4.For a website to be useful, it needs visitors. Their flow in the world of marketing is called traffic. Let’s look at techniques that will help make a website popular among users.
What is website traffic, types of traffic
Traffic sources
Website traffic analysis
How to attract traffic to a website
What mistakes do beginners make and how to avoid them
Expert advice
What is website traffic, types of traffic
Table of Contents
Let’s imagine that all the traffic on the Internet is passers-by walking along a busy street. The site is one of the stores, and the number of people who decide to go into it is the site’s traffic.
You can analyze traffic through the following sections:
1.● number of unique visitors;
2.● views of specific pages;
3.● session duration;
4.● transitions from advertising and search engines, social networks;
5.● user geolocation.
All website traffic is divided into paid and organic. To attract paid traffic, you need to buy advertising, place banners on advertising platforms and social networks, negotiate with bloggers so that they talk about the site. You don’t need to pay for organic traffic — users themselves go to the site from search engines or social networks.
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Traffic sources
Organic traffic comes mostly from search engines. The user types the words they want to find information on and goes to the site from the search results. Usually, they go to sites that appear on the first page of results. To get there, the site must meet the search engine requirements for structure and content. The better the site is optimized to meet the requirements, the better the search engine ranks it.
When a website is developed, organic traffic is the first thing to bet on. In the long term, this approach has several advantages:
✅ Sustainability
Organic traffic is more stable than paid traffic. Advertising campaigns are limited in time, and people search for information every day. If the site is optimized for search engine requirements, it can attract visitors for a long time.
✅ Saving resources
If users can easily find a site through a search engine or are familiar with the brand through social networks, the business will not have to constantly spend budgets on advertising.
✅ Increased loyalty
If a company decides to increase organic traffic to the site, they will invest in brand development: talk about it on social networks, hold online and offline events, and send out newsletters to customers with useful information. The more trust the audience has in the brand, the higher the likelihood that they will buy without advertising.
When a site is first launched, organic traffic is usually low. Search engines need time to index a new site and start showing it in search results. They will analyze the content and how users interact with the site. This can take several weeks or even months. If the niche is competitive, it will be even more difficult for a newcomer to compete for organic internet traffic. Old sites that have earned authority with search engines are more likely to appear at the top of search results.
Paid tools will help you attract traffic to your new site:
● Targeted advertising
Advertisements about a website are placed in front of the target audience of a product or service. For example, a company sells sportswear. The advertisement will only be seen by those interested in fitness and sports. To set up such advertisements, special advertising platforms are used – Google Ads and Yandex Direct.
● Contextual advertising
Such ads appear next to material on a specific topic. For example, advertising for a publishing house appears next to book reviews on websites.
Such ads are also set up in Google Ads and Yandex Direct.
● Banner advertising
Works similarly to contextual advertising. For example, an animated banner with an advertisement for an air ticket aggregator appears on travel websites.
● CPA advertising (Cost per action)
Such advertising is set up on special marketing platforms. For example, CPA.House, Saleads or Shakes. The business pays the advertising platform only for the target actions of users on the site. For example, an intermediary between the advertising platform purchases traffic. The bank pays him only for the issued bank cards that came from this traffic.
● Seedings
are something like conversations about a product or service on other web sites without aggressive advertising. For example, you can write useful comments about car repairs on car forums and leave a link to your site. If you need not 10-20 seeds, but several hundred, SMM agencies are usually involved and a content plan is made to attract traffic .
● Mentions on other sites or blogs
In this case, the business pays the platform or blogger, and they talk about the product or service and post links to the site. For example, a blog about cultural events makes a mention of a platform with educational courses on art.
There are no good or bad traffic sources. The strategy for the site is based on the business goals. It usually includes both organic and paid traffic.
To work on projects where traffic to the site is attracted for a fee, you need to understand the functions of Yandex Direct and Google Ads. These platforms record clicks on advertisements and help to understand which of them were the most successful. In the “Traffic Manager” course, students learn to launch advertising campaigns, from studying business needs to analyzing results. After training, you can get certified in Yandex Direct – this will strengthen your resume and increase the likelihood of finding a job.
Website traffic analysis
Web analytics tools, such as Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics, help analyze website traffic. They collect and analyze information about visitors and their behavior on websites.
Here’s how it happens:
1. The website owner places a special code on each page.
2. When a visitor visits the website, the code sends information to the Yandex or Google servers. It records data about which pages the user visited, what actions they performed (e.g. clicks, scrolls), where they came from, and what device they use.
3. Based on the data, the web analytics service generates reports and dashboards for the website owner about the quality of Internet traffic . This information helps them better understand the audience, analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, and the quality of content on the website.
Let’s look at the main metrics that need to be tracked in your web service personal account.
Metrics
What does it show?
Users or sessions in Google Analytics, visitors and visits in Yandex.Metrica
A user is a unique id (cookie). A session is several consecutive actions of a user on a website during the time he/she spent there. For example, he/she visited several pages, asked a question to support, or placed an order.
Page views
How many pages a user viewed in one visit.
Time on site
How much time the user spent on the site or page.
Bounce rate or bounce rate
A bounce is a situation when a user has been on the site for less than 15 seconds, has not performed any target actions, or has only visited one page.
In Google, this indicator is calculated using the formula:
Number of users who opened one page of the site and did not perform target actions / total number of site users × 100%
A rate of 50-70% or higher is considered high.
Conversions and Conversion Rate
Conversions or target actions are what the website owner expects from users. For example, they bought a product, filled out a form, or subscribed to a newsletter.
Conversion rate helps you measure how well a website owner is keeping users engaged and converting them into customers or subscribers.
Calculated by the formula: Number of conversions / Total number of visitors * 100%
For example: there were 1000 website visitors, 50 of them made a purchase. Conversion rate = (50 / 1000) * 100 = 5%. This corresponds to the average conversion rate of online stores – 2-5%.
How to attract traffic to a website
Let’s look at two cases. In one, we’ll attract traffic to a store’s website, in the other, to a website that promotes a service — cooking classes.
Online store
Let’s say you need to attract Internet traffic to the website of a pet store.
For the e-commerce industry, it is important to personalize advertising for the user. There are two reasons for this:
1. If a buyer sees an ad for products that he really needs, he is more likely to click on it and place an order. If he regularly sees such ads, he will become more loyal to the brand and choose its products more often.
2. Only those who are interested in the product will see targeted advertising. It turns out that the business spends money only on potential customers, and not on the entire flow of “Arbat passers-by”.
If you personalize advertising, you can increase the volume of traffic, which will pay off through sales of goods. For example, you invested 1000 ₽ in advertising and earned 2000 ₽.
Let’s look at sources of paid and organic traffic that are suitable for an online store.
Paid traffic
Ads in search results
They will appear if the user searches for a product that is available in the store.
Video advertising
on social networks or platforms with video content.
Targeted advertising
in the form of banners on social networks and blogs.
Organic traffic
Search engines
It is important to make sure that the site is optimized for Yandex and Google requirements.
Educational platform with cooking courses
In this case, it is worth focusing on promoting visual content, because in this case you need to sell interesting experiences and impressions. For example, shoot videos for social networks and vividly show the cooking process and redirect to the site to buy the course. To attract paid traffic, stick to a similar format: place animated banners and advertising on video platforms.
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What mistakes do beginners make and how to avoid them
❌ Error
✅ How to proceed
They do not plan to launch campaigns and traffic
Prepare a strategy, define goals, audience and budget. Create an action plan with clear stages and deadlines.
They don’t select traffic channels for different levels of the sales funnel
Determine what stage of the funnel the website owner is at: awareness, consideration, conversion, and select the appropriate channels.
They don’t conduct analytics
Attracting traffic is not a one-time action. Today the site attracts traffic, and tomorrow – not. It is important to track this in time and find out the reason.
They do not consider the return on investment in purchasing traffic to the site
Identify key success metrics and regularly evaluate whether investments are paying off.
They don’t test hypotheses
Use A/B testing methods: test different channels and approaches and change strategy if some of them don’t work.
They do not take into account the specifics of the site for purchasing traffic
Study the behavior and preferences of users on a specific platform and adapt the content to them. For example, VK clips have dynamic videos and you need to quickly hook the user with a wow effect.
