One of the fundamental goals of inbound marketing for B2B is to increase organic website traffic. Your traffic numbers indicate your website visitor numbers, and are a good indicator of the success of your inbound strategies.
Increased traffic, with the right conversions, should lead to an increase in leads. For lead generation, begin your marketing strategy by focusing on inbound traffic.
It’s important to keep track of a variety of metrics in marketing. Traffic, conversion rates, CPC (cost per conversion) etc. are all important indicators of success. However, you also need to understand which areas of your marketing are performing well, and which aren’t, specifically.
Therefore, use your website analytics to understand where your traffic numbers originate from. Are they organic search visitors, or have they come from another source? Understanding your website traffic sources helps to optimize your marketing strategies.
Organic Website Traffic
Organic website traffic is traffic (or visitors) that have come from your website through search engines. This means traffic that isn’t paid for, like traffic from ad campaigns.
Organic visitors have found your website by searching keywords specific to your business. Chances are, they haven’t arrived on your homepage. Good quality content, including blogs or cornerstones, are the main route for traffic to your website. High-volume keywords, and a good SEO strategy, increase your organic success.
Regular Website Traffic
Regular website traffic, otherwise referred to as direct traffic, is traffic that has entered your website outside of a referring source. Visitors might have typed your URL directly into their browser or clicked from their browsing history, bookmarks or favourites.
Typically, this means that direct traffic visitors are users that are already aware of your company, or have visited your website previously.
The challenge with direct traffic is that it’s difficult to identify where the users came from. Organic traffic can be tracked to the relevant search engine and search term. Direct traffic cannot be attributed to any one marketing strategy or campaign.
Other Traffic Sources
Organic and direct are just two examples of website traffic classifications. The best B2B marketing campaigns use a combination of approaches. Email marketing, social marketing and video content should all encourage traffic to the website or website content. Here are a few examples of important traffic sources to measure:
Social: Any traffic that has come from social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. YouTube might also be included in this category.
Email: Any traffic that has been referred via email links. Your email marketing platform typically tracks this metric, too.
Paid: Traffic that visits your website from Google Ad campaigns, or other paid search advertising.
Referral: Users that find your site through a link on another website, but not a search engine. Backlinks can be a valuable traffic generation tool.
Importance of Organic Traffic
As mentioned, direct traffic, although still positive, cannot be attributed to any one strategy. Increased traffic is always a benefit, as it teaches the Google algorithm that your website is in demand. However, it would be even more beneficial if you knew where that traffic was coming from.
Organic traffic can be traced back to the search engine. You can measure the success of your keywords and your overall SEO strategy. Ultimately, optimization is key in marketing. A better understanding of your marketing performance helps you to avoid overspending on campaigns and strategies that just don’t work.
Organic traffic data can also give you a more detailed overview of your users. Analytics tools can tell you information such as location, device type, demographics and the language your visitors use.
A Data-Driven Approach
Utilize this data to optimize your website for improved SEO, and increased traffic figures. The more relevant your website is to your specific buyer, the more Google will recommend your website in search results. Also, if your language resonates with your buyer, they are more likely to convert.
Not only that, but it’s important to find keyword strategies that work for your business. Your organic data can identify positive keywords, and where you’re ranking well. Your content should reflect this data.
The Challenges of Direct Traffic
The primary challenge of increased direct traffic on your website is the lack of data. Without tracking, it’s impossible to know whether that traffic is valuable or not.
You cannot optimize your website according to the buyer’s information and demographics, and you cannot further your understanding of good keywords. Also, direct traffic gives no indication of the success of your other marketing efforts.
For instance, how can you know whether a visitor is a potential lead or just one of your employees logging on to your website? You could have thousands of visitors per day, but 50% are your employees, that does nothing for your lead generation effort.
So, you need to minimize direct traffic where possible. That sounds counterintuitive, but that doesn’t mean getting rid of that traffic altogether. The key is to categorize that traffic and reduce options for direct traffic.
Track and Analyse Traffic
While you cannot remove every instance of direct traffic tracking, ensure that each of your campaigns has effective user tracking. Tracking codes and links are just one way to ensure that your traffic will be appropriately tagged throughout the customer journey.
For instance, UTM codes are embedded into conversions and hyperlinks and provide information on the source of the user, the campaign they came from, the keyword used, and more. Implementing UTM codes into your campaigns as standard will ensure that no traffic data is left behind.
Between organic website traffic and regular website traffic, the difference is in the value they provide. Ultimately, data is key to all marketing strategies. Whether organic or direct traffic, it’s important to gather as much information as possible from each click.
At Nituno, we work with B2B tech companies to learn more about their buyer, and how best to reach them. Our content is created with the buyer in mind, for improved traffic figures and lead generation. Get in touch with us to discuss your next marketing campaign today.
