Ever wonder why some pages on your site get tons of traffic while others collect dust? Or which marketing channels actually drive results?
You don’t have to guess.
Website analysis tools tell you how people find and interact with your site.
Even better?
These tools turn raw traffic data into actionable insights that help you optimize what works and improve what doesn’t.
In this guide, you’ll learn the top website traffic analysis tools, including standout features and pricing, to decide which ones are right for you.
But first, let’s start with the basics.
What Is Website Traffic Analysis?
Website traffic analysis is the process of collecting and examining data about your website visitors.
This includes key metrics such as:
- Number of visitors: Total number of users who visit your website
- Page views: How often each page on your site is viewed
- Session duration: The length of time visitors stay on your site
- Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page
- Traffic sources: Where your visitors come from (organic search, social media, direct, or referral traffic)
- Conversion rate: The percentage of web visitors who complete a desired action like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase
- Audience demographics: Visitor characteristics including age, location, language, interests, income, household size, and device types
Further reading: How to Track SEO Performance and Results for Your Business
How to Find Web Traffic
While it’s impossible to know how many people visit your site without a tool, you can manually track your site’s performance in a few ways:
- Search for your target keywords in search engines to check rankings
- Count social media shares and engagement
- Monitor comments and direct feedback
But here’s the thing: Tracking and analyzing your site’s performance by hand is time-consuming, tedious, and extremely limiting.
That’s why we recommend using a web traffic analysis tool (or two). These tools automate the process, provide comprehensive insights, and interpret the data for you—so you get all the benefits without any of the work.
Benefits of Analyzing Website Traffic
The difference between a thriving website and a stagnant one often comes down to understanding your traffic, audience, and competition.
Understand Your Website’s Performance
Want to know if your site is attracting, retaining, and converting visitors?
Traffic analysis shows you:
- Which marketing channels drive the most visitors
- How engaging your content is
- Where people drop off your site
- Which pages need improvement
For example, you might discover your blog posts get three times more engagement than your product pages. That’s a clear signal to focus on content marketing.
Learn What Your Audience Wants
Traffic analysis reveals who visits your site and what they’re looking for.
This includes age ranges, gender, browsing habits, and even connection speed. This data helps you create content tailored to your audience and optimize your site for traffic.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is all about getting your site to rank higher in search results. The higher you rank, the more likely you are to see a boost in organic web traffic.
Analyzing your traffic reveals a lot of helpful data:
- Which keywords bring organic traffic
- How algorithm changes affect your visibility
- Where you have the best ranking opportunities
- Technical issues that might hurt your performance
Use this data to steadily grow your search traffic.
Gain a Competitive Advantage
Want to know how your competitors stack up? Many competitor monitoring tools let you analyze any site to learn their top-ranking keywords, most popular pages, top traffic sources, content gaps, and more.
This helps you stay one step ahead and spot opportunities your rivals might miss.
Further reading: 23 Best Tools for Your Small Business (Free and Paid)
How Do Website Traffic Analysis Tools Work?
Web traffic analysis tools collect and analyze visitor data through two main methods:
- Third-party tools: Traffic analysis tools like Semrush and Similarweb use machine learning algorithms and data providers to analyze search rankings, keyword data, and visitor behavior across millions of websites. They use statistical modeling to estimate traffic patterns and user behavior, though these are approximations rather than exact measurements.
- First-party tools: Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console work differently by requiring a tracking code on your website to collect precise visitor data. This provides exact numbers about traffic, user actions, and conversion rates, but only for your own website.
7 Best Tools to Check Website Traffic
As you explore the following tools, consider your needs—whether it’s an all-in-one suite or just the essentials to kickstart your journey.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a must for all site owners.
It helps you gain a deep understanding of traffic patterns and how your users behave. Plus, it’s free.
Key Features
- Traffic analysis from multiple sources: Track all your traffic sources in one place—see exactly how many visitors come from search, social media, paid ads, and other channels
- Detailed user behavior insights: Watch how visitors interact with your site (including in real time), such as which pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they drop off
- Ecommerce performance tracking: For online stores, GA provides helpful tools to monitor sales, revenue, and conversion rates. Assess product performance, average order value, and how users move through your sales funnel to refine your ecommerce strategy.
Now, let’s look at a few of Google Analytics’ reports.
For example, the “Reports snapshot” provides an overview of your site’s performance. This includes the total number of active users and average engagement time.
Check this report to quickly gauge how well your site attracts and retains web visitors.
The “Traffic Acquisition” report reveals your traffic sources and shows your audience’s engagement time per session.
This tells you which marketing efforts are paying off and where to invest more time or resources.
The “Engagement” report includes information on your webpages, including how many views they get and the average time per user.
This helps you understand which pages excel in search results and resonate most with your audience.
While Google Analytics is undeniably valuable for site owners, it’s less user-friendly than many web analysis tools. For example, you’ll need to install a tracking code during setup, and its various filters and custom events can be overwhelming for beginners.
If you’ve never used this platform, read this Google Analytics Guide for Beginners to get started.
Pricing
GA4 is free to use.
2. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is another essential (and free) tool for understanding how your website performs in search.
While GA provides information on all traffic sources, GSC focuses solely on organic insights from Google.
Key Features
- Organic search performance tracking: See how your site performs in Google search, including clicks, impressions, average ranking position, and top pages
- Technical SEO monitoring: Get alerts about technical issues that could hurt your rankings, from mobile problems to speed issues
- Coverage and indexing reports: Identify indexing issues and server or crawl errors. This feature helps ensure Google can properly access and display your content in search results.
Pro tip: Get step-by-step setup instructions in this Google Search Console guide.
GSC requires you to verify domain ownership before it starts collecting data. So, you can’t use this tool to monitor competitors—only to analyze your own website traffic.
Start with the “Search results” report to see how your site is performing.
This report shows how many clicks your website received from organic search results in a specific time frame. It also displays total impressions, average click-through rate, and your site’s average position in search results.
Next, go to “Queries” to see what people search to find your site, including the number of clicks for each search term. Use these insights to discover additional keywords to target with high-quality content.
For example, if you notice a particular keyword is bringing in lots of clicks, but you don’t have dedicated content for it, you could create a blog post or guide around that topic.
The “Pages” report lists your top webpages based on clicks received during the selected period, alerting you to high- and low-performing content.
Use this data to guide your decisions, like which pages to rewrite or promote through paid ads.
With Google being the most popular search engine, it only makes sense to use Google Search Console for organic insights.
But since it’s pretty limiting (you won’t know if you’re also getting traffic from Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine), it’s best to pair it with other analysis tools to get a complete picture of your site’s performance.
Pricing
GSC is free to use.
3. Semrush Traffic Analytics
Website analysis isn’t just about understanding your own site—it’s also about gaining insights into your competitors. Semrush’s Traffic Analytics is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that gives you the inside scoop into your rivals’ strategies.
Key Features
- Audience Overview report: See who visits your competitors’ sites, including detailed demographic data and visitor interests, plus learn new audience segments you haven’t tapped into yet
- Traffic Journey report: Discover every traffic source your competitors use, from their top-performing social channels to top referring domains and search rankings
- User journey visualization: Watch how visitors navigate through competitor sites, including which pages capture attention and the content that drives the most engagement
The best part? There’s no tracking code or complex setup to get started. Add up to five competitors’ domains to get insights for free.
In the “Overview” report, you’ll get instant insights into your competitors’ web traffic, including visits per month, purchase conversion, bounce rate, and market share.
You’ll also learn your rivals’ trending pages so you can create higher-performing content that knocks them off the SERPs.
In the “Traffic Journey” report, you’ll learn monthly traffic data by channel, top traffic sources, and the top five domains users visit after leaving your competitors’ sites.
This information can highlight potential partnerships or content ideas.
To access Traffic Analytics, you’ll need a Semrush subscription, which includes a comprehensive digital marketing suite. You’ll be able to conduct keyword research, backlink analysis, position tracking, and much more.
This is an excellent option if you want to gain a competitive edge, as it equips you with everything you need to drive more traffic to your website.
However, Semrush is more expensive than some platforms, and beginners may find the number of tools (55+) overwhelming at first.
Pro tip: Many website traffic analysis tools like Semrush integrate with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, providing deeper insights in a unified dashboard.
Pricing
Semrush offers four plans:
- Free: Limited access to Traffic Analytics—make up to 10 requests per day for free
- Pro: $139.95 per month
- Guru: $249.95 per month
- Business: $499.95 per month
Side note: Some Traffic Analytics features (such as Audience Overview and Top Pages) require a Semrush.Trends subscription. Pricing for this add-on starts at $289 per month per user.
4. Similarweb
Similarweb gives you a well-rounded view of your site’s performance (and your rivals).
With its free and paid tools, you get valuable insights that help you boost your web traffic, no matter your budget.
Key Features
- Traffic analysis for any domain: Quickly review traffic volume, user engagement metrics, and trends for any website
- Top keywords and backlinks Get a breakdown of your competitors’ organic and paid keywords, plus a detailed look at referring domains and which content earns the most backlinks
- Global website traffic rankings: Compare how different sites perform across countries and industries, with detailed market share data and engagement metrics for each region
Add your domain to Similarweb’s free Website Traffic Checker to get started.
The report begins with a high-level overview of basic traffic metrics, including total monthly visits, pages per visit, and average visit duration.
Scroll to “Top Traffic Sources” to see the percentage of visitors each channel brings, from referrals to social. This helps you discover new, lucrative channels.
For example, if you notice a competitor getting 30% of their traffic from email marketing while you’re only at 5%, this could signal an opportunity to expand your strategy.
The “Social Media Traffic” report breaks traffic down by platform. This is especially helpful in understanding where competitors are most active and if there are social channels where you could expand your presence.
While the Website Traffic Checker is fairly comprehensive for a free tool, it only provides data for the previous month. This greatly limits your long-term trend analysis.
To access historical data, more in-depth reports, and Similarweb’s other digital marketing tools, you’ll need a paid subscription.
Pro tip: Read our guide: Semrush vs. Similarweb: Which Is Better & More Accurate? for an in-depth comparison of these two popular platforms.
Pricing
Similarweb offers free and paid plans:
- Free: Limited access to Website Traffic Checker, App Analytics, and Keyword Generator
- Starter: $149 per month
- Professional: $399 per month
- Team and Enterprise: Custom pricing
5. Serpstat
Serpstat is a versatile SEO platform that provides free and paid tools for website analysis, keyword research, and competitive insights.
Key Features
- Site Analysis tool: Enter any domain’s URL for an overview of total monthly traffic, visibility in the top 20 search results, ranking keywords, and more
- Keyword research tool: Research new keywords, learn your competitors’ top terms, and see metrics like volume, keyword difficulty, cost, and PPC competition
- Backlink profile insights: Review backlink sources, assess link quality, and spot opportunities to enhance your backlink strategy
Add your domain or a competitor’s domain to get started.
View the “Overview” report to see a snapshot of any site’s performance, including estimated search traffic, category rank, and Serpstat Domain Rank (a domain authority indicator).
Further down in the report, the Competitors Overview gives you a quick look at how many keywords you have in common with your rivals and their visibility in search.
Serpstat’s Backlink Analysis tool allows you to view the number of backlinks pointing to a domain, along with referring domains and anchor text.
Identifying high-authority sites linking to your competitors tells you where to focus your backlink efforts for more web traffic.
Serpstat’s budget price (if you stick with the basic subscription) and tool variety make this platform a great deal.
However, its Site Analysis tool doesn’t provide data about demographics, unlike other analysis platforms, which limits your ability to understand your audience and tailor your strategies to them.
Pricing
Serpstat has five plans available:
- Free: Limited access to Site Analysis and other tools like Site Audit
- Individual: $59 per month
- Team: $119 per month
- Agency: $479 per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
6. Sitechecker
Sitechecker is a paid SEO platform known for its easy-to-use tools, including a website traffic checker, rank tracker, and other products.
Key Features
- Traffic estimates: Enter any site URL to get estimated organic traffic numbers, page views, session duration, and more
- Top keywords: Discover keywords that drive the most traffic to the site, helping you target or refine your SEO strategy
- Backlink analysis: Get an overview of the domain’s backlink profile, including the number and quality of referring domains
To get traffic insights, you’ll need to sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) or sign up for a paid plan.
Paste your website’s URL into the search bar and click “Check traffic” to get started.
You’ll see a report that tells you how much organic traffic the site gets, organic SERP positions, and top keywords.
The Rank Tracker tool will tell you how well your keywords are doing in the SERPs and how many terms are in the top 100.
The Site Audit tool lets you check for issues affecting how much web traffic you get—like unindexed pages or critical issues hurting site speed.
For example, if the audit reveals pages with missing meta descriptions, you can prioritize writing compelling meta descriptions to improve click-through rates from search results.
Overall, Sitechecker is a solid choice for anyone looking for a budget-friendly tool (at the basic subscription level) that lets you check multiple web analysis steps off your list in one platform.
However, the lack of a free plan means you only have the 14-day trial to decide if this platform is worth the money.
Pricing
Sitechecker offers three paid plans:
- Basic: $59 per month
- Standard: $149 per month
- Premium: $349 per month
7. Ubersuggest
You might know Ubersuggest as a content ideation tool, but its free and paid web traffic analytics tools are also worth checking out.
Anyone from beginners to seasoned pros can use this tool for keyword research and domain and backlink analysis.
Key Features
- Organic and paid traffic estimates: Ubersuggest delivers detailed estimates of both organic and paid traffic, giving you a clear picture of how your site is performing and where to allocate your resources
- Backlink analysis: Learn how many referring domains any site has, along with new and lost links, anchor text, and title tags
- Site audit: Get an SEO health report for any site, including issues that may be impacting site traffic and instructions on how to fix them
Enter a website’s URL into Ubersuggest’s Website Traffic Checker to get started.
Then, view the “Traffic Overview” report, which gives you a solid snapshot of your site’s traffic.
This includes an organic versus paid traffic breakdown, Domain Authority score, and backlink profile overview.
The “Top SEO Pages” report shows you what content performs the best, broken down by country, estimated visits, backlinks, and social shares.
This insight helps you identify your most valuable content and understand which topics resonate with your audience.
In the “SEO Keywords” report, you’ll learn which terms perform the best for any site, including estimated monthly volume, position, and visits.
This tells you how well your SEO strategy is working and reveals opportunities to improve rankings for valuable terms.
As you can see, Ubersuggest is a user-friendly platform that offers a variety of tools to help you drive more web traffic.
While it isn’t as in-depth as some analysis tools—it has less robust keyword data than a tool like Semrush and doesn’t offer market research—it’s an affordable way to analyze website metrics.
Pricing
Ubersuggest offers four plans:
- Free: Limited access to domain analysis and rank-tracking tools
- Individual: $12 per month
- Business: $20 per month
- Enterprise: $40 per month
Analyze Your Web Traffic to Dominate the SERPs
Understanding your website traffic is essential to your long-term success. By tracking key metrics and user behavior patterns, you can make data-driven decisions that will drive more traffic, leads, and conversions.
And while Google Analytics provides valuable data, platforms like Semrush take your analysis capabilities to the next level—from comprehensive backlink insights to in-depth technical audits.
Want to learn more about how to get the most out of Semrush for traffic analysis? Check out our complete Semrush review to see how top SEOs use it to gain a competitive edge.