Do you want to know where your website visitors come from using Google Analytics? There are a number of different channels that a user can use to visit your site.
And by tracking where they come from, you can exactly see traffic sources for specific pages, marketing campaigns, and measure how people find your website.
In this article, we’ll show you how to track website traffic using Google Analytics. Let’s kick things off with…
Why Track Website Traffic Sources?
As a marketer, there are many benefits of knowing the source of your visitors. Here are some reasons for tracking your traffic sources:
- Better Understand Your Visitors – Tracking traffic sources can help you identify your visitor’s geographic location and which channels they use, so you can better understand them and provide targeted messages
- Measure Your Marketing Campaigns – If a campaign is built around driving traffic then you can measure its effectiveness by tracking different traffic sources
- Focus on Channels for Best Results – By identifying which channel performed the best in getting visitors to your site, you can focus on it more to get better results
- Find New Content Topics – People from different channels might be interested in specific topics, so you can discover new content ideas by checking traffic sources for each page
- Identify Traffic Gaps on Your Site – You can identify which channel doesn’t perform well in attracting visitors, so you can optimize it as relying on a single source can be risky for your site
Now, are you ready to see where your traffic is coming from on your WordPress website?
Video Tutorial
If you want to read the written steps, then continue reading. We’ll guide you on how to track your web traffic sources.
How to Check Your Traffic Sources in WordPress
When it comes to using Google Analytics, many users find it overwhelming. That’s because it requires coding for setting it up on your WordPress site. Plus, you’ll have to be an Analytics expert to find the right report and get the data that you need for making decisions.
So, a much easier way of viewing your traffic sources in WordPress is through MonsterInsights. It’s the best WordPress plugin for Google Analytics.
It makes using Analytics very easy and you don’t have to worry about hiring a developer or someone who knows analytics. The plugin helps add Google Analytics to your website and presents reports insides your WordPress dashboard.
Once you’ve installed MonsterInsights on your website, you can see where your traffic is coming from. Let’s look at each report that you can use to track website traffic.
Overview Report
To start, go to Insights » Reports » Overview. Here you can see the overall performance of your website.
If you scroll down, you can see the Device Breakdown report that shows which device your visitors use to view your website.
In the Overview report, you can also view the Top 10 Countries that your users are from. Using this report, you can create campaigns, messages, and content according to different regions.
And next to countries, you can see the Top 10 Referrals report. This shows websites that send the most traffic to your site. You can form partnerships with these sites and continue to grow your traffic.
Search Console Report
Now, if you’re site gets a lot of organic traffic, you should know which keywords your site is ranked on. To find that out, MonsterInsights offers a Search Console Report.
It shows the top 50 Google search terms for your website along with clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through-rate), and average position.
Since these are keywords that bring a lot of traffic, you can find similar search terms and optimize them on your site. You can even use them to find new content ideas around these keywords to boost your organic traffic.
You can go through our guide on how to configure your WordPress site with Google Search Console.
eCommerce Report
Do you have an eCommerce store and want to know where your most converting traffic comes from? If yes, then MonsterInsights eCommerce report can help you out.
It shows you the Top Conversion Sources. You can see which websites send traffic that converts to your online store. Since people arriving from these websites buy your products, you can offer exclusive discounts and deals to make more money.
Real-Time Report
The last report you can view is the real-time report. It shows you where your visitors are coming in real-time. You can see traffic from referral sources, countries, and cities that’s currently on your WordPress site.
This report is useful if you’ve just launched a new product or a marketing campaign and want to see where traffic is coming from.
With that, let’s see how to find traffic sources in Google Analytics.
How to Track Website Traffic in Google Analytics
While MonsterInsights offers user-friendly reports inside your dashboard, so you don’t have to leave your site. But what if you want to see where traffic is coming from in Google Analytics?
There are many reports that you can use to track website traffic sources. Having said that, it’s very easy to get lost.
To help you find the data that matters, you can start by logging in to your Google Analytics account and then go to Acquisition » All Traffic » Channels.
In this Google Analytics web traffic report, you can see which channels are driving the most traffic to your website. For instance, you can see Organic Search has the most number of visitors. These are the people that come from search engines.
And if you want more detail, you can go to the Source/Medium report under All Traffic. It will narrow down the source of your traffic along with the channel. For example, it will show which search engine generated the highest traffic (in this case Google).
Now that you know how to see where traffic is coming from for your overall website, what if you want to use Google Analytics to find traffic for specific pages?
Google Analytics Traffic Sources for a Specific Page
It’s very easy to see the traffic sources of a specific page in your Google Analytics account.
To start, log into your Google Analytics account and navigate to Behavior » Site Content. From there you can choose whether to view the traffic sources of all of your website’s pages, the landing pages, or the exit pages.
In this example, we’ll show you how to view the traffic sources of your site’s landing pages, which is important because these are the pages many visitors will land on first when visiting your site.
Next, use Secondary Dimension and search for Source/Medium, which is usually under Acquisition.
Now you’ll see a list of your website’s landing pages, complete with the source of your site’s traffic, which is where visitors were before clicking on your website, and the medium, which is how your visitors arrived at your website.
You now know how to use Google Analytics and find traffic sources for your website.
And that’s it!
We hope you liked our article on how to track website traffic using Google Analytics. You can also go through our article on why your business needs Google Analytics starting right now.
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