3 Ways visitors are finding your website

Have you ever wondered how visitors are finding your website? Basically there a three main 'traffic' routes a site visitor may take to find your website:

• Direct
• Referral
• Search Query

1. Direct Traffic

If the public are already familiar with your business (maybe through advertising, word-of-mouth, on-site visits to your premises etc), the chances are they already know the address of your website (ie. yourwebsitename.co.uk). This is referred to as a 'direct' visit, hence the term 'direct traffic'.

2. Referral Traffic

If other websites provide a link back through to your business website, these are known as 'referral' links, hence the term 'referral traffic'. Good examples of 3rd party websites providing links:

• Internet Forums & Social Media Websites (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) - Where the public may discuss and recommend your business and provide a link back to your website.
• Media Websites - Industry related websites that write articles about either your business directly, or your industry in general, and provide a link back to your website.
• Online Business Directories - Your business details may well be listed in an online business directory along with a link to your business website.

3. Search Query Traffic

'Search Query Traffic' refers to visitors finding your website via Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Typically an Internet user will be searching the web using a particular key phrase, and your website has been listed as one of many results.

How to analyse the 3 traffic types

If you are keen to monitor how many visits you are getting via these three main traffic routes the best option is to use an analytics package such as Google Analytics www.google.co.uk/analytics/. This is a great tool that provides a wealth of statistics about visits to your website. I hope this quick article has been helpful and provided a basic insight into how traffic is driven to your website. If you have further questions please feel free to contact me on the details below.