Not all website traffic is equal, some is good, some is bad and some is downright ugly. Here we will discuss what some people politely refer to as “crap traffic” and the type of traffic that can have a real positive impact on your business.
To make a simple analogy, if you sell a product such as shoes, you want people visiting your website who want to buy shoes. If you provide a service such as plumbing, you want people who are looking for plumbing services to visit your website.
On a keyword level, many businesses still get this wrong by targeting the wrong keywords. Keywords and the intent behind these keywords can attract relevant visitors and prospective customers.
Let us break this down a bit further for you.
Good Traffic
When a user finds your website through a search engine, this is what we call organic traffic. However, not all organic traffic is equal in terms of quality.
Good organic traffic is when a user visits one of your web pages where their search intent matches what you deliver on your webpage.
If a customer is looking to buy shoes and they type “shoes for women” and land on your e-commerce website page with a collection of ladies’ shoes they can purchase, this is good traffic, this is great traffic.
Search Results
As we can see from the current top organic results, all the pages that rank top for “shoes for women” are dedicated pages that focus on selling women’s shoes.
Now look at your website and think, are your pages optimised correctly to match a specific user’s intent? The pages are not talking about the best shoes at the moment, they are not discussing the pros and cons of shoes, they simply have a collection of women’s shoes people can buy.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is when a user enters your domain name in a browser and visits your site directly. These people are looking for your website specifically and have a high probability of converting if you are an e-commerce website.
If you do not sell products but provide information, this could be a return visitor who holds your website in high esteem. The search engines recognise this, sites with a lot of direct traffic also indicate a strong brand presence, another very positive signal for search engines.
If you grow your brand, your direct traffic should increase and these are people who are usually familiar with your product or service.
Referral Traffic
If a person is reading a blog post looking for the best pair of shoes in the world and this post links to your product stating these are the best shoes you can buy, this visitor may be inclined to purchase.
If the website that has referred this visitor is a trusted source, this can also impact the likelihood they purchase. Somebody else has created a web page promoting our product, and a user read the content and followed the link to your website, this is a great way to get traffic and visitors.
But again, not all referral traffic is equal and must be measured for relevance for it to be classed as good traffic, but it certainly can be.
Bad Traffic
We could call the next traffic type of traffic “bad traffic”, but in my best professional etiquette, I like to call it “s**t traffic”. This traffic has no intention of purchasing, digesting or interacting with your content.
Some of this traffic may be through poorly optimising your web pages, other types may be from outside sources.
Mismatched Traffic
If a user comes to your website looking for “women’s work shoes” and lands on a webpage that does match this expectation, they will bounce off. This sends a negative signal to search engines and acts as a signal that the landing page does not satisfy search intent.
They are not looking for training shoes or slippers, they are looking for work shoes. You need to ensure your website is properly optimised to match user intent, across every page.
We also often see people creating doorway pages trying to target a keyword they can not deliver on. For example, if you own a hair salon in Essex and you create a webpage called “Hair Salons Liverpool” you could potentially get visitors to the page. But once they realise the hair salon is on the other side of the country, they will just leave.
This type of visitor has a very low probability chance of making the trip to Essex for a haircut unless it is via a direct search. You will also have wasted time and money creating a web page with a very low chance of converting.
Bot Traffic
Bot traffic is completely useless for us as it is not an actual person looking for information or to purchase.
These could be bots scraping your content for good or bad reasons. They can show in your analytics and you may believe you have had a spike in traffic, only to realise it is bot traffic and worthless to our cause.
Ugly Traffic
Ugly traffic can present a danger to your website, it can also come in various forms.
Spam Traffic
Has your blog post received numerous comments with irrelevant content and links to external websites promoting unrelated products or services?
For instance, a tech blog might get comments promoting weight loss pills or online gambling sites. This type of spam can clutter the comment section and detract from user experience.
Fraudulent Traffic
Fraudulent traffic costs money. If you run PPC campaigns and you feel your budget is being dented by competitors, this is a form of fraudulent traffic.
Sophisticated outfits could even set up bots to target your paid ads, this could cost you a pretty penny in ad spend if not identified and resolved.
Malicious Traffic
Malicious traffic is from visitors who intend to steal information or hack into your website.
Dos (Denial of Service) attacks are one form of malicious traffic. This is an attempt to disrupt your server by overwhelming it with a flood of Internet traffic, it can potentially bring your services to a halt for a time.
Other times you may get traffic trying to access your admin pages or attempting to inject code directly into your website, attempting to gain access.