Website Traffic

Intro

Traffic! Functional or failing? Without traffic the life of a website might seem pretty miserable but it doesn't necessarily mean the site is failing. Ask yourself what you want of your website? There are many websites that act as a very good supplement to an offline business creating a very good overview and impression of the work a person or business does. Traffic is not the be all and end all.

But of course traffic can lead to success. See for example, Google Adsense success stories.

If your aim is a site with a high ranking rather than using a site as a brochure for an offline business, how do you get your site up there with the search engines?

It is useful to ask and think about these questions: Where does traffic come from? What do you look for when you go on line? How do you look for it? The address bar in your browser or which search engine do you use and why?

Sites rich in quality content and information get high traffic. As a rule, sites that advertise a specific business are more like online brochures and are more likely to get traffic specifically looking for the business. In other words, these "brochure type" websites do not necessarily get that much search engine traffic as the source of their traffic is the address bar on a web browser. Search engines, on the other hand, often provide informative pages based on keywords for people looking for something less specific.

Traffic Issues Start Before Starting a Site

Spectacular failures on the net are not uncommon so my philosophy is to stay within your means. For an interesting rundown on "epic failures" see this useful resource for online webmastery: goodwebpractices.com The site devotes itself to online success.

Build a Constant Stream of traffic rather than traffic Spikes

Keyword Demand, Search Engines & Initial Page-building

Like growing trees from seeds or seedlings, traffic grows from a number of sources. But lets look at first-steps building pages with content that is indexed by search engines and has reliable keyword demand. Content management starts from the outset. Of course, the aim of writing or design is not always with a view to meet Search requirements but one of the first sites I built proved the value of engaging search engines by focusing on keyword demand and supply. There is a great deal of work/research involved.

If you want a good article on how search engines work see: How Search Engines work. A good article on website failures and "best practices" your website might be ignoring can be found here .

Competition

If you write pages with little regard for search engines and the search terms/keywords they are fed how will anyone find you? Old habits die hard but if you are looking for traffic it is important to keep this in mind when you are writing webpages. Keep strongy focussed on search terms and especially, when starting out, search terms that are not too competitive.

For example, if you did a site on gardening it is unlikely you would be ranked highly. It is too competitive a term. But if you had a page on a niche topic or sideline topic like azaleas which became popular and diverted many of your visitors to your home page on gardening. Then what? Well, you might find yourself getting a higher ranking for the more competitve term gardening.

Google now gives actual numbers for keywords - a statistic that was only previously available in the form of estimates from services like Wordtracker. Go to Google's keyword traffic tool to see statistics on how many people search a particular keyword and the competition for it.

Search Engine (SE) rankings, old tricks, backlinks

In the early days of the web, you could play tricks on the SEs like repeat a keyword in the same color as the background color of your page to virtually guarantee first place in searches. Naturally, people look for shortcuts and loop holes which will give them an edge but nowadays trying to work out literally 100s of search engine algorithms - the formulas or methods (which can incorporate randomness) used to rank websites; shudder to think! Would anyone in their right mind try to do this? That way lies madness.

For an indispensable article on how Google page ranking and indexing works see Opentracker's article on this page: Improve Google Ranking.

And another not to be missed resource for those trying to master the need for traffic is Google's highly informative blog: The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Link Popularity

This makes a lot of sense when you consider the laws of advertising because revenue is the lifeblood of a search engine. At the end of the day, keywords, search engines, advertising and inbound linking will be how visitors will or WILL NOT find you but your content must deliver and please REAL HUMANS which the Search Engines must also please or factor in to their results if they are to stay in business and provide the eyeballs advertisers want.

Search engines want you to keep coming back so will return "quality" relevant websites (like yours!) to people searching. User experience on your site becomes important. Search engines must DELIVER highly relevant and satisfying content if they want people to return to them.

Organic Traffic

You better choose something you really have stamina or a lot of passion for because there is a fair amount of effort required to build networks which is what builds search engine favoritism and therefore traffic. As they say, if you do what you love you won't work a day in your life! Which is just another way to say it's tedious and hard work building a network of links and exchanges with like-minded sites so LOVE IT or LEAVE IT!

Paid for Traffic

My view, what many people don't want to hear, is that solid traffic takes time to develop. Sites tend to go up and down in visitor numbers but what matters is that the overall graph, like the stock market, is not downtrending! So don't just build a site. Build a following if you want traffic, or more importantly, repeat traffic.