Businesses and brands alike have found immense value in promoting their products and services via the web. After all, brick and mortar establishments can only reach those within a small geographic area: online brands can appeal to literally anybody in the world under the right circumstances. As our internet habits continue to shift and diversify, so do the number of ways in which we find great content and solutions. Brands who understand this concept can build formidable presences on the web, in part by knowing where they need to derive traffic. Today, we’ll review the main types of traffic you should be trying to generate if you want a well-balanced brand that can reach the masses.

Organic Traffic

Arguably the most common form of traffic for most brands, organic traffic refers to the people who arrive at your website through search engines. The broader premise of pinging for SEO is built around organic traffic, as search engines like Google and Bing are arguably the largest referrers of traffic in the world. When first starting a website, the amount of organic traffic you can expect to receive will be low, but with steady work and persistence, you’ll likely generate more traffic through this one source than through any other.

Direct Traffic

Another coveted type of traffic is direct traffic, which – as the name suggests – is traffic that comes directly to your website. In short, direct traffic is when anybody types out your website address or clicks on it from a bookmark. This is highly prized traffic, as it indicates a certain amount of brand awareness and loyalty; most newer websites will have little to no direct traffic because people are not aware of the website yet! As time goes on and as your marketing strategies improve, however, direct traffic should continue to grow. Many major brands rely on direct traffic due to high levels of name recognition.

Social Traffic

An increasingly valuable form of traffic is social traffic, which is the traffic that your social media efforts relay back to your website. This can come in many forms – from advertising campaigns on Facebook to influencer mentions on Twitter – but all of it is equally valuable. As of late, a growing number of brands are finding success with social traffic, due to the fact that anyone can jump into social media, begin posting and advertising, and thereby deliver large amounts of traffic to their websites. Some are even opting to ignore organic traffic entirely in favor of this method.

Referral Traffic

The final type of traffic we’ll cover today is referral traffic, which is traffic that comes from all other external sources. This often will be in the form of other blogs or websites linking back to your content, and also plays a huge role in pinging for SEO: the more backlinks and mentions you build, the better your rankings in search will generally be. Again, the amount of referral traffic is usually low for newer brands but will grow as your website becomes more prominent and active within its niche.

Which type of traffic do you see as being most valuable to your brand? Do you already have a large percentage of your traffic coming from one source? Let us know below in the comments how your traffic is distributed and how you plan to expand your reach in the future.