- Website traffic benchmarks and trends expected to take 2022 by storm
- Top SEO strategies to achieve great web traffic results this year
- SEO tactics that set effective and ineffective sites apart in 2021
Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed a phenomenal increase in website traffic, especially mobile traffic, accounting for approximately 55% of total web traffic in 2022.
More and more consumers use their smartphones to discover new brands, shop online and research products or services.
So, if you’ve just launched a website or are looking to take your marketing strategy to the next level – what metrics should you track to determine how to boost growth? How can you outstrip your competitors in the ever-evolving competitive online landscape?
We will deliver some key insights into website traffic benchmarks and the variety of metrics you should be tracking to help you effectively optimise your website and rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs).
But before we delve into the strategies you should be using to outperform your competitors, let’s look at the key trends to watch out for in 2022! Keeping on top of changes in the marketplace and responding to shifts will strengthen your brand and help it remain ahead of the curve.
Website Benchmarks and Trends Impacting the Market in 2022
To remain competitive and reach new audiences in this ever-changing online marketplace, marketers need to keep abreast of emerging trends. We’ve listed a few that we expect to materialise this year and included Hubspot‘s account on how they could impact the market.
#1 Average Monthly Unique Visitor Counts Declining
For years, rising unique visitor counts were a sure sign of growth, providing website owners with a good indication of how big your site’s audience is and how your different audiences engage with your website.
However, counting the number of unique visitors is now fraught with problems, with a Hubspot survey of over 400 websites revealing that more than half of these sites receive no more than 15,000 unique visitors per month (UVPM).
Only 31% of websites generate more than 50,000 unique visitors per month, while just 15% of those surveyed revealed they averaged over 100,000 UVPM.
Don’t worry if you aren’t producing more than 50,000 unique visitors per month. Several factors can play into average website traffic, such as:
- Website age
- Number of employees
- Content publishing schedule
The unique visitor metric can sometimes produce erroneous results as users might be using different devices to visit a website. Tracking cookies could also get lost, blocked or removed, causing an existing user to be incorrectly perceived as a new user and thus producing invalid data.
#2 Users More Likely to Visit Multiple Pages
Research shows that users spend more time on websites and don’t usually stop at the first page they click through.
According to Hubspot’s Web Traffic & Analysis Report:
- Approximately 50% of websites receive 4-6 page views per visit
- 35% of websites get 7-10 page views from each user visit
- Only 17% of websites receive less than 3 page views per visit
It’s important to adjust your digital marketing infrastructure and strategy to create more opportunities for users to visit other areas of your website, for example, internally linking to other web pages or blog posts in content and using banners or images to link offers.
#3 Optimise For Various Traffic Sources
One of the most important factors to consider when assessing your web data is: Where is my traffic coming from?
According to recent statistics, organic search accounts for 53% of total website traffic, meaning you shouldn’t be focusing all your marketing efforts on this area.
Besides organic traffic, direct and social are two significant website traffic sources. Nearly 25% of web professionals surveyed by Hubspot said direct traffic is their top source of traffic.
What is direct traffic?
Direct traffic is a term used to describe when a user visits your website without visiting another site first. For example, the user could have punched your website URL directly or clicked on your site from their “bookmarks”.
If you have a massive spike in traffic, it could be because your website uses HTTP, or there is an HTTPS to HTTP redirect in place. If you haven’t migrated your site to HTTPS, we strongly recommend doing so. Not only does the HTTPS certificate use a more secure interface, but it also carries more data allowing you to track user referrals easily.
You also want to leverage other channels to grow your web strategy, including social media, paid advertising and email marketing, which is most successfully used to boost brand awareness.
#4 Mobile Usage Continues to Accelerate
Besides knowing where your traffic is coming from, it’s also important to determine what devices people use to visit your website.
Most search engines, including Google, which dominates 92.47% of the market share as of June 2021, use a mobile-first approach to indexing web pages and websites.
Mobile search is also responsible for 41% of total traffic, so optimising your website to improve the mobile experience creates a lucrative opportunity for business.
That doesn’t mean write-off desktop optimisation, with data from Hubspot showing that 38% of web traffic comes from desktops.
It’s essential to create a responsive website with a fluid layout that can adjust according to the shape and size of a screen – ensuring your website looks great on any device!
If you want to improve the user experience further and capitalise on potential mobile traffic, consider launching a mobile app. Just make sure the themes and design of the app align with your website to ensure brand consistency.
#5 Innovative Engagement Strategies to Increase
To keep average bounce rates relatively low, we expect online engagement strategies to become more innovative in 2022.
Although data shows that web visitors are more likely to click through to multiple pages on a website, the human attention span is narrowing. Unfortunately for marketers, trends don’t last as long, and demand for immediate satisfaction has made it incredibly difficult to maintain interest for long periods.
The dependency on fast, accessible information can impact your website’s bounce rates. As a result, marketing teams must understand their average bounce rates and embrace new opportunities for creating engaging content.
#6 Brands That Already Rank Highly on SERPs do so With Ease
According to Hubspot’s survey of 400 websites, 58% of participants described ranking on the first page of search as “easy”.
However, Hubspot found that only 31% of respondents said their site ranks on the first page of SERPs for their target keywords, with just under half of that group stating that they occupy one of the top three listings.
One of the primary goals of any marketing strategy is to rank on the first page of Google search results. However, it can be highly competitive, with only ten spots available and hundreds to thousands of brands vying for a position.
How easy marketers find ranking on the first page of search results is entirely subjective. So if you’re struggling to land a top ten position, don’t panic!
Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be particularly challenging for smaller websites or new brands with less established websites trying to build their online presence. Even if you aren’t a relatively new brand, high-ranking web pages don’t happen overnight.
Other factors that influence search engine performance include:
- Website authority
- How frequent content is published
- Backlink profile
It takes considerable time, effort and consistency, with most SEO experts agreeing that it can take up to 6 months to start seeing results.
Top SEO Strategies to increase your monthly page views in 2022
So, we’ve talked about metrics and trends. Next, let’s dive into the hottest traffic-generating SEO strategies and speculation about how 2022 is expected to pan out.
#1 Optimising for Search Intent, Target Keywords & Metadata
The three top SEO strategies marketers appear to be focusing on to boost traffic are:
- Optimising content for user search intent
- Optimising on-page content around target keywords
- Optimising and writing compelling metadata
Optimising content for search intent was the most popular among survey respondents (61%), and it’s easy to understand why.
It focuses on providing an engaging experience, which helps ensure users engage with your content for longer. This acts as a positive ranking signal for search engines and helps drive qualified traffic to your website through your improved position in SERPs.
Satisfying user intent is Google’s number one priority, so if you want your inbound marketing strategy to succeed, leveraging this strategy is guaranteed to produce results.
Once you’ve conducted keyword research and outlined your target keywords, place them throughout your article, in your title tags, meta descriptions and h-tags. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, as keyword stuffing can be detrimental to your SEO efforts.
#2 Increasing Click-through Opportunities
While the first organic result on Google Search generates an average click-through rate (CTR) of 28.5%, search engine optimisation doesn’t stop at the first page of SERPs.
You need to convince people that your content is more valuable than your competitors and encourage them to click through to your site.
Studies show that this is far more challenging than appearing on the first page of SERPs, with Hubspot’s report revealing that 25% of websites have an average CTR between 10-19%.
In fact, just 14% of respondents revealed that they had an average CTR of more than 40%. Exploring ways to boost your click-through rate will help increase web traffic and improve rankings in SERPs.
#9 Increased Focus on the Bottom Line
Knowing which metrics to prioritise can be tricky, with so many metrics to track and consider.
When it comes to measuring website performance, some of the most important metrics to track include:
- Bounce rates
- Conversion rates
- Total monthly visitors
- Average time on page
- Leads generated
Here’s why you want to be tracking some of these metrics:
Bounce Rate
Tracking bounce rates can help you understand how users interact with your pages.
The data will serve as a good indicator of whether the content is irrelevant or confusing to your users and allow you to take appropriate action, whether re-optimising the page or removing it altogether.
Whatever the case, it’s essential to get to the root of the issue, as high bounce rates will affect how Google perceives your site.
Average Time Spent on Page
The Average Time Spent on Page metric looks at the amount of time users spend on a single web page, which according to Content Square, averages at 4 minutes and 24 seconds per visit across all industries.
If users spend significant periods of time on a specific page, the content must be engaging. Using relevant, high-performing pages as a model guide, you can create a strategy for tackling underperforming web pages on your site.
Total Monthly Page Views
Every brand, small or big, will benefit from being aware of how users interact with their website, and visitor tracking is critical to the successful functioning of your business.
If you’ve changed your website and noticed that your average total of monthly visitors has dipped, this would indicate that the change could be having a negative performance on your SERPs position. On the other hand, an increase in visitor totals would suggest that the changes have positively impacted your SEO efforts.
The monthly visits metric will also help you understand how your brand is positioned in the market and identify opportunities to boost your potential reach.
What SEO Tactics Set Effective and Ineffective Websites Apart?
We’ve only covered a few SEO strategies and techniques you could leverage to drive qualified traffic to your website and achieve engagement, lead generation, and conversion goals.
To avoid writing a 5,000 word article covering other SEO strategies that would overwhelm our narrowing human attention span, we’ve provided a breakdown of effective and ineffective strategies identified by web traffic analysts over the past year.
According to a recent report, the most effective SEO strategies were:
- Targeting keywords with high monthly search volumes
- Optimising website for mobile
- Optimising content for search intent
On the other hand, the most ineffective strategies web traffic analysts implemented to help achieve their overall business objectives were:
- Targeting keywords with high monthly search volumes
- Conducting keyword research
- Optimising website for mobile
Interestingly, “optimising websites for mobile” and “targeting keywords with high monthly search volumes” were the most effective and ineffective optimisation strategies.
As a result, we expect marketers to change their approach to keyword research and mobile optimisation strategies in 2022.
Still, SEO is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The techniques, strategies and tools you use will heavily depend on your business goals. And if you don’t have goals – well, you’re shooting in the dark.
With increased emphasis on average page loading speed and keyword research, why not receive a free weekly keyword ranking report from Soar Online to keep you up-to-date with your keyword positions on Google?
We’ve also created a nifty tool to test your website speed and see how fast your site loads on mobile!
