Web metrics are the numbers that let you know all about your website’s performance. It is indeed a critical step in determining whether your website is producing a positive return on investment and serving users in the manner intended.

After knowing your website stats, you can take relevant steps to increase traction and boost traffic to your website.

Measuring Website Traffic

There are several free tools available online for measuring web traffic. For some, you may have to register, to gain greater insights into visitors, backlinks, and high-performing keywords.

However, the best tool by far is Google Analytics. It is very user-friendly, so you can begin using it right away. Just insert Google Analytics code into your site, and the tool will start monitoring your site for web traffic data. You will find everything worth knowing about your site’s online traffic. You can even invoke custom reports.

There are other options as well for measuring web traffic. Kissmetrics is a paid tool that is good for gauging engagement rates. Hubspot provides features and functions for automated marketing besides measuring web traffic.

Increasing Online Traffic

Once you have information on your website traffic performance, you can try out different ways of bringing in more traffic.

Here is how you can increase web traffic.

Online Ads

Online ads are great for instantly boosting traffic. While SEO is free, it does require several months of hard work before you see results.

You can advertise on social media to increase traffic to your website instantly. Besides social media, you can also display ads on search engines to attract traffic.

However, before you can start spending big on ads, you will have to hone your advertising strategy. You will have to fine-tune your ad copy and take other factors into account to start gaining traffic from your online ads.

Hence, during the experimental phase, you should commit only to a minimal budget. As you get better results, you can steadily increase your budget for more ads and more clicks.

Guest Blogging

Visibility is key to more website traffic, and there is hardly a better way to increase visibility than guest blogging.

Guest blogging may initially not sound appealing since you will have to write blogs for others. And writing meaningful blogs obviously entails a lot of hard work.

However, you will be able to build your brand image, bolster your online presence and establish your authority in the field. At the end of each guest blog, you can include information about yourself and post links to your website. Readers will click on these links, as a result of which web traffic will rise.   

Numerous online brands have established their reputation and improve business via guest blogging. So you should search for sites that welcome guest posts and write for them.

Social Media

The most popular social media websites have billions of active users. Almost anyone who uses the internet has one or more social media accounts. Hence, social media messaging is vital for engaging global audiences and boosting your web traffic.

While engaging followers and users on social media, don’t jump straight to selling. Make sure that you establish trust and rapport. Wherever appropriate, you can introduce yourself and subtly promote your business.

To give visibility to your guest blogs and website blogs, you can post social media messages highlighting them. To entice people to click on blog links in your messages, you can cite statistics and fascinating case studies to generate interest in your blogs.

Q&A Websites and Forums

You may have likely noticed that Google shows Reddit, Stackexchange, Medium, and Quora links in response to your queries. These are Q&A websites with a highly engaged and massive user base where people post questions to get meaningful answers.

You can take advantage of this in so many ways to boost your web traffic. Try answering as accurately as possible. The more questions you answer, the more your credibility will rise. You will build trust and rapport with the massive user base at these forums this way.

You can display your website link in your profile and posts so that people click on it. However, you will have to do it smartly so that it is not seen as spam.

Here is how you do it. In response to a user query, you can answer very briefly and then post your website link that answers the same query in greater detail. This is a good way of publicizing your blog topics and gaining steady traffic.

Make Podcasts

According to a survey, around a quarter of Americans like listening to podcasts. Besides making podcasts for your own website, you may also try making podcasts for other sites as a guest.

The reason why podcasts are growing in popularity is that they are extremely convenient. People on the go can easily listen to podcasts. Since a lot of people spend a substantial amount of time traveling, podcasts are a feasible way for them to consume content.

Build Backlinks

Building backlinks is vital for ranking higher on Google search results and thus gaining more traffic. Backlinks are links pointing to your website. Hence, they are a measure of how trustworthy your site is. The more backlinks there are, the more others are talking about your site.

Guest blogging, as explained above, is a very easy way of building backlinks.

You can also talk to webmasters upfront for backlinks. You should post website links of these persons on your site first. In your request, you can highlight the fact that you are posting backlinks for them. This may compel them to return the favor and do the same for you.

You should inform webmasters about the benefits they will get from the website links you have included in your online platform. If you can convince them that they are getting exposure, recognition, and authority from such links, they will be more likely to consider posting backlinks for you.

Final Thoughts

Measuring your website traffic is easy. However, there are innumerable ways of boosting web traffic. Those shown above are a good starting point.