Website Traffic,

[orion_joel]

How easy hard do you find it to maintain a level of traffic once you have achieved it once?

I ask this as i am finding it seems to be quite easy, While i am still going to put more effort in the coming weeks for feb to try and build the level of traffic i have not put in much effort so far and am on track to exceed visitors for January in a shorter month. Strange but i like it.

[nealrm]

Joel,
That all depends on the breakdown of the traffic that is coming to your site. Maintaining traffic on a site with mostly new visitors requires different work than maintaining traffic at a site with repeating users. With new visitors, you will need to spend several hours each week maintaining your SEO and advertising. On a site with repeat visitors you will need to spend a little less time on SEO and advertising but more time on updating the site content.

These are just general ranges. It all depends on your sites and the competition in your market.

[Harold Mansfield]

Joel,
Traditionally web traffic goes up at this time of year as more people are inside because of the cold weather in most parts of the country, not traveling and recouping expenses after the holiday's.

Also, with not as much cash floating around the economy, people look for cheaper ways to entertain themselves, or with less cash to get out and go, spend more time watching T.V. and online.

You may find that come spring and summer, you take a dip in traffic as people spend less time indoors.

This is a crucial time of year to retain readers to keep them coming back year round.

[jem]

Traffic is just one measure.

Would you rather have 1 in 1000 buy (or whatever the purpose of your site is) or 2 in 100. Assume that's the amount of traffic for a day.

Getting traffic can be done relatively easily, getting good traffic can prove a little harder, but if you can plug into a few good 'veins' you can get it gushing!!!

Typically as your site becomes more established, you build more content and more backlinks you can see traffic grow.

Simon

[Harold Mansfield]

I made a really bad mistake on my music blog. Traffic was doing fine and growing, but at the time I wasn't making any money on it, so I started neglecting the updates to spend more time on things that were starting to pick up, and to pursue other niches...and my traffic suffered big time. When I made my first sale off of it, the traffic was so low that I realized that I had blown my lead in the race, and had to build it back up again.

Once you get it going, don't let up. It's hard to get readers back once you have bored them or let them down.

[SteveC]

Joel... instead of focusing on number of visitors to your website, focus instead on how much revenue your website generates or how many buyers you attract... more visitors does not neccessarily mean more income... I know of lots of people that make this mistake when advertising online...

They buy visitors instead of buyers... so my advice to you is to focus on attracting buyers and not simply visitors.

[Harold Mansfield]

Joel... instead of focusing on number of visitors to your website, focus instead on how much revenue your website generates or how many buyers you attract... more visitors does not neccessarily mean more income... I know of lots of people that make this mistake when advertising online...

They buy visitors instead of buyers... so my advice to you is to focus on attracting buyers and not simply visitors.
Couldn't have said it better. I would spend more time and money on a simple online classified ad than a link in a directory, or a high traffic site that is not in my niche.

There is nothing more frustrating that getting numbers and no conversions....it lets you know that you have focused on the wrong thing and wasted time.

Better to have 50 visitors a day and 1 or 2 sales, than 500 visitors a day and no sales.

[vangogh]

I'll echo what SteveC said and what eborg already echoed. Don't focus on the numbers. Would you rather have one person visit your site and buy something or hire you or would you rather have a million visitors who immediately click their back button?

As far as how consistent traffic is, it really depends on where you get your traffic. If you build traffic through quick tricks like posting links to social media sites then it won't be consistent at all. If you've built out a site so that it ranks well for a wide range of search terms then it should be fairly consistent. Just two examples of where traffic might come from.

Some traffic sources are one time only and some traffic will sources will continue to send traffic your way. When your focus is on the numbers you tend to chase after the first kind of traffic sources which means you'll always be chasing them again and again. When your focus is on business you tend to build things for the second kind of traffic and usually have more long term success.

[KristineS]

Couldn't have said it better. I would spend more time and money on a simple online classified ad than a link in a directory, or a high traffic site that is not in my niche.

There is nothing more frustrating that getting numbers and no conversions....it lets you know that you have focused on the wrong thing and wasted time.

Better to have 50 visitors a day and 1 or 2 sales, than 500 visitors a day and no sales.

This is so true, and I fight against this mentality that more is better all the time. I keep telling people it isn't about reaching a lot of people, it is about reaching the right people, and that sometimes those goals can mean two very different things. It drives me nuts to see people wasting money and time showcasing their product to people who don't need it, don't want it and won't buy it.

[vivianrollins]

Unless you are running paid ads (not Adsense), what good is traffic? You should focus on conversion instead of # of visitors. What good is it if a store have 500 people going through it if no one is buying?

[Spider]

I agree with the general idea that quality of trafic is more important than quantity of traffic, but I don't think it is that simple. One has to get a certain amount of traffic to begin with.

Example:

I have a website that focuses on Self Improvement. Self improvement is a very generic term and extremely competititve for SERPs ranking. (I am competing with only 43,000,000 other sites in Google!)

A more targetted search term like 'self improvement robbins' still doesn't place me anywhere near the front, even though there are only 955,000 sites searched on Google.

However, the generic term gets me to page 3 on Bing and page 1 for the more targetted term. Nevertheless, I am only getting an average of 1 or 2 visits per day. How I need that sort of ranking on Google!

Visitors that do come to the self improvement site stay and visit several other pages - visit duration and pages visited are considerably better than other sites I have. Which tells me that people who find this site are interested in what they find there. I take that to be quality traffic, even though the extremely small numbers haven't translated into any measurable sales, so far.

So, in this example, it seems to me that quantity of traffic (ie. getting ranked by Google) is way more important, at this stage, than quality of traffic.

[billbenson]

You want as much TARGETED traffic as you can get. You also need to close the traffic you get. Neither are mutually exclusive.

Good SEO should bring targeted traffic via the search engines. Paid ads work but everything should start with good SEO and landing pages that sell.

[orion_joel]

I do agree with a large portion of what has been said. However i believe that Quality and Quantity are both important together.

If you get 100 visitors per day and can convert 1% to sales and they are all visitors that are right on target, you may be getting good quality visitors, but you still only make 1 sale per day. However if you could double the number of visitors by being willing to accept that not all your visitors are going to be quality, and maintain that 1% conversion rate you double your sales.

So in reality i think it does depend a lot on how good your site converts, If you can maintain a certain conversion rate, but increase the number of visitors, it does not really matter if the traffic is quality or not, if you can maintain a conversion rate you are happy with. Yes maybe better quality traffic may convert better, but it comes down to a economic of scale, the more traffic that is quality you are trying to attract the more work you may need to put in to get that traffic.

[vangogh]

Joel if you're getting the right kind of traffic then your conversion rate will likely go up. You've already cleared one major hurdle by getting someone to your site who will possibly by something.

Quantity is only important if you're talking more of the quality kind of traffic.

For example years ago I wrote a post and through some odd combination of words I ranked #1 for the phrase "creme king of baits" and still rank #2 and #3 for the phrase. Turns out there's a company called Creme with a tagline "king of baits" They do rank #1 for the phrase and should.

Let's pretend the phrase and similar phrases around it were searched a lot. Why would I ever try to rank for that phrase. No one searching for it is looking to hire me for anything. They're looking for the Creme company or something related to fishing. I could pull thousands of visitors a day for that phrase and never make a sale.

You have to start with quality. The problem with chasing quantity traffic is there's little thought to quality. It also takes more work in general to generate mass traffic than it does to generate a few of the right people.

What a lot of people do is hear about the new thing to get thousands of instant visitors without thinking about who those visitors are. For example a year or two ago Digg was all the rage. Digg probably still sends tons of traffic for making the front page. But it's a community with distinct interests. They prefer Apple and Linux to Mac. They're on the high end of the tech savvy. Unless you're selling what that community is interested in you have no reason to try to get traffic from that community. It would be a waste of time.

You have to think about who are your customers and where they spend their time. Where can you reach those people and how can you build a brand in front of those people so when the time comes that they need or want your services and products your name comes to mind.


if you could double the number of visitors by being willing to accept that not all your visitors are going to be quality, and maintain that 1% conversion rate you double your sales.

Or you can work to double your conversion rate to 2% without increasing your traffic at all and still double your sales. If you're conversion rate is 1% then it's probably easier and less expensive to increase the conversion rate than it is to pull in more traffic. And again if your traffic is more targeted and a higher quality your conversion rate will naturally go up.

[billbenson]

And again if your traffic is more targeted and a higher quality your conversion rate will naturally go up.

And if you have high quality traffic and a good landing page for the key terms, you will probably get more qualified traffic and better positions in the search engines? Trying to get more traffic first is kind of putting the cart before the horse IMO. Within reason of course because you do need to get some traffic.

[vangogh]

Trying to get more traffic first is kind of putting the cart before the horse

That's how I see it too. Unless your site is able to convert at some reasonable rate all the traffic in the world won't really help you.

I think you have to consider which (more traffic or higher conversions) is going to take more effort, time, money, etc to acquire. Sometimes you'll find it easier to improve conversions and sometimes you'll find it easier to get more traffic. You should be working to improve both of course in either case.

Getting back to traffic quantity what you're looking for is a greater quantity of quality traffic. When you're only looking for more traffic you're hoping some % of that traffic will be quality. When you do that you're still focusing your efforts on acquiring mostly useless traffic. If you're converting 1% of visitors then your efforts at getting more traffic are 99% aimed at people that will never buy anything. On the other hand if you focus on quality then you're wasting less of your effort on useless traffic.

[orion_joel]

Mostly this rings true, however there will come a time when increasing your conversion rate is less viable then increasing your visitors, will working to maintain a conversion rate.

When we are around the 1% mark as i used in the above example if you double your visitors or conversion rate. Both are probably going to require similar effort. However once you get to say a 5% conversion rate, or 10% which is going to be more viable, double the conversion rate, double the visitors or split the difference.

I think split the difference wins all the time, and that you cannot bring it down to saying you increase quality visitors or increase conversion, both need to happen together.

As i said before if you are getting a conversion rate you are happy with and can maintain that conversion rate then quality is less of an issue. If you are getting a 4% conversion rate and can triple your visitors without thought to the quality and still be converting 4% you are winning.

The fact is Quality is all a matter of perception. As long as any of us offer a generic type service, website development, business coach, IT consulting, quality visitors could include just about anyone. As a Website Developer Vangogh, the example you give above may not be relevant, but if you had something rank under keywords like " Wayward pet training" Just because this is not something you have anything to do that does not mean that people searching for that do not have a business that may require your services. The point i want to make is not everyone will find what they are looking for when they are looking for it, many will find things that they are not looking for when they least expect it, and this is not saying that we should go out and target areas that are not our specific market, but getting listed in them and drawing traffic from them is not always a bad thing.

[billbenson]

It appears, Joel, that you are in a market where people may be able to use your product even though they were looking for something completely different. The president of a business might be searching for dog food, but also has IT problems and seeing your site may get you a phone call. But how are you going to get the dog food traffic? Put a dog food section on your IT website? Buy traffic? I've never heard of anyone making any money from bought traffic btw.

From an on site SEO perspective, I think it would be a lot of work to get junk traffic unless you pay for it?? It would also probably degrade you existing site trying to hit that market.

[vangogh]

As long as any of us offer a generic type service, website development, business coach, IT consulting, quality visitors could include just about anyone

I completely disagree. In fact I think this is one of the biggest mistakes many small businesses make including myself when I was first getting started. In the beginning I took some courses with the SBA and one of the handouts they gave out was all about how to define your market. My initial thought was anyone needing a website was my market, but that's very wrong.

The truth is the majority of people looking for sites and me will never make a good fit. For example I'm not a corporate type of guy. I'll never appeal to businesses above a certain size, because of the way I do things. That's fine. I don't particularly want to work with those kind of businesses and there are plenty of other web designers and companies that would make a good fit.

However I make a very good fit with many of the people who post here. A lot of us are micro businesses. The business is likely less than 10 people, just like mine. My clients and I all too often will chat on the phone about things that have nothing to do with me working on their websites. From a purely bottom line standpoint that's a waste of my time, but I like getting to know my clients as people and they seem to feel the same way about me.

Once I realized the type of client that made a good fit with me I was able to rewrite all the content on my site with a different tone. I don't pretend to be a larger company and I wrote the copy in a way that I hope is welcoming and inviting and has more of my personality in it. Where I used to get call from people and businesses that never led to anything, I now get calls from people who do become clients.

Once I refined my market and actually stopped seeking more traffic and focused on getting the right kind of traffic and also had a site to better match what that traffic, my business grew a lot. It doubled within a few months and has continued to grow.

Unless your selling something with low margins you don't need a lot of traffic. You want to figure out who in all that traffic is likely to hire you or buy from you and then focus your effort on getting those people to the site. It will also end up taking a lot less effort and money to get those people to your site since you begin to understand them better.

Wal-Mart needs a ton of traffic. Amazon needs a ton of traffic. Both make their money by selling in volume. If you do then yes I agree you need a lot of traffic, though I still say you want to seek out the right kind of traffic and not all traffic.

As yourself how much volume you need to do in order to make the money you want. I doubt you need to make millions or even thousands of sales to do well. If you're focus is on getting everyone possible into the site you end up missing out on many things you could be doing to get the right people to convert.

When you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.

[orion_joel]

I feel that the point i am trying to make is being misunderstood. The point of getting more traffic that is not necessarily quality traffic, which has potential to buy as a secondary off chance. The thing is at no time have i tried to imply you should just start throwing random chance topics out there and deviate from a specific target market. But I think your post Vangogh, that ranks for "creme King of bait" sums up the whole idea.

If you have a post or a page that somehow brings together a bunch of random keywords and gets you placed well in search engine, for something irrelevant to your business what are you going to do. Go Opps i dont want this useless traffic and try to get rid of it, or take advantage of it. A fishing tackle shop searching for the company with the tag line King of bait, sees your result and thinks of their website that needs a refresh. How about someone that searches for a creme company with the search term "creme king" (which the same post is ranked 5th in google) who actually owns a small bakery that wants a website. You may pull thousands of hits a day, and never make a sale or you might make an occasional sale.

The point i am trying to make is that you may not go out of your way to get the traffic and you may not even want the traffic but, if by a wild chance you get something that ranks well and gets you traffic, you need to take advantage of it. Yes i understand you have a target market, that you work with. But if you specifically only ever look at that one direction and dont see other trends how can you take advantage of a move that may mean you slightly readjust your target.

[vangogh]

Joel if I misunderstood at all, my bad.

I agree. It's not like I would start turning away that random traffic. It makes a lot of sense to see it as an opportunity and see if you can take advantage of the traffic. However I disagree that someone searching for fishing tackle and landing on my site is suddenly going to think about their website that needs work. It's much more likely that they'll leave quickly and go back to searching for fishing tackle. People in search mode are searching for something specific. I'm not saying it can't happen, but in general they aren't going to change directions suddenly.

Is it possible the scenario you describe could happen? Absolutely. Am I going to spend time working to increase that possibility? Not at all. The time spent on that would be time spent away from something with greater potential.

You also have to consider how ranking for things affects your brand. Here's another scenario. Say I do try to maximize traffic around the 'creme king of baits' phrase and my site starts appearing for a variety of fishing tackle related phrases. Someone searches for fishing tackle and keeps seeing my site. In their mind my site is related to fishing tackle and that becomes my brand to that person. A few months later that same person is looking for web design work and sees my site ranking for a query they type. Because they've associated my brand with fishing tackle, they're probably less likely to visit my site for the query that is a good fit for my site.

If the search term was more related then sure I'd do what I could to capture more traffic for the phrase or similar phrases. I do that all the time. When I see my site ranking for a variety of phrases around a more general term, I try to write a new post around that term or build a few more links to the original post. But even then you have to consider what the person is searching for. Is the person in buying more or are they just looking for information.

I think it's more important to put your time where it's going to lead to the best chance of success. Sometimes you could pull traffic from somewhere you didn't expect and it would make sense to take advantage of an opportunity and other times it doesn't make sense to spend the time because the opportunity is close to 0 at best.

My point in this is that you shouldn't chase after traffic for traffic's sake. Traffic is not the end game. Traffic is an intermediary step. You certainly need people visiting your site if you want them to buy something from your site, but the goal is the sale and not the visit. When people seek traffic without thinking how it leads to a sale I think they waste their time.