3 Types of Traffic coming to your Website

If you use Google Analytics as religiously as I use it then I’m sure that you know how to check traffic statistics about your website.  One area that is important for people to understand is the types of traffic that websites can generate hits from and how to apply this knowledge into growing your own website’s traffic.  After all, it’s all about traffic when it comes to a website.  The traffic sources that a website can have fall into 1 of 3 categories including traffic from search engines, referring sites and traffic that comes directly to your website.  The good thing is that Google Analytics tracks them all!

• Search Engines – This includes your standard search engine delivered traffic from Google, MSN, Bing, Yahoo! and all the others.  What defines search engine traffic is that it’s delivered by people searching keywords on a search engine to find web page on your website.
• Referring Sites – This includes traffic from any website that refers traffic to your website.  If your blog or website is in other people’s blogs or websites and they click on your link and come to your website Google Analytics will add these hits as referral traffic.
• Direct Traffic – Direct traffic, just like it sounds is traffic that is coming directly to your website by either typing in your website URL or clicking on a direct link going straight to your website.  As you build more trust with readers on your website or blog you may see the direct traffic statistics come up.

Ultimately, these are three ways of getting traffic and its best to not get them confused.  Understanding the key differences between them shows you insights into where you can improve your website’s traffic and keep people coming back for more!