Google Analytics – Visitor Traffic Data

Every website has its purpose - provide information, build a brand, sell products services online and or offline.  To often website owners’ focus on the quantity of visitor traffic measured in analytics in terms of measuring website performance, when in fact the focus should be on quality of visitors engaging on the site. 

Before logging into Google Analytics to access your website data, take a moment to reflect on “What it is you want visitors to do on your website?”

How are visitors coming to my website?

One of the most important data elements to obtain insight into about visitors is determining how visitors are finding your website. Within “View Report” select “Traffic Sources” located on the left of your screen to display the websites and keywords sourcing traffic to your website.

3 Traffic Sources Categories

1. Direct Traffic - This reflects the number of visitors who came to the website by typing the URL into their web browser.  Direct traffic also measures the popularity of your website.

2. Referring Sites - These are other websites that have a link that points to your website. Referring visitors are then the number of visits landing on your website via clicking through a link provided from another website. This data can provide valuable information in terms of measuring return on investment for paid advertising links, as well as judge the success of social media marketing efforts.

3. Search Engines – This list the search engines and the number of visits coming from each as a source of traffic to your website.

Additionally, Google Analytics allows you to drill down further to view a list of the keywords that visitors clicked through to access your website.  A high percentage of visits from search engines indicates successful SEO efforts in terms of SERPs visibility.

What are visitors doing on my website?

To take a look at what visitors are doing once they come to your website, look at the “Content” category.

Top Content- identifies which pages are most popular in terms of visits.

Top Landing Pages- are the content pages visitors land on. You can also view the path of pages visitors explore on your website, and look for popular patterns.

Top Exit Pages- lists the web pages that visitors used as point of exit off your website. The pages with the greater percentage of exits presents a red flag that warrants reworking the information functionality of the content to align with your site performance goals.

You can use this visitor traffic insight to improve content pages on your website that are under performing, as well as target referral efforts with websites similar in nature to those referring high volumes of quality visitor traffic.

When you approach Google Analytics data with thoughtful goals, the information at hand becomes invaluable.  Read more about Website Analytics.