Web Traffic

The Popularity of Web Pages is measured by Web Traffic Statistics Web Traffic is a term that describes the number of visitors coming to a particular page on the Web, which can be either a website or a social media page (such as Twitter or Facebook). Today, sites that rank high with search engines for specific search terms usually get the highest number of “hits” (visits by Internet user), because around 90 per cent of all traffic originates from Web Search.

Likewise, the most popular Social Media accounts attract the most visits from members of the respective social media platform, either because of their content or because of the fame of the individual the owns the account. Amongst the most popular Facebook accounts, for example, are the ones of soccer star Christiano Ronaldo or singer Taylor Swift.

Natural (Organic) versus Paid For Web Traffic

Websites attract visitors through various channels and in different ways.

First and foremost, Internet users visit sites because they search the Net using certain keywords, in order to find useful content for their particular areas of interest. Because users find sites naturally, the traffic flowing towards websites this way is called “natural” or “organic”.

In addition to the natural (and most common) way of finding sites, website operators can also pay for placement with search engines. The type of attracting website hits is called “Paid Advertising” and very commonplace. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) on Google very often show paid ads on top of the organic search results – and people click on these ads. This paid-for traffic is certainly a good way of generating hits – and works well for many website operators.

Another term often used is “referral traffic”. It describes hits to sites coming from social media pages, blogs, directories, or other sites. Website owner can install software or work with hosting companies that display the statistics and measures hits. Most professional PR agencies analyze these stats when they start a promotion effort for their clients.