When you’re in the website monetization business, you need to know your traffic like the back of your hand. But did you know that there are different types of traffic? Well, there are. And they greatly impact your performance and the way you conduct your business, as well as the profit you can expect.
So, if you want to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk and that means knowing what makes your traffic happy, engaged, and coming back for more. Keep on reading if you want to know how many kinds of traffic there are, and what you can do about it, or to get more.
1. Direct Traffic
Direct traffic are all the users that searched for your URL or brand name straight in the browser bar. They can also get on your website from a saved bookmark.
Here, we can also include users who get on your website after having clicked on direct links to your website from word or PDF documents – like brochures or eBooks.
These users contribute to your website metrics as page views, time spent on the page, repeat visits, and overall user engagement. They are the ones letting search engines know that your website is popular and has authority.
Direct traffic drives your SEO efforts, and helps your website get noticed by search engines and organic traffic.
What you should know about Direct Traffic
You need to understand that these users are very important, and you must take good care of them. They’re familiar with your website, and expect you to help. So you’d better not let them down.
To best provide for your direct traffic, make sure to keep a nice website, with attractive features, offering a great UX. Another important thing is to always keep your content updated, matching with the trends and relevant for your users. This way people will spend a lot of time on it, and they’ll do it often, helping with your SEO goals.
If you need more help with SEO, make sure to check our guide to organic traffic
2. Search Traffic
This traffic is also known as Organic Traffic, and it’s the most beneficial for your website.
At the same time, this is the most valuable of all the traffic types. These users made a targeted search, and got your website as an organic result from the search engine.
Organic traffic represents all the people that searched for what you are offering, or for the keywords for which your website appears among the first in the search results. These users know exactly what they want, and if you manage to solve their problem, they’ll convert.
Aside from that, these users are also free, and can be a lot more profitable even when you’re running long-term strategies.
What you should know about Search Traffic
If you’re looking to increase your search traffic volumes, and keep a stable influx of this kind of users, you need to invest in a good SEO strategy for your website. However, know that all your hard work will be well compensated as organic traffic is the most wanted by advertisers.
3. Social Traffic
As the name suggests, this is all the traffic that you get through social media channels. No matter if it’s coming from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or even WhatsApp, these visitors get on your website after they click on a social media post or message.
With PropellerAds you can monetize your social media traffic, choosing between direct monetization methods like Direct Links, or other formats, like Push Notifications, In-Page Push, Interstitials, OnClick Popunders or MultiTag.
What you should know about Social Traffic
Social traffic brings the best user engagement and CPM as a result. So if your website traffic numbers are not that great, you can consider increasing your Social Traffic. Moreover, social traffic is directly connected with mobile use.
In this article, you can find everything that you need to monetize Social Media Traffic
Social media users represent the segment of mobile internet users that is developing the fastest.
However, a very important thing you need to keep in mind is to carefully check the network’s policy when it comes to using any ad format.
4. Email Traffic
Email traffic are all the users that get on your website as a result of your email campaigns, by clicking on links that you placed inside your emails.
This traffic is extremely precious – almost like social media traffic – but it also costs a fortune to get.
At the same time, email traffic is also one of the hardest to get because of all the extra permissions that users need to grant in order to receive the emails in the first place, according to the new GDPR guidelines. However, if you’ve got a lot of this traffic you’re likely an email marketing genius. So good for you!
What you should know about Email Traffic
Since this traffic costs a lot and requires a lot of experience to get, make sure it’s worth the effort. If you don’t know exactly how to use it, maybe it would be best to reconsider your strategy.
5. Display Ads Traffic
In this category, you will find all the users that come from display banners, placed on other websites. This traffic type is also known as paid search traffic or paid media traffic, since you obviously need to pay to display your ads.
You can boost these ads for a maximum traffic inflow via Google Ads or any other PPC platform, including Facebook or TikTok ads.
What you should know about Display Ads Traffic
Before launching an ad campaign, think carefully about what you’ll do with this traffic. If you don’t have a clear goal set in mind, you will only end up wasting your money.
Check if your website is ready to receive traffic. And make sure that this traffic will want to engage with your content, return, and navigate on your website.
6. Anti-AdBlock Traffic
This kind of traffic comes from users that have AdBlockers installed. However, if you are a PropellerAds client, you might already know that with our Smart Anti-AdBlock system you can monetize this traffic slice as well.
What you should know about Anti-AdBlock Traffic
It is important to start monetizing AdBlock traffic as well, as it can help you get an additional income of up to at least 15%+ in revenue.
However, keep in mind that Anti-AdBlock traffic might have a lower CPM. Nonetheless, the added profit that this traffic will bring you is really worth the trouble. And you don’t need to take our word for it, just look at what our clients experience.
Don’t miss a single user. Learn everything you need about Desktop Traffic
7. Referral Traffic
Referral Traffic are the users that get on your website by clicking on a link from another website, blog, forum, etc. This traffic is almost the same as direct or search traffic. So if you have a lot of them, there’s no need to panic as they’re just interested users that know what they want.
What you should know about Referral Traffic
If you want to get referral traffic, make sure to partner only with reputable websites and invest in good link-building techniques.
If you need help with that, there are plenty of serious link-building agencies you can work with. Alternatively, your website’s SEO might be affected by association.
How to monetize all these kinds of traffic
Now that we saw which kind of traffic types you can monetize, it’s time to see how to turn these puppies into money. Although you might expect one format to fit all kinds of answers, the reality is that traffic is unique.
The only proven method that works when it comes to monetizing various kinds of traffic is trial and error. In other words, you need to test various formats (on their own or combined with others) to see which and in what measure, trigger your users the most.
And here is where PropellerAds can help you. With our 6 monetization methods, you can automate the entire process. All by using one or several of the following tags on your website:
What Monetization Format to Choose? Read the article to find out more
Other kinds of traffic, and why you can’t monetize them
8. Proxy Traffic
This type of traffic represents all the users browsing anonymously – there’s no way of verifying the real IP or their GEO location. The private connections also make it hard to understand if they’re real users or bots.
And since these users don’t have the needed tracking data, advertisers can’t target them with their products.
What you should know about Proxy Traffic
When it comes to proxy traffic, having a lot is clearly bad, as it doesn’t pay. In addition, if these users are fake, they won’t convert. Your CR will drop, less advertisers will rush to promote on your website, and all will lead to a lower CPM.
However, if you don’t want to bury your CPM, chase advertisers away, and get paid for your traffic at the same time, make sure to keep proxy traffic to a minimum.
Having troubles with your CPM? Here’s what might be wrong
9. Fraud traffic – bots
We saw before that Proxy traffic can be hard to sell because you can’t prove they’re real users. However, with bot traffic, we know for sure that this is the case. If you have a lot of them, advertisers will avoid you like the plague.
What you should know about Fraud Traffic
Nobody wants to pay for fake impressions, and not having accurate campaign data. So clearly all we saw above will happen when you have bot traffic as well: low CR and CPM, no advertisers, and no payment. Just a major waste of time and money.
Clearly, having this type of traffic will lead to your PropellerAds account being banned.
TLDR: What you should remember
There are various kinds of traffic and methods for you to get more of it or to use it. However, before you can start to monetize your traffic, you need to know it well enough and understand its monetization potential.
Often CPA and Advertising Networks will recommend you have at least 10,000 active users before you can start to make profit out of them. But, no matter how much, or what traffic type(s) you have (except for fraud and proxy), all our formats will be a great match for you to use.
The most important thing is to test properly and diversify as much as you can.
Use one format or combine several of them before sticking to a monetization solution. Your traffic is one of a kind, and only well-driven tests can tell you when you are doing something right or wrong.
