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Where are Your Website Visitors Coming From? Posted by Tyson Downs on 4/20/15 7:09 AM One of the best things about your healthcare website is the ability to gather data on your visitors. All of this data is displayed in an analytics or your traffic report. It tells you the browsing and purchasing habits of your visitors, their demographics, and how they were referred to your website, among other things.
Having a traffic report and reading it are two different things. In fact, if you look at your traffic report right now, you may find it confusing. Maybe you don't look at your traffic report at all, because all you see is a bunch of numbers and words you don't understand or can't even begin to put meaning to. If that's the case, you are not alone. Plenty of healthcare website owners know traffic reports are important, but they don't know what to do with the reports that they have. We're going to solve this problem for you. We'll teach you how to read it, what information to look for, and how you can use that information to improve your marketing.
The Four Primary Types of Traffic for Websites
The type of traffic mentioned here doesn't just apply to healthcare websites. Every website on the internet has these four types of traffic. You need to understand what this traffic is and where it comes from before you can use it to benefit your business. Direct traffic is the most common type of traffic. This traffic comes from a direct link to your website. Visitors from direct traffic will either click on a link to your website or type the URL in. This is where the majority of your traffic is going to come from. (As a side note, if an analytics program can't figure out where the visitor came from, they'll often just put it as 'direct traffic'. Paid traffic is traffic that comes from paid advertising sources. You may have put up an ad on Google, Bing or a social media website. People who arrive to your website through advertisements are part of the paid traffic group. Paid traffic can be a good thing if it's utilized correctly. It's also very easy to tell if you're getting a good return on investment with paid traffic. If you're noticing that your Facebook ad is bringing in a lot of traffic, then that's money well spent. If your ad on Google or Bing isn't doing so well, then you need to reinvest those funds somewhere else. Referral traffic comes from other websites that may have referenced you in an article or blog post. It also comes from guest posting on other websites. Organic traffic comes purely from SEO searches. When someone types in a term in a source engine, websites pop up that provide information on that term. If your website pops up, and someone clicks on your link, that's referral traffic.
How to Make Each Traffic Type Work For You Now that you know the basics of the four types of traffic, let's focus on how you can get each one to work for you. You probably already have a lot of direct traffic. Most websites don't have a problem with this. We touched on how important your paid traffic is too. Now let's look at referral traffic and organic traffic. Referral traffic can be increased by guest posting on other blogs or websites that are considered authorities in the healthcare field. This makes you seem like an authority too, and builds your credibility. The more guest posts you do, the wider your audience will become, and the more your organic traffic will increase. There is a catch though. You don't want to spam blog posts or articles. This means you shouldn't put out articles just for the sake of gaining traffic. Your articles have to be highly relevant to the website you're posting on. They must provide information that the website's audience will consider useful. They have to be genuine and helpful. Users can tell when all you want to do is plug your practice, and they won't respond to you. Organic traffic is usually a little more elusive, but it can work in conjunction with referral traffic. You can use your traffic report to see which terms are bringing visitors into your website, then write articles around those search terms. These articles can be distributed either on your blog or on other websites. This increases your visibility in search engines, and your chances of getting more traffic using that search term. For example, if a number of your visitors found your site through the term "cure for the cold," then you can write an article about remedies for the cold. Put it up on your website or offer it as a guest post to another website. One thing you never want to do is submit your article to an article directory. They are viewed by search engines as spam, and it can have negative affects on your traffic website. Now you know the basics of your traffic report. Your next step should be to check it out on a regular basis - at least weekly. Stay on top of it. Those numbers help you determine how your marketing efforts are paying off.
A traffic report is like a map in an unfamiliar area. If you don't have one, you're completely lost. Keep referring to your map on a regular basis, and you'll have a good roadmap for improving your marketing.
Topics: Web Analytics