As for a percentage, that’s not an accurate stat for me, as I particpate in a lot of running forums (my site is a running & fitness site), so a lot of my traffic comes from referrals.

@Ed – I like that you equate direct requests to building your brand.

@Robyn – Feed visitors are a lot like direct/bookmarked visitors – and for most of our blogs, they are the type of traffic we are really prefer.

@Wendy – PPC is an area I am ready to start exploring more – especially for a few of my sites.

@Chris – good point about sustainable growth. We are all after more numbers and more traffic – and all types of traffic play into the equation. I was just wondering out loud what is the best combination and you all have helped reinforce my initial thoughts.

@Gayla – I have also been looking closer at search terms for two reasons – one to make sure I am staying on target topic wise and in some cases to give my readers more of what they are looking for. Same thoughts here on Feedburner! I was at 300 one day and 250 the next – I know to expect fluctuations, but sometimes they can just make you crazy.

When I analyze my own traffic, I look at directs and I pay very close attention to the searches. When I know I’m going to have a slow week, I look back at historical spikes in traffic and the searches that landed visitors on my site and try to tap into the same keywords or similar.

It keeps the traffic flow going while I’m tending to other things – like family

I do have to admit, I’m not overly impressed with FeedBurner these days. One day I have 150+ subscribers and the next I have 100 and then back up again.

Hopefully the bugs will get worked out before long.

Personally I think those are some of the best traffic because those folks care enough to subscribe.

Ultimately I think the critical factor isn’t so much the source of the traffic as it is sustainable growth. Any major spike in traffic (for example a big Digg) feels good. But the business growth will come from consistently increasing traffic over the long haul not from the spikes.

A site that measures it’s page views in the hundreds of thousands or millions per month can be made profitable regardless of the traffic source.

So the sources, although important to help trend visitors, are only as good as the targeted traffic they can send your way. Also don’t forget PPC, which has taken me quite a while to get the hang of, but I’m finally having some good results with it lately. Even though you could lump it in with SEO/Search, I think it should be it’s own animal because it takes a completely different learning curve and skill set to get it right.

Hope it helps and great post!

This is a great topic and a huge question. I think you’ve done a great job of narrowing down incoming traffic to those three main categories. But of course, within each of them there are so many sub-categories. Within the Search Engine category you have organic and paid, google, yahoo, ask, etc. Within referrals you have to include social bookmarking sites which could almost be placed in an entirely new category.

Personally, I love to see a lot of direct requests. It means that people are typing my site in because they specifically want to go there. That means that I’ve created brand awareness which is a good thing.

Referrals are next best because they are coming from a -hopefully- trusted source.

Search engine traffic is great, but it requires more work to convert into business.

I’m not sure that there’s a magic formula. But I think that anything you can do to increase Direct and Referral traffic will benefit any type of business.