PEAK MEDIA MARKETING

What is Website Traffic?

by Christopher Spencer B.A. (Hons) MCIM

Chartered Marketer and Co-Founder of Peak Media Marketing

Having a website is great.

But who's going to see it and how are they going to find it?

Okay so you’ve had a website built or you’re looking into getting one. Good work.

Hopefully it’s going to be mobile friendly, easy to navigate and it looks and feels amazing, or it will when it’s built.

Depending where you’re at with this.

One thing is for sure. It’s going to be the hardest working tool that you own and a great asset to the business. Arguably the greatest.

Its job is going to be to represent you online. That means it’s your brand manager, your PR team, both sides of your marketing team (commercial and creative) and it’s going to do all the heavy lifting for your sales team. If it’s ecommerce, it IS also your sales team.

Your website works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and it never takes any time off or asks for a payrise.

Your website is definitely in the running to be employee of the month, every month.

Over the last three years we have built about 60 websites and for about a quarter of them, the people commissioning them had this idea that all they need is a website, and everyone is going to automatically find this new website as if they are guided by some kind of external mystical force of destiny that means they will know exactly how to find this particular website out of 400 billion published pages that make up the internet as of November 2025.

If you build it, will they come?

Not that they’ve heard of your business, or your website but .. all you need is a website and ... “if you build it… they will come” right?

(This is a reference to a film from the 90’s called “Field of Dreams” it had Robin Hood and Darth Vader in it and it’s about baseball. Of course)

I don’t know why this is a common misconception but it is definitely there.

And this other part might come as a shock to many people but the internet is not like a coiled spring, loaded with people that need whatever your website is about; whether its a safety certificate for a helicopter landing pad on a superyacht, or a regular supply of name placements for wedding guests or a dry stone wall.

You can’t just publish a website and orders start raining out of the sky because someone was struck by inspiration and took a guess on typing your url perfectly into their search bar.

To do well a website needs a regular and consistent supply of traffic to the website, the more relevant that traffic the better.

So what is website traffic?

People. Eyeballs. Users. Actual human beings turning up on your website; whether they’re first-timers, returning visitors, curious browsers, or someone who fell down a Google rabbit hole and ended up on your “About” page at 1:30am.

Traffic is simply people landing on your website.

Where do I get traffic from?

The short, simple answer is, from anywhere people can stumble across you online:

Google search results.

Social media posts.

Email newsletters.

Online directories.

Articles, blogs, or someone linking to you.

And Paid ads. (we'll come back to that in a minute)

Or there's always the hardcore superfans who type your web address straight into the browser like it’s 2003. Bosh!

Basically… If it leads someone to your site, it’s a traffic source.

How do I do that?

You show up where your audience already spends their time and you give them a reason to click.

That means you:

Create content that genuinely helps people.
Optimise your website so Google actually understands it.
Post consistently on social media (not “consistently” like once every three months).
Build and nurture an email list.
Get listed in places that matter in your industry.
Collaborate, partner, share and cross-promote.

And yes, if you want speed and predictability, you run ads.

You can run ads on all search engines and social media channels.

There’s no tractor beam that pulls people towards your website.

You just have to make it as easy possible for people to find you, trust you, and move one step closer to buying from you. It really is as simple as that.

Can't that get expensive?

It can, but only if you let it.

Organic traffic - SEO, content, social, email - costs more time than money.

Paid ads are the shortcut, and the price depends entirely on your industry, how competitive it is, and how smartly the campaigns are set up.

The trick isn’t to throw money at it, it’s to build the right mix for your goals and budget so you’re not burning cash; you’re making an investment that pays you back.

Because when we get it right, marketing is something that can not only reduce how much corporation tax you pay, it’s something that comes at a negative cost.

So you make more than it costs so it should be safe to say that it’s a worthwhile activity.

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