How to see how much traffic a website gets?

12/12/2025

Understanding the volume of traffic your website receives is crucial for evaluating its performance and shaping your digital marketing strategies. Monitoring this metric is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your efforts, understanding the return on your investment, and making informed decisions to enhance your online presence.

This guide explores various tools and methods to accurately gauge your site’s traffic. We will distinguish between analysing your own website’s data, where you can obtain concrete figures, and estimating competitor traffic, which provides valuable strategic insight.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA4) is the most reliable method for checking your website’s data, provided it is set up correctly. It is also free to use.

To get started, set up an account at https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/ and install the tracking code to your website’s header. Once the setup is complete, you will need to wait for data to be recorded. You can then navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition to see a breakdown of the traffic sources.

Understanding key metrics within GA4 is vital for effective analysis. Here are some of the most important metrics to monitor:

Sessions:

The total number of user visits to your website within a specific time frame. This is a fundamental metric for understanding overall site activity.

Traffic Sources:

Identifies where your visitors are coming from, such as organic search, paid ads, social media, or direct visits. This metric is critical for understanding the effectiveness of your marketing channels.

Engagement Rate:

The percentage of sessions that are considered “engaged”—lasting longer than 10 seconds, having a conversion event, or viewing two or more pages. This metric helps you assess how engaging your content is for visitors.

Conversions:

Specific user actions you have defined as valuable, such as purchases, sign-ups, or form submissions. Conversions measure the success of your website in achieving its business goals.

Demographics:

Provides data on the characteristics of your users, such as age, gender, and location. This information is invaluable for tailoring your content and marketing strategies to your target audience.

Content quality and relevance

Creating high-quality, engaging content is essential for attracting and retaining visitors. Content that provides value, answers questions, and solves problems will not only attract more visitors but also improve your site’s authority and ranking in search results.

On-page SEO techniques

Optimise on-page elements such as headers, title tags, and images to improve search visibility. Ensure your website offers a user-friendly experience with a clear structure, fast loading times, and mobile responsiveness to boost organic traffic.

Analysing competitor traffic with third-party tools

While you can only access accurate data for your own website, third-party tools are excellent for getting an estimate of a competitor’s traffic. This analysis can reveal opportunities and help you understand your competitive landscape.

Semrush

Semrush offers extensive SEO, content, and competitive research features, along with traffic analytics to understand your site’s performance and competitor activity.

Ahrefs

While known for its backlink analysis, Ahrefs also includes traffic estimation and keyword research capabilities to gauge the performance of any website.

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb provides traffic source data and user engagement metrics, allowing for direct comparisons with competitor sites to benchmark performance.

Leveraging competitive insights to increase traffic

Understanding your competitive landscape is crucial for developing strategies to increase your own website’s traffic. By analysing competitors’ traffic sources, content, and marketing tactics, you can identify opportunities and gaps in your own strategy.

Competitive traffic analysis

Utilise tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to get an overview of your competitors’ traffic levels, sources, and the keywords driving their traffic. This analysis can reveal new channels or keywords that you may not have previously considered.

Benchmarking against industry standards

Compare your traffic metrics with industry averages and top performers to set realistic traffic goals and identify areas for improvement. This benchmarking can provide a clear roadmap for growth and improvement in your traffic acquisition efforts.

Adopting successful tactics

Learn from the successes of your competitors by adopting strategies that have proven effective in your industry. Whether it is a particular type of content, a social media strategy, or an SEO tactic, applying these successful methods can help increase your website traffic.

Innovating beyond competitors

While it is beneficial to adopt successful tactics from competitors, innovation can set you apart. Use the insights gained from competitive analysis to develop unique value propositions and marketing strategies that exceed industry norms, attracting more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

Mastering website traffic analysis is essential for any business seeking to optimise its online presence and drive growth. By employing a range of tools and strategies to monitor, understand, and act on traffic data, businesses can make informed decisions that enhance their digital marketing efforts and improve user engagement.

FAQs

Could you give me a GA4 glossary?

1. Active Users

Definition: The number of users who have visited your website or app within a specified time frame.
Usage: Helps measure user engagement by showing how many users are actively interacting with your site.

2. Engaged Sessions

Definition: Sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had 2 or more screen/page views.
Usage: Indicates meaningful interactions, going beyond mere visits to reflect actual engagement.

3. Engagement Rate

Definition: The ratio of engaged sessions to total sessions.
Usage: Used to assess how engaging your website content is for visitors.

4. Events

Definition: Any user interaction on your website or app that you want to track (e.g., clicks, form submissions, video plays).
Usage: Allows for detailed tracking of user interactions and behaviours.

5. Event Count

Definition: The total number of times events have occurred on your website or app.
Usage: Measures the frequency of specific interactions, helping identify popular actions or areas needing improvement.

6. Conversions

Definition: Specific events marked as valuable or important, often aligned with business objectives (e.g., purchases, sign-ups).
Usage: Tracks goal completions and measures the success of your marketing efforts.

7. Conversion Rate

Definition: The percentage of sessions that result in a conversion event.
Usage: Evaluates the effectiveness of your website in achieving its goals.

8. User Acquisition

Definition: The process of gaining new users or visitors through various channels (e.g., organic search, paid ads, social media).
Usage: Helps understand which marketing channels are most effective in attracting new users.

9. User Retention

Definition: The percentage of users who return to your website or app over a specific period.
Usage: Measures the ability of your site to keep users coming back, indicating long-term user satisfaction and loyalty.

10. Sessions

Definition: A group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame.
Usage: Fundamental metric for understanding overall site activity and user engagement.

11. Session Duration

Definition: The total time users spend on your website during a session.
Usage: Provides insight into how engaging your content is and how long users are interacting with it.

12. Bounce Rate

Definition: The percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page.
Usage: Used to identify pages that may need improvement to retain visitors.

13. Pageviews

Definition: The total number of times a page is viewed.
Usage: Measures the popularity of specific pages and helps understand user navigation patterns.

14. Average Engagement Time per Session

Definition: The average amount of time users spend engaging with your site during a session.
Usage: Indicates how effectively your site holds users’ attention.

15. Demographics

Definition: Data about the characteristics of your users, such as age, gender, and interests.
Usage: Helps tailor content and marketing strategies to your audience.

16. Tech Details

Definition: Information about the devices, operating systems, and browsers your users are using.
Usage: Essential for optimising site performance across different platforms and devices.

17. Source/Medium

Definition: The origin of your website traffic (e.g., search engines, direct visits, social media) and the means through which users arrive (e.g., organic, referral, paid).
Usage: Critical for understanding the effectiveness of different marketing channels.

18. Attribution

Definition: The process of identifying which marketing efforts are driving conversions.
Usage: Helps allocate resources and optimise marketing strategies based on performance.

19. User Explorer

Definition: A tool that allows you to view detailed information about individual user interactions on your site.
Usage: Useful for deep dives into user behaviour and identifying patterns or issues on a granular level.

20. Funnel Analysis

Definition: A visual representation of the steps users take to complete a goal on your website.
Usage: Helps identify where users drop off in the conversion process and optimise those steps to increase conversions.

Understanding these terms will help you effectively analyse and improve your website’s performance using GA4.

How to view website traffic figures?

It is possible to see how much traffic a website gets using tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb. These tools provide insights into traffic volume, sources, and user behaviour.

How to determine website traffic value?

Traffic value is calculated based on the estimated cost of organic traffic if it were obtained through paid search. Tools like Ahrefs can help you estimate the traffic value by assessing the cost per click (CPC) of keywords driving traffic to the site.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool that can be used to track and analyse your website’s traffic. It provides detailed data on visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and content engagement.

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