer who has gone through various channels in his Customer Journey, which of them is the one that has really convinced him to visit a company page. That is why Google Analytics offered us different attribution models that give more weight to the first click, the last click, etc. For some years now, it has also had the Attribution tool, with more detailed information.
There are more sophisticated attribution models on the market, but with budgets only available to large companies.
Possible strategies: What channels are the priority ones?
As it all depends on what is intended and above all on the desired growth speed. In the end, each channel has its utility.
Organic traffic represents a long-term investment that will contain your spending on paid campaigns, but whoever thinks that organic traffic is free is wrong. The correct application of an SEO strategy consumes considerable human and/or financial resources.
It is necessary, because in addition to organic traffic, a good natural positioning guarantees that Google will charge you less for each click on your ads, but it is a path that lasts months or even more than a year and can have ups and downs.
If what you are looking for is to have good traffic from the first moment, you can implement a parallel SEM strategy that reduces the investment as your SEO improves.
If you doubt which means of payment may be the best for your case, we recommend reading this short post, where some advice is given for different cases.