How Many Pageviews Should My Site Get?

Updated April 7, 2023

While there is no definitive answer to how many pageviews you should be getting, your goal should be to increase your website traffic while decreasing your bounce rate. The answer to this question involves several factors, such as the size of your business, your SEO ranking, user experience, the age of your site, and other considerations. 

In this article, we’ll look at what factors affect pageviews, offer tips on how to increase pageviews, and provide direction on how to see pageviews in Google Analytics.

9 Factors That Affect Pageviews

You’ve ticked all the “marketing” boxes for your new business—you’ve created a Facebook page, signed up for a Google Business Profile, started keyword research, and designed a shiny new website. Now what? How do you know if your efforts are successful? When new businesses are first starting their digital marketing efforts, one of the most frequently asked questions is, “how many hits should my website be getting?”

Because the average pageview per site varies so widely by industry and type of business, it’s hard to nail down a precise percentage for what’s “healthy” when it comes to website visits. However, there are lots of anecdotal examples and data out there that can help us pinpoint what might be affecting your traffic.

Now let’s look at the factors that affect website pageviews, how Google Analytics monitors your traffic, and how to increase pageviews.

1. The Size of Your Business

The first factor that might affect your site’s traffic is the size of your business.

For a HubSpot study, 400 web traffic analysts were surveyed to see what traffic trends they could find. They discovered that while the number of employees a company has correlates with the size of its web traffic, that isn’t always the case. 

Companies with over 1,000 employees received an average of 250,001-10 million monthly visitors, but so did 8% of small businesses with less than 10 employees. Thus, bigger companies receive more traffic than smaller ones, but not always.

2. How “Online” Your Industry Is

The next thing that might affect your site views is how “online” your industry is. If you work in eCommerce or a primarily online industry like media, your website will likely have a lot more traffic than industries that follow a more traditional, in-person business model, like car sales.

The role digital marketing plays in your industry will help you determine the average pageviews per site you should have for your industry. 

3. The Purpose of Your Site

Is your site purely informational to help potential customers learn more about you? Is it an eCommerce site where customers complete their purchases? Is it a landing page where customers sign up for a consultation? 

The number of hits your site gets will vary dramatically depending on your site’s function. According to HubSpot, 22.5% of B2C (Business to Consumer) sites get around 40,001-100,000 unique visitors per month, while 16% of B2B (Business to Business) sites get that same number of visitors. 

4. How Often You Publish

According to the HubSpot data, the more frequently you publish, the more visitors you get per month, and vice versa. Sites publishing new content multiple times a day can get over 50,000 visitors a month. Meanwhile, sites that post new content every few months only get 1,000 to 15,000 visitors per month.

Sites that publish new content multiple times a day have the only chance of getting 10 million visitors. 

Content marketing may take a lot of time and effort, but it’s worth it.

5. Your SEO Rankings

To get website traffic, you need to be discoverable first. That’s where SEO comes in. When done right, SEO can get your website listed among the first results when someone searches for specific topics in a search engine, like Google. On average, organic search accounts for a 53% share of site traffic across all industries!

Of course, it takes work to reach the top result, though it could happen faster with the right help (wink, wink). But even raising your rank just a little bit will cause an increase in pageviews. 

6. Age of Site

The age of your site can play a significant role in how much traffic it earns. More mature sites are seen as more credible by search engines and therefore are more likely to show up higher in SERPs (search engine results pages) and get more clicks. In the same HubSpot study, sites over 10 years old represented the majority of sites that received 250,001-10 million monthly visitors. 

If your site is under a year old, you’ll have a harder time garnering traffic, so don’t despair if your site isn’t getting as many visitors as your competitor’s older site. Age goes a long way in the game of digital marketing.

7. Site Speed

User experience is crucial to increasing web traffic. Slow page loading times will cause people to bounce off your site in search of faster sites with quick load times.

According to Google, your bounce rate will increase to 32% if your webpage takes more than three seconds to load.

8. User Experience

Every page on your website must be optimized with the customer in mind. If your site is difficult to navigate, potential customers will abandon your site for a competitor—and they won’t return: “88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.” 

You also need to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. 59% of global website traffic now comes from mobile devices (excluding tablets).

9. Domain Security

An unsecured website won’t receive as many site visits as a secure one, simply because people unfamiliar with your brand won’t want to risk having their sensitive data stolen. But even if your site visitors are willing to take the risk, search engines may not be. Some search engines penalize unsecured websites, which could cause your ranking to fall in SERPs.

Using Google Analytics for Pageviews Tracking Will Make Your Life So Much Easier 

There are many tools, both paid and free, that can help you monitor your site traffic. We recommend using Google Analytics (GA), which is a free web app that allows you to not only see how many hits your site is receiving but also get:

• Real-time reporting
• Event reports (user actions and system events and errors)
• Knowledge of which pages people are most engaged with
• Reports on revenue from eCommerce, subscriptions, or ads
• New and predictive info from Google’s machine learning
• Easier connection to other Google tools
• More customization options for data reports

Another vital function of Google Analytics is the ability to see—in real time—how your visitors are finding you. This is what GA’s Acquisition tool is used for. Using the Traffic acquisition report, you can see exactly which channels bring in the highest number of visitors, down to the specific email campaign, Pay-Per-Click ad, or URL. 

You can also filter your acquisition sources by paid versus organic. This helps you better tell how well your advertising dollars are being spent and where adjustments need to be made. 

You’ll also know exactly which pieces of organic content are attracting the most viewers.

When you know these things, you can better tailor your site to the customers you actually have rather than the ones you think you have, and you can address issues causing users to leave your site.

How to Set Up Google Analytics for Pageviews

Assuming you already have a Google account, you need to set up a Google Analytics account. On the Analytics page, there’s a blue button that says “Start measuring”. Click it and you’ll go to an account setup page. There you’ll have to fill out information for three sections:

• Account setup
• Property setup
• About your business

Once you finish all that, you’ll sign a terms of service agreement. 

If you already have an account, pick which account you’re adding the property to.

Then add a data stream to your account and you’ll get a tracking code from Google. Add that code after the <head> tag on the page that you want to track and you’re done! 

Repeat this process for every page that you want to track. 

To see pageviews in Google Analytics, navigate to the Real-Time Reports Page and click Overview.

Do More with Your Website Analytics

Now that you’re tracking your site traffic and know exactly where your customers are coming from and what they’re doing when they arrive, you can better tailor your site to meet your customers’ needs. 

Keep in mind, you won’t be getting the traffic numbers you want right away—intelligent digital marketing takes a lot of time and effort. Sites need time to mature before they’ll rank highly in Google. 

Feeling overwhelmed with running your business, figuring out how to increase pageviews, and monitoring your site traffic all at once? We’ve got your back. 

Big Leap can help you optimize content, analyze website data, and drive more traffic to your site through intelligent marketing and consistent support.

Talk to our SEO experts today!