How to Check Website Traffic With GA and GSC

Managing a business or personal website requires regular monitoring and optimization. For that, you need to know the data from website performance to traffic that has been acquired. With this data, you can measure the success of your campaigns.

In this guide, you will find out in detail how to check website traffic using free tools from Google, namely Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC). Apart from that, we will also show you how to increase website traffic for you. Here's the discussion.

How to Check Website Traffic Through Google Analytics

Google provides a free tool for website managers called Google Analytics. With this tool, you can get various kinds of data and measure website performance with various metrics, one of which is traffic.

One way to see website traffic is to use Google Analytics. This tool provides very complete traffic data, starting from the amount of traffic, traffic sources or channels, to graphs of traffic growth over time.

Here's how to see the traffic of a website using Google Analytics:

1. Make sure that your website is connected to Google Analytics.
2. Open Google Analytics and you will go straight to the 'Home' page.
3. By default, this page will show overview data in the form of the number of users, new users, average engagement time, total revenue, and a graph of changes in metrics over time.
4. If you only want to know website traffic data, you only need to pay attention to the user and new user metrics. 
5. Users are the total number of website visitors, while new users are the number of new visitors who have never visited your website before.
6. Change the time range to see changes in traffic over a given time period.
7. You can also see data on the number of visitors in the last 30 minutes on the right on the 'Home' page.
8. The way to see website traffic with more complete data is to open the 'Reports' menu, then go to the 'Acquisition' sub menu.
9. In this menu, you can find out which channels are the sources of website traffic, such as organic search, direct, organic social, paid search, display, referral, and others.
10. You can see the number of users and new users on each channel. 
11. Other metrics include engaged sessions, engagement rate, and so on. 

Learn more about how to use the latest version of Google Analytics through the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) guide to measure SEO performance and increase business growth.

How to Check Website Traffic through Google Search Console

If you want to know how to see other websites' traffic, especially organic traffic, then you can use Google Search Console. This tool is provided by Google for free, which allows webmasters to measure website performance organically and website health.

There are many features that are very useful for implementing SEO on your website, one of which is monitoring organic traffic from your website. Here's how to see the traffic of a website through Google Search Console:

1. Make sure your website is connected to the Google Search Console. You can learn about it through our guide on how to add a site to GSC.
2. Open Google Search Console, then select the 'Performance' menu.
3. In this menu, you will see several metrics related to organic traffic, which are clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position.
4. Clicks are the number of clicks or visits that a website gets from search results on Google.
5. Impressions are the number of pages your website appears on and is viewed by search engine users on the SERP.
6. CTR, or click-through rate, is the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions on organic traffic.
7. Average position is the average position of all your website pages in the SERP.
8. You can also view graphs that show changes in each of the metrics over time. Additionally, you may change the time range based on your needs.
9. At the bottom of the graph, you can see more detailed organic traffic data by keyword, page, country, device, search appearance, and date.

The Importance of Traffic to a Website

Why should you know how to check website traffic? By knowing the amount of website traffic, you will get a lot of information that can be used to improve your website's performance. Here are some reasons why it's important to know how to see the traffic of a website:

Analyzing User Behavior

By knowing how to check website traffic, you can analyze user behavior. You can use this information for evaluation, strategy development, and making business decisions.

Examples of this function include checking which pages bring in the most visitors, how long the average visitor stays on the website, or what channels bring in the most visitors.

Knowing Website Statistics

Website traffic data can also provide statistical data on visitor demographics. You can use Google Analytics tools to view demographic data such as country or city of origin, language, age range, gender, device used, and topics of interest.

Benchmark of Success

You can use traffic-related metrics as KPIs (key performance indicators) or benchmarks for the success of your SEO efforts. This metric will be needed, especially if your SEO goal is to build brand awareness.

You can compare the amount of traffic in the previous period with the current period. If your website is new and does not have data in the previous period, you can use data from competitors' websites or based on industry standards.

How to Increase Website Traffic Organically

After knowing how to check website traffic, you certainly want it to continue to grow. If you want to know how to increase website traffic, especially through organic search, then you must apply SEO well. Here are some methods to increase your website traffic organically:

Do Keyword Research

If you want to increase organic traffic, then you have to target potential keywords. Find keywords with a high volume of searches but low keyword difficulty. Keywords with these criteria can bring in a lot of traffic more easily.

You also have to know the various types of keywords, because each type of keyword has a different role. For example, informational keywords play a role in bringing in a lot of traffic, while transactional keywords play a role in increasing sales on the website.

Produce Useful Content

After the target keywords are obtained, your next task is to create useful content. Useful content is content that is relevant and able to answer the needs of the audience. If the content does not meet expectations, the audience will feel misled and leave the website immediately.

Starting from August 2022, Google released a core update that discusses helpful content. In its release, Google explained that useful content should be aimed at users, not just search engines.

Useful content can also be used as a resource for other websites so that they will provide backlinks to yours. If the backlink is of high quality and in accordance with your business niche, then your website will get a higher ranking in the SERP. 

Perform On-page SEO

On-page SEO is an optimization that is carried out on the internal website. If you want the content you create to bring in a lot of traffic, then it must be optimized from the on-page side. There are several optimizations you can do, such as:

• Use target keywords in the meta title, meta description, heading, and first paragraph.
• Image optimization with alt images and WebP formats.
• Create URLs that are simple, clear, and understandable by the audience.
• Optimize internal links to other content.

If you need tools that can help perform on-page optimization such as meta data, you can use the Page Title & Meta-Desc Checker from cmlabs.

Use People Also Ask (PAA)

People Also Ask, or PAA, is a feature in the SERP that contains a collection of questions most frequently asked by Google users related to the keywords they are looking for. In the PAA feature, Google will display questions and answers taken from website content.

Your content can also appear in the PAA tool as long as it has answers that are relevant to the question.

That's an explanation of how to check website traffic using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Don't forget to use it on your website. By knowing the amount of traffic, you will get very useful information for website SEO development.

In regards to increasing website traffic, it is important to have a professional team who can implement SEO best practices. If your company does not yet have a professional team, use an SEO Consulting Service that is ready to optimize your website.