In internet marketing you may have heard the term traffic sources, this relates to how a visitor has come to find your website. There are many different forms of traffic but the main ones are referrals, direct, organic and paid for. Below is a quick over view of what they all mean:
Referrals – this is the number of visits to your website that have come through another site. This may be a link that you have on another site to yours, through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook or from links within articles you have created.
Direct – this is the number of people that have come to your site by typing your address directly in to the address bar. Often these are repeat visitors or ones that have got your address off a business card, signage or maybe by calling you first.
Organic – An organic visit is counted when someone finds you via one of the search engines such as Bin, Google or Yahoo. Organic listings are the ones that do not have the words “Ad” next to them.
Paid for – This is a visitor that has clicked on a paid for link on one of the search engines, maybe via Google Adwords etc.