Car traffic is obnoxious, unpleasant, and frustrating. It’s the majority of commuters’ most dreaded part of the day and only seems to be an obstacle for getting where they want to be. Site traffic for inbound marketers is the exact opposite. Measuring site traffic is not an obstacle but an aid for business sites online. It helps inbound marketers understand where they are going with their business objectives and can help them get there. According to Inbound Marketing University’s class “Advanced Marketing Analytics“, there are four key metrics for site traffic that can help inbound marketers get more insight for their businesses.
Metric 1: Visits
The first metric inbound marketers should look at is the type and amount of visits on the site. Visits can be described in three ways: unique, repeat, and total. Unique visitors are people who are completely new to the site and jumping in for the first time. The amount of unique visitors indicates how well the site is attracting new people to its content. Repeat visits refers to visits from people who have been to the site before which demonstrates visitors’ ongoing engagement with the site and how much the website “sticks” or keeps people interested. Total visits are the sum of unique and repeat visits to the site. This number gives inbound marketers an idea of the overall interest in their site.
Metric 2: Traffic Sources
The second metric inbound marketers can concentrate on is where the traffic is coming from. They should look to referral traffic sources, like search engines, blogs, and other websites to see which are the most popular sites that bring in visitors, and try to build upon those opportunities. This may include:
- Developing more search engine optimization for sites like Google or Bing
- Sending content over to bloggers who wrote something positive that rerouted interested readers to the business site
- Creating more relevant content for websites that mentioned the business on their page.
Inbound marketers should also check for their own social media’s referring power. If they do not bring site traffic, then some adjustments, like adding more interesting content to your social media sites, may be necessary. If these efforts fail, then inbound marketers should reconsider whether this type of social media is worth the investment altogether.
Metric 3: Pageviews
Page popularity is the third component that marketers can measure for better site and business success. There are tools, like Google Analytics, that can break down traffic by the number of visits individual pages receive. From this data, inbound marketers can see which pages are the most attractive and unattractive to their audience. Attractive pages can continue with what they are doing and businesses should keep producing this sort of content.
On the other hand, unpopular pages, or pages with few visits, should be analyzed. The content on these pages may be boring or irrelevant to the visitors. Either way, inbound marketers should try to identify the problem and eliminate it from being included on future pages.
Metric 4: Keywords
Finally, the last component inbound marketers need to pay attention to is the use of keywords. What words do search engines consider relevant and end up sending people to the business’s website? Are these terms accurate for what the business stands for? If not, inbound marketers should change keywords and employ search optimization practices for the content on the site that better represent the business brand.
Site traffic is a huge part of how inbound marketers determine a website’s success. If a site is successful, the more likely its business will be too, but site traffic isn’t the only important factor to measure. Want to learn more about other aspects inbound marketers should look at like traffic-to-lead conversion or closed-loop analytics? Comment below and Katie will be sure to fill you in!