Traffic

What is traffic?

In online marketing, traffic describes the number of hits on a selected page. For companies and website owners, the main goal when optimizing a website is to attract more traffic to it. The traffic of a page also influences the Google algorithm. If a website already has a certain number of hits, it will be displayed higher up in the rankings, resulting in even more traffic. Traffic is a criterion for Google to assess relevance and reliability.

How can you increase traffic?

There are many ways to increase a website’s traffic in the long term. Basically, however, it can be said that the number of hits is largely dependent on the content. If informative, high-quality and unique content is available on a page, this is rated positively by Google and the page rises in the search engine rankings. Backlinks and paid advertising can also ensure that traffic figures shoot up. Subpages, a sensible structure and navigation are essential to keep customers on a page and improve the conversion rate. To summarize, there are several aspects that have an influence on traffic:

• Content and content must always be unique

• Sensible structure with subpages and clear navigation

• Paid advertising from networks such as Facebook, Twitter & Co.

How can traffic be analyzed?

The traffic and visitor numbers of a website should be monitored at regular intervals in order to identify trends and optimize content. Well-known analysis tools such as Google Analytics or Piwik are ideal for analyzing traffic over a longer period of time and making statements about the effectiveness of advertising measures. The tools can be used to evaluate when most visitors visited a page, whether they were new users and also how long they stayed on the page. If the bounce rate is unusually high and visitors only stay on the website for a very limited time, optimization processes must follow. These can affect both the content and the structure of a page. After any changes and optimization processes, it can then be analyzed again to see whether the measures have a positive effect on traffic.

What is fake traffic?

Not every call is made by a real person. Automated bots are often directed to a specific website in order to artificially drive up traffic. The artificial page views automatically flush a page up the search results. Even though this is actually prohibited by the search engines, these tools are used time and again to fake the relevance of a page and ensure that pages grow organically over time and build up more traffic.

How can traffic be influenced?

A site’s traffic can be influenced by various factors. First and foremost is always suitable content. Unique content is evaluated by search engine crawlers and the quality of a page can be assessed as a result. Permitted optimizations also include the expansion of navigation, the creation of subpages and the creation of backlinks to other pages.