More website traffic sounds like an obvious marketing goal. If 500 people visited your website this month, getting 1,000 next month must be better.
But I’d want to know what those 500 people are doing first.
If they’re the wrong people, more traffic isn’t particularly useful. If they’re potential customers but nobody is enquiring, I’d want to understand what’s stopping them. And if you’re already getting good enquiries but they’re not turning into sales, your website traffic might not be the problem at all.
That’s why I wouldn’t automatically recommend more SEO, Google Ads or content just because website traffic looks low.
Before spending money trying to increase it, I’d look at the traffic you’ve already got and ask a much more useful question: are enough of the right people finding you, and what happens when they do?
Start With What You Actually Need the Website to Do
Not every website needs thousands of visitors a month.
A local accountant, renewable energy installer or specialist horticultural supplier could build a very healthy business from a relatively small number of website visitors if those visitors are the right potential customers.
That’s why traffic needs some context.
If your website had 300 visitors last month and generated 15 good enquiries, I’d be interested in finding ways to build on that. If it had 3,000 visitors and generated two enquiries, I’d be asking a few more questions before trying to increase the traffic further.
The number on its own doesn’t tell us very much.
What matters is whether your website is helping you achieve something commercially useful, whether that’s generating enquiries, selling products, taking bookings, getting people through the door or supporting another part of your sales process.
Are Enough of the Right People Finding You?
Sometimes traffic really is the problem.
If people are searching for exactly what you sell and your business is nowhere to be seen, improving your visibility makes sense. Your competitors are getting an opportunity to reach those potential customers and you aren’t.
That might mean looking at SEO. It might mean using Google Ads to get visibility more quickly. In some cases, it might be a mixture of different marketing activity.
But I’d want to see the evidence first.
Is there actually search demand for what you offer? What are people searching for? Where are you currently appearing? Which competitors are consistently ahead of you? And, importantly, are those searches likely to bring the sort of customer you want?
If there are 500 relevant searches happening every month and you’re barely visible for them, there’s a clear opportunity to investigate.
That’s very different from deciding you need more traffic because an SEO tool says your competitor gets more than you do.
Your Competitor Has More Traffic. Does It Matter?
This comes up quite a lot.
You put your website into an SEO tool, compare it with a competitor and discover they’re estimated to get five times as much organic traffic as you.
It’s very easy to look at that and assume you’re losing.
Before worrying about it, I’d look at where their traffic is actually coming from.
They might rank for hundreds of informational searches that don’t generate any business. They might sell a much wider range of products or services. They might operate nationally while you only work within a particular area.
Or they might genuinely be appearing for valuable searches that you’re missing.
That’s the bit I’d care about.
If a competitor is consistently appearing when your potential customers search for the services you both provide, there’s something useful to investigate. If most of their estimated traffic comes from an unrelated blog article that gets thousands of visits, matching their total traffic isn’t a particularly useful goal.
Competitor research should help you find opportunities, not give you another number to chase.
Are You Attracting the Wrong Traffic?
You can have plenty of website traffic and still have a visibility problem. It’s just a slightly different one.
Perhaps you’re ranking well, but for searches that don’t reflect what you actually sell. Your Google Ads might be generating clicks from people looking for something you don’t provide. Or a blog article might be responsible for a large proportion of your traffic while your commercial pages barely get seen.
This is why I like looking beyond the headline traffic figure.
Google Search Console can help you understand the searches generating organic visibility and which pages people are finding. If you’re running paid search, the actual search terms behind your clicks can tell you whether your budget is reaching the people you intended.
If you’re paying for traffic and aren’t convinced it’s producing enough in return, my Google Ads audit checklist covers some of the things I’d look at before increasing the budget.
The aim isn’t simply to attract more people. It’s to attract more of the people who could realistically become customers.
What If the Right People Are Visiting but Nobody Enquires?
This is where I’d be particularly cautious about spending more money on traffic.
If people are searching for something you provide, finding your website and then leaving without taking the next step, increasing the number of visitors doesn’t address what’s happening when they arrive.
I’d look at the website itself.
Can someone quickly understand what you do and who you work with? Does the page they’ve landed on answer the questions they’re likely to have? Is there enough information about your service, process or likely cost? Is there evidence that other people trust you? And is it obvious what someone should do next?
I’d also check the less exciting things. Does the website work properly on a phone? Do the forms actually work? Is the phone number clickable? Are there pages where visitors regularly drop out?
If you’re already attracting relevant visitors but they aren’t becoming enquiries, I’ve covered that in more detail in why your marketing isn’t converting and the three things I’d check first.
At that point, improving the experience you already have could be much more valuable than adding another 1,000 visitors.
What If You’re Getting Enquiries but They Aren’t Becoming Customers?
This is where the conversation moves beyond website traffic altogether.
If you’re getting genuine enquiries from people who want the service you provide, the marketing may have done exactly what you asked it to do.
I’d then want to know what happens to those enquiries.
How quickly are they answered? Are they genuinely suitable leads? Are people disappearing after receiving a quote? Is anyone following up? Do you know which enquiries eventually turn into customers and which don’t?
Without that information, it’s easy for a business to conclude that it needs more leads when the bigger opportunity is improving what happens to the leads it already has.
This is also why tracking matters. Knowing that Google Ads generated ten form submissions is useful, but knowing that four of those became customers worth £8,000 to the business is much more useful.
If you’re using several marketing channels, UTM tracking can help you get a clearer picture of where website visitors and enquiries originated.
You don’t need perfect data before you can make a marketing decision, but you do need enough information to avoid fixing the wrong problem.
When More Website Traffic Does Make Sense
There are plenty of situations where I’d recommend increasing website traffic.
If there is clear demand for what you sell, your website converts reasonably well and you’re simply not reaching enough potential customers, increasing relevant traffic is a sensible objective.
The same applies if you know a particular source of traffic performs well.
For example, if organic visitors landing on a particular service page regularly become enquiries, improving visibility for related searches could be a very sensible next step. If a Google Ads campaign is generating profitable work and there’s room to capture more relevant demand, increasing the budget may make commercial sense.
That’s quite different from saying, “Traffic is down, so we need more traffic.”
One is based on what the business needs and what the data is telling us. The other is based on making a graph bigger.
What Should You Look at Before Trying to Increase Traffic?
I’d start with four fairly simple questions.
Are enough of the right people finding the website? If not, you’ve probably got a visibility or targeting problem to investigate.
Where are your current visitors coming from? Look at the searches, pages and marketing channels responsible for the traffic you already have.
Are those visitors doing anything useful? That could be enquiring, calling, buying, booking or another action that matters to the business.
What happens after they do? If enquiries are coming in but rarely becoming customers, increasing traffic may not be where I’d put the next chunk of budget.
Those questions sound simple, but answering them usually tells you much more than looking at total website sessions on their own.
It’s also the reason my approach to marketing strategy starts with what you’re trying to achieve and what’s getting in the way, rather than deciding you need a particular marketing channel before we’ve looked at the problem.
More Traffic Isn’t the Goal
I don’t have anything against website traffic. I just don’t think it’s a particularly useful goal on its own.
I’d rather help a business attract 500 relevant visitors who have a genuine reason to buy than 5,000 people who were never likely to become customers.
Sometimes that means increasing your visibility. Sometimes it means improving the quality of the traffic you’re already attracting. Sometimes the website needs work. And sometimes the marketing is doing its job perfectly well and the problem sits somewhere else in the sales journey.
Working out which of those applies should come before spending more money.
If you’re not sure what’s actually holding your marketing back, you can book a free Seed Session. We’ll spend 30 minutes looking at where you are now, what you’re trying to achieve and what I’d prioritise next. If marketing isn’t the biggest problem, I’ll tell you that too.
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