Understanding Traffic Channels

In this lesson, we’re going to explain traffic channels. We’ll cover the following topics:

• The 8 traffic channels as defined by Google
• The importance of diversification

Let’s get started!

The 8 traffic channels as defined by Google

As you might imagine, Google knows a thing or two about generating traffic. Here are the 8 traffic channels as defined by Google:

CHANNEL	DESCRIPTION
1. Display	Interactions with a medium of 'display' or 'cpm'. Also includes AdWords interactions with ad distribution network set to 'content' but excluding ad format of 'text'.
2. Paid Search	Visits from the AdWords Search Network or other search engines, with a medium of 'cpc' or 'ppc'.
3. Other Advertising	Visits that are tagged with a medium of 'cpc', 'ppc', 'cpm', 'cpv', 'cpa', 'cpp', 'content-text', or 'affiliate' (excluding Paid Search).
4. Organic Search	Visits from unpaid search on any search engine (i.e. a medium of 'organic').
5. Social Network	Visits from any of approximately 400 social networks (that are not tagged as ads).
6. Referral	Visits from websites that are not social networks.
7. Email	Visits that are tagged with a medium of 'email'.
8. Direct	Visits for which the visitor typed the name of a URL into the browser, or who came to the site via a bookmark (i.e. source='direct' and medium='(not set)' or '(none)'.

In this course we will be going into detail on the following channels:

• Organic Search Optimizing for organic search is also known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. We’ll show you how to optimize your content so that it ranks high in the search engines.
• Referral This is also referred to as link building, and is one piece of Organic Search.
• Social Network Also known as Social Media. We’ll show you how to use social networks to drive traffic to your sites.
• Email Marketing Continuing with our Stover Tree Service example site, we’ll explain how to use AWeber to build effective email campaigns.
• Paid Search We’ll show you how to open and set up an AdWords account to get quick results for your clients.

The importance of diversification

Just like a good stock portfolio, it’s important to diversify the sources of traffic to your sites. Diversifying your traffic sources will provide you with a stable and consistent supply of leads on a long-term basis.
The healthiest websites have a good mix of all types of traffic. Here’s an example of a website using Google Analytics:

Traffic sources in Google Analytics
Notice that only four channels are represented, and Social is less than 1%. This site needs to add more channels to have a healthy balance of traffic. Also notice that Direct is almost 62% of all traffic. If more than 50% of your traffic is coming from one category, it’s time to diversify.
Congratulations on completing Lesson 1! You should now understand:
1. The 8 traffic channels as defined by Google
2. The importance of diversification
If you have any questions on this lesson, you can contact support here.
You can also share your process, questions, suggestions – or whatever you’d like – in the comments below…