Site Traffic Comparison Tools: How do they work?

The digital age keeps businesses at their toe tips, easily creating and filling voids in their performances based on prompt responses. Understanding site traffic comparison and relevant tools should not be difficult. Since digital marketers already know how vital site traffic tracking can be for a business’s website.

These tools are dedicatedly designed to help you measure traffic inflow for your website and that of other competitor sites. These tools’ crucial parameters for performance benchmarking include traffic sources, bounce rate, monthly traffic, backlinks, and many others. But before jumping on to analyzing such tools, let us first look at what site traffic comparison would mean and how critical it can be for a business’s digital marketing goals.

What is Site traffic comparison?

Site comparison can be simply defined as a process involving contrasting two or more websites based on dedicated parameters, traffic performances. Website traffic comparison can involve multiple aspects of how one site is faring equated to the other/s.

The number of visitors to a website/webpage and their qualitative grasp over the content based on view behaviour defines how it outranks others. Today, various site tracking tools allow businesses to measure traffic volume and quality to their and competitor sites through different metrics. Site comparison through metrics like page views, bounce rate, visitor demographics, and traffic sources are among the most upfront means used. And, here’s why it can be crucial for a business.

Why is Site traffic comparison important?

Comparing your website traffic with those of competitors as per defined metrics can be of value both in the short and long term. Some prominent reasons that make site traffic comparison crucial include –

1. Easy comprehension of website growth over time.
2. Deciphering climbs up the SERP rankings.
3. Performance benchmarking as against competitors.
4. Drawing parallels with the previous year’s performance of the site.
5. Identifying traffic variations as per seasons and making use of the peak periods of traffic,
6. Identifying potential for site growth in various new aspects as per competitor analysis.
7. Identification of main visitor interests.

The overall result of using such a comparison can improve digital marketing tactics, user engagement, and strategy usage timing. For instance, if a search engine/s is/are recognized as the prominent traffic source, allocating resources towards and improving SEO strategies can be fruitful for obtaining desired results instead of other digital marketing channels.

The following are three special tools, accessible for both free and premium users. Along with a comparison of how they can help with site traffic comparison.

Comparative analysis of available tools

1. Semrush

Semrush is one of the top premium tools in trend, allowing site traffic comparison for up to 5 websites with detailed metric evaluations. Users can also fetch any domain to gauge its traffic. Top metrics that can be measured through Semrush include –

• Total site/domain visits
• Bounce rate
• Average visiting duration
• Number of unique visitors

It allows comparisons with estimated accuracy scores varying from high to medium and low. The premium tool’s free account access provides up to 10 analytics results, including those mentioned above.

2. GA Benchmarking

If you are already into Google Analytics, its GA Benchmarking can help compare industry competitors and measure self-site analytics through quick reports.

Google Analytics allows easy access to the Benchmarking tool under the Audience tab. You need to select your industry and the applicable country to arrive at reports on top parameters. This includes pages per session, total sessions, bounce rate, session duration on average, and many more based on website traffic access of top industry players.

The tool is handy and easy to use, requiring a basic understanding of analytics metrics for comparison.

3. Ahref

Ahref, one of the best website traffic comparison tools, is famous for its organic search traffic comparison and trending keyword analysis. The top parameters measurable for any URL, domain, or subdomain include –

• Backlinks generated
• Organic traffic (Monthly)
• Country-based traffic
• PPC plus organic traffic value
• Domains referred
• Organic search keywords

Keyword-based top SERP results are accessible here too for traffic estimation of domains that target such keyword/s. It allows access to competitor data only through paid membership access.

Other popular tools in the list that you can refer to for such metrics comparison are listed below.

1. Serpstat
2. Alexa
3. Similarweb
4. Sitechecker
5. SpyFu
6. Website IQ

Summing up

While these site traffic comparison tools are useful and in high demand, it is crucial to be aware of the accompanying drawbacks. When looking at the comparative metrics, keep in mind that the results are primarily estimations based on available data, which is, of course, restricted. Also, the website’s visitor experience is an entirely separate dimension that requires research based on the qualitative and quantitative parameters of the website. Improving the customer experience will require subjective intervention in feedback, interaction tracking, benchmarking individual business factors, and re-strategizing.