You’ve mastered organic search visibility and are confident that your content is appearing prominently in SERPs. Now, it’s time to examine how many people visit your site and where they’re coming from.
Now, you might be asking some of the following questions:
- How do I measure web traffic?
- How do I know if my efforts are driving traffic?
- How do I know if I’m connecting with the right audience?
- After I’ve identified what’s working, how do I capitalize on those opportunities?
By the end of this article, you’ll know how to access valuable insights into how much traffic is coming to your website and what you can do to improve your website’s performance based on your SEO goals.
How To Measure SEO
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How To Measure Website Traffic
Google Search Console shows how people find your website. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) lets you measure web traffic data and track user behavior with metrics like page views, time on page, conversions, bounce rate, and more.
In this article, I’ll be focusing on Google Analytics.
How To Measure Web Traffic With GA4
To see how many people are visiting your website and how they got there, you need to use an analytics tool like Google Analytics. Website traffic measurement is crucial for assessing the efficacy of your marketing efforts because it reveals how big of an audience you can reach. All you need is a tracking code!
There are different ways to think about web traffic, so let’s talk about three metrics you’ll see in Google Analytics.
How Does Google Analytics 4 Define Website Traffic?
You can measure website traffic in Google Analytics 4 with the following three metrics:
- Users
- Sessions
- Engaged Sessions
Let’s dive deeper into these key metrics to uncover which you should focus on.
What Are Users?
Google Analytics calls unique visitors “users.” Every time a new user visits your website, they’re assigned a unique ID that tracks their return visits. If the same user visits your website three times, Google Analytics will associate those three sessions with the same user. As such, the number of sessions your site receives will always be greater than or equal to the number of users. View your Traffic acquisition report to see how many users visit your site and how they’ve found you.
GA4 also makes it easy to track new users to see how much of your website’s traffic is from repeat traffic or new visitors. Just check the User acquisition report.
What Are Sessions?
Each time someone visits your website, Google Analytics records it as a “session.” A session begins on the first page a user sees (aka, the “Landing Page”) and ends on the last page they see before they leave or become inactive (aka, the “Exit Page”). A session ends after a user has been inactive for 30 minutes.
You can learn more about sessions here.
What Are Engaged Sessions?
An engaged session is one where a user has stayed on the site for at least 10 seconds, has completed at least one conversion event, or has viewed at least two pages. This metric is used to determine the “Engagement Rate” metric, which is the inverse of Bounce Rate.
So Which Traffic Metric Should You Measure?
Each of the metrics defined above offers valuable information about how many people are arriving on your site and which pages they visit most often. Users and sessions each measure slightly different things, but they tend to follow the same patterns. The one you should track will depend on your business objectives and search engine optimization goals. And, of course, you can always monitor both (that’s what we do).
All three of the traffic metrics mentioned above can be tracked across different channels. Let’s dig into the different types of web traffic, how they’re unique, and which ones are most applicable to SEO.
What Are the Different Types of Web Traffic?
Google Analytics breaks down website traffic into several different categories called “channel groups” or “sources.”
Segmenting website traffic by channel helps answer a fundamental question in digital marketing: “How are people finding my website?”
Of the acquisition channels listed in the next section, organic search traffic is the only one that relates directly to SEO. But the others are important to understand for reasons I’ll dive into later.
Traffic sources are specific platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, etc. Tracking source traffic can help you see which platforms generate the most traffic and help you allocate your marketing budget accordingly.
Traffic Channel Groups, Defined
Organic Search Traffic
The organic search traffic channel group highlights page traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Organic search traffic is considered one of the key performance indicators for SEO because it measures the volume of unpaid clicks your site receives from search engine result pages (SERPs).
Direct Traffic
Google Analytics defines direct traffic as web visitors who’ve arrived on your site by typing your URL directly into a browser or by clicking a bookmark they have saved. Some of this direct traffic may be a result of ongoing SEO efforts, though it isn’t clearly attributable. For example, someone who stumbles across one of your pages in SERPs may type your domain into the search bar in the future and navigate directly to your site.
Referral Traffic
In Google Analytics, referral traffic measures the visits to your site from links that appear on other websites. Because a “referral” is considered a recommendation from another site, strong referral traffic can be an indicator of how credible Google perceives your website to be. Referral traffic can have a direct impact on your search rankings. The hyperlinks that refer this kind of traffic to your site are also known as backlinks and are an essential ingredient of any SEO campaign.
Organic Social Traffic
Social traffic comes to your site through social networks or social media channels. For example, if someone clicks through to your website from a tweet or Facebook post, Google Analytics will attribute that to social traffic. Technically this is referral traffic, but Google understands that social media plays a special role in marketing and advertising, so it separates it from the rest of the referrals.
You may also see traffic from Paid Search, Email, Paid Social, Organic Video, and “Unassigned.”
How To Check Website Traffic Analytics on Google Analytics 4
Follow these steps to check your website traffic on Google Analytics.
1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Click ‘Reports.’
3. Expand the ‘Acquisition’ menu and select ‘Acquisition overview.’
You can now see how many users have visited your site, which channels new users used to find you, and sessions by default channel group.
To learn more about how users are finding you, go to the ‘User acquisition’ report. To investigate how many sessions originate from each channel, navigate to the ‘Traffic acquisition’ report.
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What You Can Learn About SEO By Measuring Web Traffic
Since SEO campaigns focus on boosting organic traffic to your website, there’s a lot of value in analyzing traffic data, specifically from search engines. Before diving into that, I want to quickly distinguish the different types of results searchers find on SERPs.
What Makes Organic Search Different From Paid Search?
Although organic search and paid search live in the same neighborhood of search results, they’re very different.
Paid search ads generally appear at the top of the page, followed by organic search results. Depending on the search term, there may also be paid results at the bottom of the page.
While they both appear together on SERPs, there are a few important distinctions to make between the two:
- Organic search rankings are earned and, therefore, carry more credibility than paid search results.
- Appearing in organic search is free. The quality and credibility of your search-optimized content continuously drive organic clicks from search.
- Paid search stops producing clicks as soon as you stop paying Google Ads.
Plus, organic search traffic is more likely to drive qualified leads to your site since keyword research is designed to attract people who want what you have to offer.
Why Measure Organic Traffic?
The primary goal of SEO is to drive relevant organic traffic to your site. Growth in organic sessions over time is one of the strongest indicators of SEO performance. A high month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter uptick in visitors to your website from search engines shows that your SEO performance is improving.
How To Use GA4 To Monitor Organic Traffic
If you’re unfamiliar with where to find organic traffic metrics in Google Analytics, head to your dashboard, and we’ll walk through it together.
Navigate to ‘Acquisition’ > ‘Overview,’ and you’ll see a general breakdown of all the different channels sending traffic to your site.
Click on the ‘Traffic acquisition’ report to see additional data for each default channel group.
To see data at the page level, visit the Pages and Screens report or Landing Pages report. You’ll want to filter for organic traffic by selecting “Add filter” and then setting the “Session default channel group” to exactly match “organic.”
This report allows you to see traffic data at the individual page level to identify which pages are performing well and which may need to be further optimized or pruned.
By default, pages are listed by the number of views, from highest to lowest. This allows you to take a closer look at where visitors spend their time on your website so you can evaluate what strategies are working well and which could perform better.
To see which pages might need extra optimization or need to be pruned altogether, click the arrow in the sessions column to reverse the order and float your lowest-performing pages to the top of the list.
Understanding Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is Google’s channel for reporting visits that come to your website from websites other than search engines, social networks, and emails. If someone finds your website by clicking a link on one of these websites, Google Analytics typically tracks that as a referral visit.
Why Is Referral Traffic Valuable?
Referral traffic is important because it sends potentially qualified visitors to your site from another trusted website. These backlinks represent the opportunity to get your content in front of more people than organic search alone. If the backlinks that create referral traffic are on a credible website, they lend further credibility to your content, just like a recommendation from a friend makes you feel more comfortable about trying a new restaurant.
Google considers referral traffic from backlinks a sign of social proof that increases its perception of your site’s authority and trustworthiness and positively impacts your search rankings.
Why Monitor Referral Traffic?
Examining your referral traffic can teach you a lot. First, understanding where your referral traffic is coming from helps you identify the interests and habits of users clicking through to your site.
For example, if you sell sneaker insoles and you’re getting a lot of referral traffic from a skate shoe brand, you might deduce that skateboarders are interested in what you sell.
A revelation like this might inform your SEO strategy, prompting you to create content that targets that demographic so they can find you through organic search.
Likewise, using the context of referring sites to understand visitors to your pages can help you optimize conversion pages for specific user demographics that will move them through your marketing funnel. Consider measuring it as part of your website traffic data.
How To Use GA4 To Monitor Referral Traffic
From your Google Analytics dashboard, go to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Search ‘referrals’ in the box below the line graph.
Click the down triangle next to ‘Session default channel grouping’ and select ‘Session source/medium’ to see a list of sites that have referred traffic to your pages, sorted by session volume.
To evaluate the quality of your referral traffic, you’ll want to look not only at the total number of users or sessions but how those visitors are engaging on your site. For example, which sites have the highest engaged sessions or events? Are visitors from certain sites converting at a higher rate than others?
Use what you learn here to see where your most engaged (and profitable) referral traffic is coming from, strategize ways to boost those referrals, and find similar sites to build backlinks. Then, tweak your SEO strategy to capitalize on your knowledge.
FAQs About How To Measure Web Traffic
How long does it take for data to appear in Google Analytics?
It can take as long as 24 hours for data to appear in Google Analytics. However, GA starts tracking data from the moment you implement the tracking ID on your website. Unfortunately, there’s no way to recover historical traffic data from before implementing Google Analytics.
If you set up your tracking ID and don’t see any traffic stats after waiting a couple of days, double-check the implementation to make sure there aren’t any errors.
A simple way to check your code implementation is to install the Google Tag Assistant extension for Chrome. It’ll show the tracking ID and status for your site.
How do I find the most popular pages on my website?
To find the most viewed pages on your website, go to your Google Analytics account, and click on Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens. The list defaults to show the most viewed pages at the top.
How often should I be measuring site traffic?
For website traffic, measure metrics weekly, as they’re prone to fluctuation. Website traffic stats are a good initial indicator of campaign success or, on the flip side, offer an early warning for technical issues that could impact your search visibility. Look for inexplicable peaks or valleys every week, and keep an eye on MoM or YoY comparisons to spot cycles (seasonality) or trends in either direction.
How does website traffic impact my business?
In general, the more traffic you drive to your website, the more opportunities you have to generate qualified leads, nurture prospective customers, and sell your product or service. While the number of sessions alone doesn’t absolutely correlate with business success, getting people to come to your site is the first step to building a thriving online business.
How do I increase my referral traffic?
There are some basic things you can do to boost your referral traffic, including:
- List your business in industry directories.
- Get listed on review sites.
- Guest post on other websites.
- Make the best use of social media.
But the most effective way to grow your referral traffic is to include SEO link building services in your overall marketing strategy.
What if my traffic is going up, but my conversions are going down?
In this case, you’re attracting searchers to your website, but they aren’t your best prospective customers. You’ll want to employ keyword research services to get help targeting queries that are relevant to your prospective customers.
The Power of SEO Partnership
Learning how to measure a website’s traffic is the first step to understanding how services from your SEO agency impact your business. Because your SEO goals are unique to your business, the way you analyze your website traffic will also be unique and may evolve over time.
Learning more about SEO doesn’t mean you have to do it by yourself. At Victorious, our most successful partnerships are with customers who relish transparency and frank conversations about what’s working, what isn’t, and where to leverage campaign resources for the greatest impact on the metric that matters most — a return on your investment.
So, if you’re ready to take the next step in SEO, let’s have a conversation about how we can help your website get the attention it deserves.
