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Best Free Website Traffic Checkers to Grow Your Site

Published on 15.07.2024 by Tracey Chizoba Fletcher

One of the most critical metrics any website owner wants to grow is traffic. By driving a continuous flow of visitors to their sites, webmasters can convert a good percentage of them, ensuring they reach their target audience. Increasing your website traffic can help get a broader audience interested in your products and services.

To grow your website, you need to understand how much traffic you are getting to your site. You also want to check your competitor’s traffic to determine what they are doing better than you. To check the traffic, you need to use a website traffic checker. This article reviews the top free and paid website traffic checkers. 

Why it is Important to Track Your Website Traffic

There are several reasons for analyzing your website traffic. These include:

Understand Your Audience's Behavior

When you analyze metrics such as traffic source, time on site, bounce rate, and exit rate, you can get essential data on how users interact with your site. Then, you can use the data to improve. For instance, if you  are getting a high bounce rate, you can implement several measures, such as:

Understand the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Campaign

As a website owner, you drive traffic from various sources such as SEO, SEM, and social media. Unless you check how much traffic you get from each source, it can be hard to determine which of your marketing efforts are bearing fruit. Therefore, checking website traffic, including data on traffic sources, can help you determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. You can then allocate your marketing resources accordingly.

Personalize User Experience

When you understand your potential customer's behavior and how they engage with your site, you can focus on creating a personalized experience for them. This can result in a better user experience and your customers are likely to perceive you better. It will increase engagement and result in customer loyalty.

Improve Website Performance

A common saying goes that you cannot improve what you don't understand. Similarly, when it comes to website performance, understanding your traffic data is a critical step in deciding which areas to improve. Your website's performance in various metrics will help you determine the best traffic sources. 

When you understand how visitors to your site interact with it, you can identify areas for improvement and make changes to enhance the user experience.

Understand Your Key Pages

You can see the pages that receive the most views when you track your website traffic. You can then focus on them to maximize conversions and boost sales. If pages receive little or no traffic, you can decide whether to improve, remove, or continue with them as they are.

Improve Your Content Strategy

After understanding the kind of content your visitors are searching for, you can now focus on creating content that meets the user’s needs. You will understand the topic to focus on and see how you can make relevant and valuable content.

Top 6 Best Website Traffic Free Checkers

Here are the top tools to help you check traffic free of charge:

Google Analytics

Since it is from the biggest search engine, Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for checking website traffic. This is because most people trust the quality of the data obtained from the tool. Besides, the tool provides extensive reports you can use to track your user behavior and traffic source.

You can use Google Analytics to check Audience data demographics such as age, gender, location, area, and how they discover your website. You can add a tracking code or a WordPress plugin to your site using Google Analytics.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another free tool. The same search engine provides insights into your website traffic, providing insights into keywords, and your site's performance. It will show you important data such as the pages that Google has indexed, the top-ranking keywords, the list of keywords you are ranking for, the traffic the keywords are bringing, and the pages with errors. You can also use the tool to see how your rankings change and the keywords that bring the most traffic.

SimilarWeb

While this tool isn't completely free, it has a free version that will provide insights into your website traffic. To check your website traffic, click the website analysis and enter your site link. This will show you a breakdown of the site traffic and engagement, audience demographic, marketing channel, search trends, and more. The tool also lets you check your site's performance against your competitors.

Semrush

This is also a paid tool with a free version to track your traffic. While the data provided by this tool is limited, it still offers some great insights about your website traffic. It will provide essential insights into the estimated traffic, bounce rate, traffic source, source over time, estimated visits, and more.

The tool will show you the amount of traffic your competitors get. You will get detailed analytics, such as their most popular pages and the top region from which they receive traffic. In addition to the number of people visiting your site each month, you can check their top traffic source.

Alexa

While Alexa is more of a website ranking tool, it still has useful free analytics that offers insights into page views, estimated monthly visitors, traffic sources, bounce rates, and more. While the traffic data is an estimate, it can still provide a picture of the traffic and how the site compares with the competitor. You can, therefore, use the tool to get a rough picture of your traffic.

Moz Analytics

Another paid tool that comes with a resourceful free tool is MOZ. The tool will show you data such as the number of estimated daily visitors, page views, bounce rates, source of traffic, and more.

How to Analyze Website Traffic

There are several steps you should follow when analyzing website traffic. These are:

Define Your Goal

The first step in analyzing your website traffic is to define your goal. Start by determining what you want to achieve when people visit your website. Is it to increase sales, generate leads, or improve signups? 

When you understand what you are trying to achieve and assign a number to the goal, you can easily focus on the target and provide your team with a tangible goal they can focus on. It also becomes easier to measure the success of your website and understand how visitors interact with it.

When setting goals, you should have short-term and long-term goals in place. What will you achieve in the next few weeks, months, or years? Once you have a website traffic goal, creating a plan to achieve it becomes easier.

Install Website Analytics Tools

We will discuss the analytics tools to use in the next section. But after you have chosen a good tool, you need to decide the metrics to track regarding your goal. Some standard metrics you can measure include website performance, traffic source, bounce rate, time on page, and much more.

Analyze the Traffic Source

An essential step in analyzing your website traffic is to determine the source. One source is direct traffic resulting from users typing the website URL into their browser. Other sources include organic search, social media, and referral traffic. When you analyze the source of traffic, you can determine the most important channels for driving traffic to those sites. You can then monetize the traffic source accordingly.

Measuring User Engagement

Measuring your website traffic means more than just checking the number of people visiting your site. User engagement is another important metric you should track. You need to check various metrics, such as the pages per session, time on site, and the bounce rate. When you analyze the traffic source, you can determine which of your channels are the most important for driving traffic.  

 There are several other measures you should take into consideration. These include:

  • Page views. This is the total number of people who see your site over the period you are tracking. This metric determines whether people are interested in your product or service.
  • Bounce rate. This refers to the number of people who leave after a few seconds of viewing one page. If you have a very high bounce rate, it indicates that users don't seem to find what they are searching for on your site. While a low bounce rate shouldn't raise an alarm as it is usual, a high bounce rate may indicate the need to change your content strategy.
  • User behavior. You should analyze the behavior patterns of your users when they are on your site. You can then explore any trend you notice to improve the navigability of your site.
  • Unique sessions or visitors. This metric shows the number of people who visit your site over a given period. Understanding these metrics lets you realize your repeat customers' habits and activity patterns.
  • Organic website traffic. This will show the number of people getting traffic from the search engines.
  • Top traffic source. You need to find the top online sources driving traffic to your site.
  • Average visit duration. This metric determines the average period users spend on a website.

Conversion Monitoring

Finally, you want to determine whether traffic to your site is converting after you drive it. This is an important step as it will enable you to determine whether your website meets your business goal. This data will also help you decide which areas of your website to improve to increase conversion.

Leveraging Website Traffic Data

Tracking the above data lets you obtain valuable information to inform your decision-making, including product features and marketing behaviors. As mentioned above, you need to track the correct data before engaging in any analysis.

By analyzing the website traffic, you can get insights into user behavior. You can identify opportunities for content improvement and ensure that you have an effective marketing plan. Besides, it can help you to:

  • Analyze multiple data sources.
  • See real-time data
  • Understand your customer data for better targeting.

When you understand the website traffic patterns, you can put in place strategies targeting high-value visitors with the right messages and offers. The data will help you measure the performance against your goal. You can also use the data to optimize your campaigns for the highest ROI.

Benchmark with Other Industry Players

Another critical step in checking website traffic is comparing your data with other industry players. This will let you see how your efforts measure up against your competitors. You will also see the possible areas for improvement. Compare the website traffic numbers, average session lengths, and bounce rates. Check if there are any emerging trends you can notice.

By comparing your website data with those of your competitors, you can also see what is happening in the industry. You can understand if there are emerging trends you need to know of. You can see if there are critical differences in the way people interact with content. You can also determine if new tactics could be helpful in planning your future marketing activities.

Best Practices in Tracking Website Traffic

If you need accurate data on your website traffic, there are several best practices to follow in your website analysis.

Use More Than One Analytics Tool

The right tool will show you important data, such as branded and competitor traffic. It will also show critical data, such as who visited your site, their behavior, and the effectiveness of your marketing and optimization efforts. However, despite all the above benefits, you will find that most tools also have their own shortcomings. 

For instance, you might find that the data available in one tool is different from the other. Others, like Google Analytics, usually provide a traffic range, not an exact figure. So, how can you overcome these shortcomings? The best way is to rely on more than one tool. That way, you can compare their data and get the best one.

Add Tracking Code

Another strategy you can use is to add a tracking code to your website to see the performance. This can help you ensure they perform as expected and deliver the right results.

Avoid Common Mistakes

Just as it's essential to understand what to do, you should also know what you should not do. Some common mistakes you should avoid are:

  • Wrongly setting up your tracking code.
  • Not segmenting data well.
  • Not analyzing the data regularly.
  • Not acting on the insights you uncovered.

Troubleshoot Causes of Low Traffic

If you are receiving low traffic, this could indicate that you need to improve in certain areas. Here are some common causes of low traffic, along with actionable tips on how to improve website traffic.

  • Vague call to action. How easily can your audience find what they are searching for?
  • Poor quality content. When people visit your site, do they find exciting and engaging content?
  • Not promoting content. How active are you in promoting your content on social media and other platforms?

Other Tips for Optimizing Your Website Based on the Data

After analyzing your website data, it's time to optimize it. While your exact action will depend on your results, here are tips to improve your website.

Improve Site Speed

One of the factors affecting website user engagement is traffic speed. If your site takes more than six seconds to load, it will drive users away. This will negatively impact the bounce rate and the time on site metrics. Site speed is also one of the metrics Google uses to rank sites, which affects your SERP rankings.

 There are several measures you can use to improve your website speed. These are:

  • Optimizing images and videos. Image files are usually larger than CSS and  HTML files. Fortunately, image optimization can help reduce image load time. Optimizing images often requires compressing the file and reducing the dimensions and resolutions.
  • Reducing unnecessary HTTP requests. A common mistake in most websites is making multiple HTTP requests. Each request has to trip to the web server and back, reducing the load time. Therefore, you should perform a speed test to determine which HTTP requests take the most time.
  • Removing render-blocking javascript. When websites have some unnecessary codes, these may load before the essential pages. This is especially common with big sites with different web managers. If there are poorly performing pages, web managers can use specific tools to view the pages with such codes.
  • Reduce the usage of external Javascript. If scripted web page elements are loaded from other sources, such as pop-up ads, CTA buttons, or external commenting systems, these get loaded individually every time a page load request is made. Depending on the script size, they either slow down the site or prevent it from loading altogether. This can be quite frustrating for users, especially those on mobile devices.

Content Optimization

One way to engage users and drive conversion is to create quality content. Therefore, ensure your site has well-written and organized content that adds value to the user. You can optimize content by using clear headlines, bullet points, and other formatting that makes it easy to read.

Creating high-quality content is essential for attracting natural backlinks. When users find the content valuable, they are more likely to share it with their friends. With time, this sharing translates to more traffic to your website.  

For instance, you can produce high-quality content with case studies and infographics. Video content is also becoming increasingly popular as shareable content. Therefore, incorporating such content can increase the likelihood of people sharing your content. But even as you focus on these types of content, you should address your reader’s pain points.

Check the time on the page and bounce rate to see which pages keep visitors engaged. Then, you can improve the elements we discussed earlier. 

Page Optimization

By looking at your analytics, you can see which pages are converting and which have a low conversion rate. You can then get essential insights on optimizing your pages to receive a higher conversion. There are several optimization tips you can use. These are:

  • Reducing the number of steps. 
  • Making your forms simpler.
  • Adding trust signals such as security badges.
  • Using urgency cues to increase conversions.

When you optimize the traffic flow, you can quickly increase the number of visitors who become leads and customers. Continuously analyzing traffic can also improve user experience and site performance.

SEO Optimization

If you want your business to get noticed, you must optimize your site for the search engines. You can do that by ensuring your website is full of high-quality and informative pages with relevant keywords. You should then focus on networking with content creators in your niche to get external links to your site. Understanding the SEO strategies and tips makes driving traffic to your website possible.

FAQs on Website Traffic Checker

Why is it important to check your website traffic?

By checking your website traffic, you can better understand your users. This can help you implement strategies to drive traffic and provide you with a better and more personalized experience for visitors. On top of that, when you monitor website traffic, you can easily stay ahead of trends and get better insights into what your competitors are doing.

How can I check website traffic?

While there may be other methods, using the website traffic checker tools listed above is the easiest.

Conclusion

Website traffic is one of the most essential metrics that any serious business should pay attention to. This is because it can provide insight into whether your site is moving towards its goal. If you want to check your website traffic, the tools in the article can help you. Additionally, you can use the tips shared to improve your website traffic. We recommend you read our guide on how Instagram followers can help your business.