Your Google listing, your page headlines and the sites that link to you all exist to put people in front of your business. Website traffic is where you see whether that is working. It is the result of everything else, and it is the fourth part of Website Health in Marketbase.
In this article
- 1. Why traffic is a result, not a starting point
- 2. How we estimate it, and what we look at
- 3. Three gaps we see on New Zealand business websites
- 4. What to do today, this week and this month
Traffic is a result
Most marketing advice treats traffic as the goal: get more visitors, drive more clicks. For a local business that misses the point. Traffic is not something you go out and get directly. It comes from getting the other things right.
A complete Google listing sends people to your site. A home page that says what you do gets you into search results. Links from other sites tell Google you are worth recommending. When traffic is low, the answer nearly always sits in one of those.
Key point
You cannot fix a traffic problem by working on traffic. Sort how your pages are built and the links to your site, and the visitors follow.
How we estimate it
We do not see inside your Google Analytics, and we do not need to. We estimate the search traffic to every website in your market from the outside, the same way for each one, so the comparison is fair.
An exact visitor count on its own tells you little. Knowing where you sit among the businesses in your trade and town tells you where you stand. Think of a property valuation: the same method for every house in the street shows where yours sits, even if no one figure is exact.
What we look at
Website Health's traffic checks look at two kinds of search visit. Organic visits come from ordinary search results. Paid visits come from ads. For each, we look at three things.
| From ordinary search | From ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches you show up for | How many search terms your site appears for | How many search terms your ads cover |
| Visitors | Estimated visitors from search results | Estimated visitors from your ads |
| Value | What those visitors would cost to buy as ads | What your ad traffic is worth |
Value matters because a local business does not need volume. It needs the right people. Fifty visitors searching "plumber Riccarton" are worth more than 500 reading a blog post about tap washers, and the value reflects that.
Ads are part of the picture. If you do not run them, that side reads low, and for most local businesses that is normal. It is a decision about budget, not a gap in your marketing.
Three gaps we see
1. A good-looking site nobody finds
A business spends thousands on a new website that looks great and gets few visitors, because nobody set up the headlines, the description or the links. Google has no strong reason to show it. If your traffic reads low beside a site you are proud of, look at how your pages are built first.
2. A home page, a contact page and nothing else
Sites like this show up for almost nothing, because there is nothing on them for most of what people search. A page for each service you sell, in the words customers use for it, is where search traffic starts.
3. Showing up for the wrong searches
An accountant ranking for "what is GST" gets students, not clients. Traffic counts when it comes from people looking to buy what you sell, where you sell it.
Picture this
A yoga studio in Hamilton spent $4,000 on a new website last year. It looks beautiful. Its free Marketbase report puts its search traffic near the bottom of the 11 studios in its market.
The rest of Website Health explains why. The home page headline says "Home", there is no description, and one website links to it.
So the traffic problem was never a traffic problem. It was a headline, a description and a handful of links.
How traffic connects to the rest
Each part of Website Health feeds this one. The basics decide whether a visitor gets in at all. How your pages are built decides whether Google understands what you do, and the links to your site decide how far Google trusts it.
Your Google listing feeds it too. When someone finds you on the map and taps through to your website, that visit came from the listing, not from your site's own search standing. A listing with a working website link, the right category and real photos sends more of those visits your way.
Grow the right traffic
10 minutes today
- Search your main service and suburb on your phone, such as "electrician Riccarton", and note where you appear
- Tap the website link on your Google listing and check it works
An hour this week
- Give your home page a headline and description that name your service and town
- List every service you sell that has no page of its own
Ongoing this month
- Write one page per service, starting with the work that earns you most
- Ask a supplier or a referral partner to link to your site
Where Marketbase comes in
Your free Marketbase report already shows where your search traffic sits in your market, beside the other three parts of Website Health that drive it. Find your business by name to see it. Seven days' free access opens the how for every finding, in order, with your place tracked every month. Sort it yourself, or hand it to us and we'll do it for you.