If you’ve ever wondered how people find your website, you’re not alone. Knowing how visitors get to your site helps understand your audience and fine-tune your marketing efforts. If your website was built by Wild Tree Digital, you already have all this information available at your fingertips in your very own Website Analysis Dashboard!*

In this post, we’re going to break down the confusing terminology around Google Analytics Acquisition Channels. By the end, you’ll better understand how your visitors find you, and how you can use that information to grow your business.

The Basics: What are Acquisition Channels?

Acquisition channels in Google Analytics tell you how visitors land on your website and where they come from. The channels are divided into categories like Organic Search, Paid Search, Social, Direct, and others.

When you look at your Website Analysis Dashboard (your crystal ball of the wonderful world of websites), you'll see information such as:

• Number of users visiting your site
• Sessions per user (how often people come back)
• Acquisition channels (see below!)
• Popular pages visited (which of your pages are getting the most attention)
• Location of visitors (where in the world your audience is)

All this data is gold when you’re looking to make decisions about your website and marketing efforts. So, let's dive a little deeper into the acquisition channels – particularly those that come from organic search and digital marketing campaigns.

Your acquisition data is displayed in a pie chart on, and you can use the arrows underneath the chart to scroll across to the channel you want to investigate. Click on it, and the rest of the dashboard will immediately update to show information from only that channel.

Organic Search: The Magic of Free Traffic

Organic search traffic is, in simple terms, the traffic that comes to your website without you having to pay for it. It’s the dream! When someone searches for a term or question on Google, Bing, or any search engine, and they click on your website from the search results, that's organic search in action.

If your site is well-optimised (hello on-page and technical SEO!), search engines will favour your pages and show them to users looking for services or products like yours.

Pro tip: If you’re not seeing much traffic from organic search, it might be time to revisit your SEO strategy. The world of SEO has changed a huge amount in the last five. The SEO and AIO strategies we use today are a world apart from the SEO we implemented even just a few years ago.

Digital Marketing Campaigns: Pay-to-Play

While organic search is great, sometimes it's great to give things a little push. That’s where digital marketing campaigns come in. Platforms like Google Ads and Meta (formerly Facebook) Ads allow you to pay for visibility, targeting specific audiences with ads that lead straight to your website.

In your dashboard, you’ll see traffic coming from Paid Search (Google Ads, Bing Ads) and Paid Social (Meta ads, Instagram ads, etc.). These channels give you a clear idea of how effective your marketing campaigns are.

When done well, these paid channels can drive highly targeted traffic to your site. This traffic tends to convert better because, well, you’re paying to put your website in front of people who are already interested in your services. Your dashboard will reflect how much traffic comes from these social campaigns.

Pro tip: Digital marketing campaigns are an investment, so it's crucial to track which ones are bringing in the most traffic and conversions. If you’re spending but not seeing results, please talk to us.

For information about what the other channels are, check out this page from Google: Acquisition channels

Make Your Dashboard Work for You

Your Website Analysis Dashboard is more than just a bunch of numbers – it’s a powerful tool that tells the story of how your website is performing. Whether it’s organic traffic from search engines or visitors clicking through from your paid ads, knowing where your visitors are coming from can help you make smarter decisions about your online strategy.

Want to see how your organic search and paid campaigns are doing? If you’re a Wild Tree Digital client, you’ve already got access to these insights in your dashboard.

If you can’t remember how to access your dashboard, don’t panic – just get in touch with us, and we’ll help you out.

Thinking of running a new digital marketing campaign? Contact us for a chat – we can help you drive more traffic to your site, the right way.

*if your site was built by another agency, ask them for access to your Google Analytics.