Website traffic plays an important role in optimising and improving your SEO strategy. While not a direct ranking factor, the number of visitors to your site and how these users interact with your site can have an influence. We take a look at website traffic and how it impacts your SEO:
What is web traffic?
Web traffic is a measurement of the volume of users visiting a website. Several factors can affect the volume of web traffic, from the website’s purpose or the visitor’s goal, to how the user discovered your site. Higher traffic is a metric that can help determine how well a website is performing.
The amount of website traffic may not be hugely important for personal websites (such as a travel blog for a hobby). However, it is a significant measurement for businesses and organisations. Understanding and identifying ways to improve web traffic is vital for business growth.
What are the different types of traffic?
When it comes to identifying traffic, it can come from a variety of sources. Website analytics will provide a breakdown of traffic from each source. It’s important to distinguish the different types of traffic as this provide an insight into how well your marketing campaigns are working, and which areas need further attention.
Direct traffic
The first type of traffic you should be familiar with is direct traffic. Direct traffic refers to a website visitor who visits your site by manually entering the URL or clicking on a bookmark. The user visits your website directly without a referring website.
High direct traffic can be a very positive sign as it indicates brand and company familiarity. This is something search engines, like Google, will pay particular notice of. The greater number of users visiting a site directly signals higher authority and value.
Organic traffic
Another type of traffic you should be familiar with is organic traffic. Unlike direct traffic, organic traffic is the number of visitors that click on your site from a search engine. As such, this type of traffic is most likely to consist of your target audience.
Only clicks from organic results will impact your organic traffic. Any clicks you receive from paid ads on search results will not count. As such, traffic from these sources will not affect your SEO strategy. Only clicks from organic results will influence this.
Paid search
Any visits you receive to your site as a result of paid ads, such as Google Ads, are categorised as paid search traffic. While organic traffic can take considerable time to build, paid search can provide much quicker increases in traffic.
Social media
As the name suggests, social media traffic is visitors to your website from social media platforms. A high social media following combined with posting engaging content helps to boost your social media traffic. However, the impact on SEO from social links is minimal.
Referral traffic
One more type of traffic you may come across for SEO purposes is referral traffic. This is the volume of visitors who come to your site from a referring site. The major source of referral traffic is backlinks from third-party websites.
Why is website traffic important for SEO?
While the amount of website traffic you get to your site will not directly affect your search rankings, there are several other reasons why website traffic is important for SEO. It’s also a good indication of how effective your SEO efforts are. Here are some of the reasons why website traffic is important for SEO:
- Higher traffic indicates to search engines that your site is relevant and valuable.
- Pages with higher traffic can indicate content that resonates more with your target audience.
- Consistent traffic growth from organic search results can boost your domain authority.
- Websites with much higher traffic are more likely to gain quality backlinks.
- The greater your website traffic, the greater your brand awareness, trust, and authority.
- Provides data that gives more of an insight into your target audience, such as behaviour patterns, location, and device.
How does website traffic impact SEO?
Website traffic does not directly influence or impact your SEO strategy. That’s because website traffic can be easily manipulated and is difficult to verify. As such, no matter what traffic you receive, it will not correlate to higher rankings. Despite this, website traffic can indirectly impact your SEO:
User engagement
Higher website traffic is a strong indicator of how users engage and interact with your site. Certain user engagement metrics are used by search engines to determine a website’s quality and relevance.
Some of the metrics you should pay particular attention to include bounce rate, time on page, and pages per session. While increasing your website traffic does bring more users to your site, it’s how users interact with your site that is crucial.
If users are coming to your site and then not interacting or leaving straight away, it spells bad news for your user engagement. As such, your SEO can see a negative impact. Here’s why:
- High bounce rates indicate website visitors are leaving your site after viewing a single page. This sends a signal to Google that your content is not meeting users’ expectations.
- A low time on page can be a reflection of poor quality content. In contrast, the longer users spend on a page can be a good indication of high content quality.
- A low number of pages per session can be a sign of a poor user experience, such as poor navigation.
Strong brand awareness and authority
The more website traffic you receive, the stronger your brand awareness and authority. This is especially the case with direct traffic, as we previously discussed. High direct traffic indicates to Google that your brand has credibility and can help boost your authority for growing your search rankings.
Organic traffic
We already mentioned that your organic traffic does not directly impact your SEO performance. However, high organic traffic is a strong indication of an effective SEO strategy. More organic visitors to your site shows that your SEO efforts are paying off, as more people are finding your site in the search results.
Another benefit is the increased traffic that drives users to your site, which could result in more backlinks. If users visiting your site find your content valuable, they are more likely to include a backlink to it in the future. They may also be more likely to share or engage with your site.
Click-through rate
Click-through rate (or CTR) refers to the percentage of people who clicked on your listing in organic search results. While this is not a confirmed ranking factor, tracking your CTR can be a good idea for traffic to your organic search performance or optimising your strategy.
Returning visitors
Returning visitors are those who have visited your site before and are tracked using first-party cookie data. The more returning visitors you have to your site, the better for your SEO. This is a good reflection you are delivering value to your users, hence why they are returning to your site.
How can you improve SEO through traffic?
Even though website traffic does not directly impact your SEO performance, you can use traffic metrics to help shape your SEO strategy, which can lead to better performance. Here are a few of the ways you can improve your SEO through traffic:
Analyse traffic data using tools such as Google Analytics. This will allow you to understand traffic patterns, such as the best and worst-performing pages. You can then shape your SEO strategy by focusing more on the content that appeals to your site visitors or optimising poor-performance pages.
Optimise or create high-quality content to ensure it provides value to your website visitors that encourages them to stay on your site or return. Creating engaging content that is keyword-optimised, is a sure way to attract and retain traffic.
Sharing on social media is a great way to increase traffic to your site and increase the discoverability of your content. As such, you are more likely to gain backlinks to your site that will positively impact your SEO performance.
Optimise the technical elements of your site to ensure users have a positive experience on your site. Technical SEO elements, such as loading time, mobile friendliness, and navigation, are all elements you should improve to retain visitors.
The more quality traffic you attract to your site, combined with a positive user experience, will ensure users stay engaged on your site for longer. This results in positive website traffic metrics that send positive signals to search engines that users find your website valuable. Combined with the increased chance of potential backlinks, website traffic can have a positive impact on your SEO strategy.