Traffic
The number of visits or distinct users reaching your site over a period, added up across every channel they arrived from.
Analogy Mental model
Foot traffic through a shop door. The counter clicks whether the person came for the product, the restroom or the air conditioning. The number is real, it just says nothing about why anyone walked in.
In practice What you actually do
Split organic traffic before you report it. Separate branded from non-branded queries, because branded volume mostly measures how many people already knew your name; non-branded is the part search actually earned you. Then segment by landing page cluster, so growth in one topic can be told apart from a seasonal tide lifting everything at once.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Traffic is the easiest number to inflate and the easiest to be fooled by. A viral post about your industry can triple sessions while the pipeline does not move a millimetre. Visitors who cannot buy what you sell are a server cost, not a win.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →