Unless you are mammoth multinational, spreading tentacles all over world to collect your booty, your only chance of survival as a small online business will depend on website traffic. And that’s precisely why most small businesses have started investing in websites and doing their best to attract website traffic. Needless to say, in order to develop your business you will have to increase your sales and to achieve this through the internet your website should have abundant traffic, part of which may be converted into sale or leads.

However, here are a few points that exemplify why traffic is so crucial to your business, what are the methods of sourcing it as also how to evaluate the ROI from the data available therefrom.

>> Online marketing is closely related to website traffic and its conversion

As earlier mentioned, for a small business, online traffic means everything. In fact, sans traffic it literally loses its purpose. But mere haphazard traffic will not do – you need qualified traffic for conversion. The issue incidentally has a two-way connotation – To increase sales you need traffic, but without conversion it becomes useless. At the same time, you need traffic as otherwise, what will you convert from?

>> Types of traffic, where do they come from and which is the best

Traffic, I mean website traffic, is the mainstay of any online business. The more you have it, better for your business. You need an online internet service for this job. Some of the important types of website traffic are enumerated below.

Paid Traffic includes Google Adwords, Facebook ads, specified ezine ads, as also offline classified ads that are supposed to drive people to your website. You may also include free online classified ad such as Craigslist.

As for Google Adwords, it may help you to understand the implication if you take a look at the background. One of the commonest goals among businesses comprises driving sales and generating leads. This often corresponds to running direct-response campaigns that urges customers to pursue a specific action like buying a product or signing up for a newsletters. Also known as traffic generating or lead-generating campaigns, these prove to be best practices when organized through Adwords.

As for Facebook it provides you with a platform that lets you introduce your brand to more than a billion users that use Facebook almost on a daily basis. Needless to say, it will provide your business a mammoth audience to interact with.

Referral Traffic Includes site traffic that originates from links on sundry web sites. It could be forums, blogs, directories such as superpages.com or just other business sites. However, referral traffic should be even with all other traffic sources. But in practice, referral traffic (percentages) for the average mean site usually fall below search engine traffic, though above direct traffic.

Though it usually is the Numero Due driver of visitors to a site, analyzing referral traffic is the key to determining whether backlinking campaigns are effective or not. Also known as link building, it is the practice of getting other sites to link to yours. This can be done through blogs, social media or simply asking other sites for a link exchange. The more relevant sites that refer real traffic to your site, the better your SEO strategy and backlinking plan is.

Earned Traffic originates from SEO or search engine optimization, being found online by your focused prospects and by driving traffic from your social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook back to your website.

It also includes traffic you can send via your email list because you’ve earned the right to communicate with them.

Earned traffic has the highest amount of credibility, but also takes the longest to get in volume.

>> Return on Investment

To be very precise, your website conversion rate will tell you how many of your visitors (driven through sundry traffic channels) have been ‘converted’ from plain visitors to valued clients.

When you purchase your traffic through a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaign, or invest money into website management, then a visitor who has been converted into a client, or completed a purchase (an action known as a ‘desired outcome’) is a return on your investment.