Which Reports Indicate How Traffic Arrived at a Website?

By Colette Nichol, SEO & Story Strategist

"I want to figure out if I'm getting organic traffic. So which reports indicate how traffic arrived at a website?"

This is a great question, but the answer depends on what you're using to measure traffic.

If you have a WordPress website and you haven't set up Google Analytics 4 or Google Search Console, then you probably don't have a way to find out how traffic arrived at your website.

If that sounds like you, then the first thing you should do is set up GA4 (Google Analytics 4) and Google Search Console. As long as you control your website, it's just a matter of having a gmail account and googling the set up instructions. It's pretty easy to do. And worth your time.

If you have another website host and design service like Wix or Squarespace, then they give you very basic reporting to find out where your traffic is coming from. But I suggest you connect GA4 and Search Console. Once you set it up, you'll be able to start getting the data about your traffic.

Now let's assume you have GA4 set up and figure out which reports indicate how traffic arrived at your website.

Website Reports on GA4

First open up GA4.

Then hover over the left-hand side panel to see your options.

Click on REPORTS.

Then go to ACQUISITION.

Hover over the items on the left-hand side to get the nav bar to pop up.

Then go to TRAFFIC ACQUISITION.

Voila! You'll have the information you need to see where your traffic is coming from.

This is what your 28-day traffic report will look like.

Are You Sitting on a Keyword Goldmine?

Every niche has a traffic opportunity.

In some cases the traffic opportunity is massive. It can be exciting to see that you're sitting on a traffic goldmine. Sometimes, in the case of local SEO, the real traffic goldmine actually comes from being in the map pack. In other words, getting your Google Business Profile to show up on the map section of the Google search results page is where you're going to see massive traction. Your website is just the gravy.

But in other cases, the real traffic comes from being found in the regular search results.

You want your website to come up in position 1, 2 or 3. In still other cases, what you're aiming for is to have your product show up on Google images or in Google shopping.

My team and I mostly work with clients who need to show up in the map pack or on the regular search results list. That's where service-driven businesses and experts will typically get the most relevant traffic.

By using a keyword tool like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs, you can figure out what the approximate volume of traffic is for your niche. From there, you can estimate how much a portion of that traffic would be worth to you. And you can also estimate how difficult it will be to obtain that traffic based on the competition for your top keywords.

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