7 Best Traffic Analysis Tools to Boost Your Website’s Performance

In today’s fiercely competitive digital marketplace, a deep understanding of website traffic isn’t just an advantage – it’s essential.

Keeping tabs on your website’s traffic is your golden ticket to making smart, data-backed choices about how well your marketing efforts and campaigns are doing.

Furthermore, it allows you to pinpoint potential areas of improvement, adapt swiftly to changing trends, and craft strategies that resonate more deeply with your target audience.

In this post, we’ll dive into the 7 best traffic analysis tools, share what gets us excited about them, and dish out some tips to make the most of each one.

7 Best Website Traffic Analysis Tools

1. Semrush .Trends

Looking for a hassle-free way to monitor your competitors’ traffic and catch the latest market trends? Semrush .Trends is precisely the traffic analysis tool tailor-made for your needs.

Semrush .Trends is an add-on solution to Semrush that provides a comprehensive overview of any website’s traffic, including estimated desktop and mobile traffic, traffic sources, and audience engagement metrics.

It also includes tools for analyzing market trends, tracking competitor activity, and understanding your audience.

.Trends essentially comprises of 4 traffic analysis and competitive intelligence tools:

• Traffic Analytics – provides a detailed overview of any company’s online performance.
• Market Explorer – enables deep insights of competitors in your niche or industry.
• EyeOn – automatically monitors your competitors’ activities, including new content and promotional changes.
• One2Target – offers unique insights into audience characteristics, including demographics, socioeconomics, behavior, and audience overlap.

When you sync them up, Semrush .Trends serves as the ultimate traffic analysis toolkit for anyone who wants to understand their traffic, identify new opportunities, and crush the competition.

Semrush .Trends: Key Features

• Traffic Analytics’ Top Pages Report: This report essentially provides a list of top pages that generate the highest volume of organic traffic. Armed with this information, you can deconstruct your competitors’ content strategy and streamline your blogging efforts.
• Traffic Analytics’ Traffic Journey Chart: This chart helps you identify the sources sending the most visitors to your competitor’s site, alongside top 5 external domains that users commonly go to after visiting your competitor’s domain.
• Market Explorer’s Market Summary: The Market Summary widget provides a set of metrics for a quick assessment of your market, including its size, value, and competition levels.
• EyeOn’s Overview Report: This report provides a breakdown of your competitors’ Google ads, blog posts, social media updates, and new pages.

To learn more about Semrush .Trends’ key features, check out our post on how to use Semrush .Trends for competitor analysis.

Semrush .Trends Pricing

If you’re an existing Semrush user, you can buy Semrush .Trends as an add-on for $200/month. This will give you complete access to all the four tools in .Trends — Market Explorer, Traffic Analytics, EyeOn, and One2Target.

If you don’t have an active Semrush account, the pricing for integrating Semrush .Trends alongside your existing subscription would be:

• Semrush Pro – $329.95/month
• Semrush Guru – $449.95/month
• Semrush Business – $699.95/month

How to Use Semrush .Trends

• Sign up for Semrush .Trends. If you’re an existing user, you can click here to add .Trends to your Semrush account. If you’re a new user, you can click here to get a 2-week free trial of Semrush Pro + .Trends.
• Login to your Semrush dashboard and navigate to .Trends.
• You can explore any of the four tools in .Trends. If your goal is to deconstruct your competitors’ content strategies and acquire comprehensive insights into their traffic patterns, Traffic Analytics is your best bet.

The Traffic Analytics tool allows you to deep dive into your competitors’ strategies, analyze user behavior, and spot the latest trends in your niche.

For example, you can analyze your competitors’ top-performing content by using the Top Pages report. From the list of pages, you can see useful metrics such as traffic share, 1-year traffic trend, unique pageviews, unique visitors, entrances, and the different traffic sources.

You can also use Traffic Analytics to benchmark the traffic metrics of your website with your competitors’ to see where you fit in the market mix.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the most popular and widely used traffic analysis tools on the web. Not only does it help you see how people are finding your site, but it also lets you dive into who your audience is and what they prefer.

Plus, it helps keep track of your goals and any special events happening on your site. It’s essentially your best bet for getting a comprehensive view of your site’s performance and audience behaviors, making it easier to tweak things for better results.

Google Analytics’ latest iteration, Google Analytics 4, introduces more intelligent insights and predictive metrics, along with a user-centric data model, to offer a more nuanced understanding of user behavior across various platforms and devices.

Google Analytics: Key Features

• Traffic Reporting: Offers detailed statistics about the traffic coming to your site, helping you understand where your audience is coming from.
• Behavior Flow: Allows you to see the paths users follow through your site, which helps in understanding user behavior and tweaking site structure accordingly.
• Conversion Tracking: Lets you track how well your site is achieving its goals, whether it’s sales, lead generation, or other actions users might take on your site.
• Real-Time Reporting: Provides real-time data, letting you see the actions users are taking on your site at any given moment.
• Integration with Other Google Tools: Seamlessly integrates with other Google tools like Google Ads and Google Search Console for a unified marketing strategy.

Google Analytics: Pricing

Google Analytics is completely free. Needless to say, it’s one of the best free website traffic analysis tools you can use to optimize your site’s performance.

Sign up for Google Analytics

How to Use Google Analytics

• Sign up for a Google Analytics account with your Google account.
• Create a new property by entering details like website name and URL.
• Insert the tracking code into the header of your website to start tracking the data.

Once Google Analytics starts collecting traffic data on your website, you can navigate through different reports from your dashboard to gain a deeper insight into your audience’s preferences.

You can also configure goals to track conversions and important events on your website.

To get started, you can explore the Acquisition reports to see how users access your site. Google Analytics 4 separates this data into 2 categories: User acquisition (based on user engagement) and Traffic acquisition (based on session engagement).

To access your User Acquisition report, navigate to:

Reports > Life cycle > Acquisition > User acquisition

This report will provide you with a top-level view of how new users find your website.

Sign up for Google Analytics

3. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a nifty free tool from Google that helps you track and improve your site’s presence in search results. It’s a go-to for anyone aiming to enhance their website’s visibility without a hitch.

It shows you how many clicks and impressions each page on your site is getting, where it generally ranks in SERPs, and the click-through rate (CTR). It’s a solid tool to peek at your website’s performance.

Google Search Console: Key Features

• Performance Reports: These reports give insights into how well your website is performing in search results, including data on clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and more.
• URL Inspection Tool: This tool helps to analyze individual URLs to check their indexing status and identify any issues affecting them.
• Mobile Usability Report: This report highlights issues that might affect the user experience on mobile devices, which is increasingly important as mobile searches continue to rise.
• Core Web Vitals: These are a set of metrics that focus on user experience, such as loading time, interactivity, and visual stability of pages.
• Sitemap Submission: Google Search Console allows you to submit sitemaps, making it easier for Google to find and index your pages.

Google Search Console: Pricing

Google Search Console is absolutely free of charge.

Sign up for Google Search Console

How to Use Google Search Console

• Visit the Google Search Console website and log in with your Google account.
• Add your website by clicking on ‘Add property’ and enter your website URL.
• Verify the ownership of your website using any of the recommended methods (like uploading a HTML file or adding a meta tag).
• Once verified, explore the dashboard to get an overview of your website’s performance.

The Performance report in Google Search Console offers an in-depth analysis of your website’s visibility in Google SERPs, showcasing critical SEO metrics such as:

• Clicks: The total number of clicks from Google Search to your website.
• Impressions: The number of times any of your website’s pages appeared in search results.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.
• Average Position: The average rank of your site for the queries made by users.

Using this report, you can optimize your website’s content with a data-driven approach, enhancing visibility and improving the overall user experience.

Sign up for Google Search Console

4. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is a popular SEO platform that helps optimize your online presence through keyword analysis, competitor insights, and website performance tracking.

When it comes to traffic analysis, SE Ranking helps you analyze the traffic strategies of your competitors, allowing you to find gaps and opportunities to attract more traffic to your website.

SE Ranking also comes with a great rank tracking tool that helps you keep a tab on your keyword rankings, offering insights into traffic patterns and changes over time.

SE Ranking: Key Features

• Keyword Research: This tool helps in pinpointing the most effective keywords to enhance your SEO and content strategies.
• Competitor Research: Lets you deeply examine your competitors’ tactics and find potential opportunities for growth in your niche.
• Website Audit: This tool scans your website to identify various issues potentially affecting your SEO performance.
• Rank Tracking: A feature that helps you closely track your keywords’ performance in search engine rankings over time, offering insights to make informed decisions.

SE Ranking: Pricing

SE Ranking is one of the most budget-friendly traffic analysis tools on the market, with prices starting at $39/month.

You can choose from 3 pricing plans:

• Essential – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
• Pro – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
• Business – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

You can save 20% on any plan by switching to annual billing.

How to Use SE Ranking

• Sign up for an SE Ranking account.
• Create your first project by adding your website and the keywords you’d like to monitor. Specify the search engines and locations to ensure you get precise, location-specific ranking data.
• Once you’ve added your project, head over to the Competitor Research section and enter the URL of your closest competitor to examine their strengths, weaknesses, and potential growth opportunities.

The Competitor Research Overview report will provide you with a top-level view of your competitor’s organic traffic and paid traffic.

You can delve deeper into the Organic Research report to view your competitors’ estimated organic traffic, organic keywords, and a complete breakdown of all the keywords your competitor is currently ranking for.

Related: SE Ranking vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool is Better?

5. Serpstat

Serpstat is an SEO platform that offers a variety of tools for website optimization, including keyword research, competitor analysis, PPC analysis, and more.

As one of the leading traffic analysis tools on the market, Serpstat provides an estimation of the traffic a website receives, giving you an insight into its popularity and reach.

It also lets you peek into your competitors’ strategies by showing you the keywords they are ranking for and the kind of traffic they are pulling in.

Serpstat: Key Features

• Content Marketing Insights: Analyzes top-performing content in your niche to craft engaging and effective content strategies.
• Domain Analysis: Provides an overview of a domain’s visibility, traffic, and keyword positions in search engine results.
• Keyword Research: Highlights the best keywords for your content and PPC campaigns.
• Rank Tracking: Monitors the rankings of your keywords in search engines.
• Website Audit: Conducts a detailed audit of your website to identify and fixes issues that might affect SEO performance.

Serpstat: Pricing

Serpstat currently offers three pricing plans:

• Individual – $59/mo
• Team – $119/mo
• Agency – $479/mo

You can switch to annual billing to get a discount on any of these above plans. For an extra discount, you can use promo code 99signals2023 to get 22% off any annual plan. Click here to activate this exclusive Serpstat discount.

If you’ve never tried Serpstat before, you can start with a 7-day free trial.

[Exclusive Offer] Get 22% off Serpstat’s annual plan. Use promo code 99signals2023. Click on the link below to activate this exclusive Serpstat offer.

How to Use Serpstat

• Sign up for Serpstat.
• Create a new project by adding your domain and domain name.
• Once your project is setup, you can access all the tools within Serpstat, including Domain Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Analysis, and Rank Tracker.

To analyze your competitors, head over to Domain Analysis and enter your competitor’s domain.

The Overview report will provide a quick rundown on domain metrics, including visibility, estimated traffic, organic keywords, and paid keywords.

To gain deeper insights, you can open the Tree view report from the left-navigation menu to explore the layout of your competitor’s website: this includes every page, spanning the domain and subdomains, along with the keywords they are ranking for in specific positions.

6. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a free traffic analysis tool by Ahrefs that lets you analyze your traffic and monitor the SEO health of your website.

With Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, you can get free limited access to Site Explorer — one of the most widely used tools in the Ahrefs tool. It comes packed with insights that can be a real game-changer in improving your website’s SEO performance and boosting its overall user experience.

You also get access to the Site Audit feature, which highlights all the technical SEO issues on your site and provides detailed information on how to fix them.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Key Features

• Track Organic Traffic: Monitor your site’s organic performance and get a deeper understanding of your site’s SEO potential.
• Monitor Your SEO Health: Scan your website for 140+ common SEO issues and get actionable advice on fixing them.
• Backlink Research: Analyze your website’s backlink profile and get actionable insights from your inbound and outbound links.
• Keyword Research: Find out what keywords your website ranks for, alongside important SEO metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and traffic value.

Ahrefs Webmasters Tool: Pricing

Ahrefs Webmasters Tool is completely free, making it a great starting point if you’re just starting with SEO. But to really get into the nitty-gritty of your site’s SEO performance, you might want to consider upgrading to the full Ahrefs toolkit.

Try Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free

How to Use Ahrefs Webmasters Tools

• Sign up for an Ahrefs Webmasters Tool account.
• Add your website as a project.
• Confirm ownership of your site by connecting your Google Search Console account with Ahrefs. This step will also import all your existing projects from GSC to Ahrefs.

Once you’ve imported your projects from Google Search Console, Ahrefs will automatically crawl your website to check for 140+ predefined SEO and on-page issues.

In the Site Audit report, you can view all the issues that are affecting the website’s optimization. You can click on the question mark beside each issue to get actionable advice on how to fix it.

Try Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free

7. Ubersuggest

If you’re looking for a budget-friendly traffic analysis tool, then Ubersuggest is a top choice. Since Neil Patel took over, it’s been loaded with a host of new features, making it a full-scale SEO platform.

Although it doesn’t quite stack up against some other tools mentioned on this list, it’s a fantastic option for beginners in search of an easy-to-use interface with little to no hassle.

Ubersuggest: Key Features

• SEO Analytics: Offers insights into your SEO performance, helping you understand how well your website is optimized for search engines.
• Competitor Analysis: Lets you examine your competitors’ strategies, providing data that can help you develop an edge in your industry.
• Content Ideas: Provides suggestions for content based on popular articles in your niche, helping you create content that can attract more traffic.

Ubersuggest: Pricing

Ubersuggest follows an unconventional pricing setup. Breaking away from the typical monthly and yearly billing patterns seen in most SaaS platforms, it provides options for both monthly and lifetime payments.

Here are the monthly pricing plans of Ubersuggest:

• Individual – $12/mo (1 website)
• Business – $20/mo (2-7 websites)
• Enterprise – $40/mo (8-15 websites)

You can also opt for lifetime pricing (one-time payment) for these plans:

• Individual – $120/lifetime
• Business – $200/lifetime
• Enterprise – $400/lifetime

Try Ubersuggest for free for 7 days

How to Use Ubersuggest

• Sign up for Ubersuggest.
• Add a new project by entering your URL and website name.
• Next, add a list of keywords and competitors that you wish to monitor on Ubersuggest.
• To get more accurate data on your traffic stats, you can connect your Google Search Console and Google Analytics to Ubersuggest.
• Once you’ve provided these details, you can access all the tools within Ubersuggest, including Website Traffic Checker, SEO Analyzer, Backlink Checker, and Keyword Ideas.

You can use Ubersuggest’s Traffic Checker to gain insights in your competitors’ traffic patterns and keyword mix.

The Overview report provides basic data on your competitor’s monthly organic traffic, organic keywords, domain authority, and backlinks.

You can delve deeper into the report to view your competitor’s top pages, examine their top organic keywords, and review their backlinks.

Ubersuggest is great for getting a quick peek at your competitors’ SEO data, but if you’re planning to dig deep into their SEO, PPC, and content marketing strategies, you need to explore other options.

Sign up for a free trial of Ubersuggest

Related: Ubersuggest vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool is Better?

Final Thoughts on Traffic Analytics Tools

Website traffic analysis isn’t really that complex. Armed with the right set of traffic analysis tools, you can easily identify market trends, analyze competitor strategies, and optimize your own website’s performance.

From free website traffic analysis tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to premium offerings like Semrush .Trends and SE Ranking, there’s a solution tailored to meet the specific needs and budget of every online business.

Get started and test out these traffic analysis tools now.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on September 20, 2023 and has been updated frequently since then for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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