The number of visitors to a website, and the pages they click on, is called website traffic. When a visitor arrives at the site, their presence is logged and any links that they click on are also monitored. These numbers get added up, giving the website owner an idea of how many people are visiting his or her site. It is a way of measuring the success of a website, as the more traffic it gets, the more popular it is.
Website traffic is monitored through various tools. Many of the best tools are free, but the results may need some interpretation. There are many companies that provide services that monitor and analyze website traffic. There are also ways for website owners to learn to perform this service themselves. It may take a while to learn, but it is a worthy investment, especially if a website owner is serious about growing the traffic to his or her site.
There are many reasons to analyze website traffic. One of the biggest reasons is that it gives site owners a way to monitor the effectiveness of their site. If, for example, a website is registering 3,000 hits during a two-day span, it sounds like the website is doing reasonably well. On closer examination, however, the owner sees that the visitors are only staying a minute, and are not looking at the other content on the site. Now, the owner can try to solve the problem, and find ways to encourage the visitors to stay longer.
Increasing website traffic takes time, luck, and skill. For any one topic, there may be a million or more web pages devoted to it. In order to get traffic to one particular site, the owner needs to know how to get his or her content noticed. One of the best ways to do that is through search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO uses keywords, links, and other methods to improve a websites rank in search engine results. While these methods are not foolproof, and require a lot of research and understanding of how search engines operate, they do give users a step up from other websites not using SEO to build their traffic.
Understanding website traffic can be the key to unlocking the potential of a website. Being able to develop a targeted approach to increase traffic based on how visitors are using a site and on search engine strategies allows the website owner to improve their site in ways they may not have initially thought of. As the website improves, the amount of traffic it sees increases, giving the owner new information that can be used in further improvements.