Are you interested to know how much traffic a website gets? Website traffic monitoring is an integral part of competitor analysis. Apart from tracking your website’s visitors with simple analytical tools, it’s also important to track your competitor’s site to serve as a benchmark for assessing your online entity’s performance and refining your position.

This is applicable whether you are an influencer or blogger hired to promote content for a brand and understand what draws more audience. If you run a business, you need to know how to improve your website rankings and gain more visitors.

In such cases, an effective site traffic estimator can help you understand what is working and what’s not to formulate the right marketing strategies to reach your target audience. They allow you to archetype your traffic and strategy instead of the competitors and market leaders in your area of concern.

Several tools in the market can come forth and help you determine the traffic your website is getting. Here are some features that are a must in a traffic estimator:

1. Total Website Traffic Estimation

Any website will have traffic from different sources, including organic, direct, referral, mobile, social media, etc. While estimating the traffic, it’s mandatory to consider all channels, or else it will not provide a comprehensive picture.

The traffic source will also help you find out which is the top traffic source. Some estimators also enable you to compare multiple websites of competitors to see where their audiences come from.

2. Reliable Metrics to Assess Performance

Apart from the total website visitors from various channels, it’s also important to consider other metrics that make the website stand apart. These can include:

Bounce Rate – This is a measurement of the website’s engagement level wherein a high bounce rate may indicate audiences dropping off too soon. These summaries can help you assess audiences’ preferences and what constitutes engaging content to have them lingering on the site.

Time on Site – The average time the users spend on the website is another valuable metric to consider what makes a website appealing and stand out.

Page Views – This refers to the pages from a site generating the most traffic so that you can explore the reasons for such high engagement and make necessary adjustments in your strategy accordingly.

Geo and Demographics Distribution – With this feature, the site traffic estimator can enable you to analyze from which location or region a site is driving traffic so that you can devise your content specific to a particular region that has more traction

3. Search Traffic Estimation

You also need to be able to estimate the organic search traffic a site is getting. This will provide you with the knowledge of the top keywords that are driving traffic to the site. It will help to estimate the right keywords for your site that have a high traffic potential.

It should also come up with a detailed report of the keyword’s ranking and handle the bandwidth or indexing of accounting for long-tail keywords. Before taking the plunge of devising the content for your site, it is worth spying on what a competitor is doing and possibly steal the traffic.

4. Determining Paid Traffic

Most websites have active paid campaigns as part of their digital marketing toolkit. A noteworthy site traffic estimator comes with tools that pinpoint all of the site’s campaigns that have high traffic and conversion rate. Separate the good campaigns from the crowd to implement the right paid ads strategy for your website

5. Reliability and Accuracy of Data

The quality of the website traffic estimator is another mandatory feature that cannot be compromised. After all, the estimator should provide accurate statistics, so you have the confidence that the data you are looking at is lucrative. Although what is provided is an estimate, it should under or over-represent the data.

6. Free vs. Paid Plans

Some tools are free but do not provide extensive features, while some come with a premium option. Depending on the amount of detail you prefer to view, opt for the right tools that go beyond the run-of-the-mill statistics and offer a chance to drill down to a greater level of detail.

Apart from regularly monitoring your website traffic, it is also recommended to pay close attention to your competitors or other sites in your niche. There are several methods to check the website traffic of a competitor.

A site traffic estimator with valuable features is the best tool for the job to help you make smart decisions that are not solely based on hunches and rather on what’s working in real-time.