Sources of Site Traffic – Best To Worst
We all share a common goal – increasing traffic to our site or blog. Without traffic, our sites are invisible. Traffic, however, can come from many sources. Some of those sources are gold mines of highly targeted traffic consisting of visitors who are wanting to consume and interact with our content. Some sources are next to worthless and our sites would be better off without the waste of bandwidth. Below, I’ve listed what I consider to be the most common forms of traffic, rated from best to worst. Use this as a guide when promoting your site, so that you focus your energies in the right places.
- Organic search engine traffic – This is the granddaddy of all traffic. Visitors who arrive at your site from a search they’ve conducted are extremely targeted. This is what SEOs live for – high search engine rankings for popular phrases related to your niche. Bonus points if the great rankings are on Google, as that sends far more traffic than others. Don’t make the mistake of concentrating solely on search engine traffic however. If you lose your rankings, and you have no other sources of traffic, your site’s traffic will be devastated.
- Sponsored search engine traffic (PPC) – Second best is the traffic obtained from visitors clicking on sponsored listings from those same search engines. Essentially, you get all the same benefits as above, but there’s one difference. You have to pay for this traffic. The major search engines have made it a bit more complicated to play the PPC (pay per click) game. No longer is it as simple as “the biggest spenders get the top listings”. You can be very successful with this method, and the fact that you have more control over placement is a big draw. Keep in mind, however, that without experience, you may end up spending a bundle of cash on PPC systems such as Google’s Adwords without reaping any profits.
- Referrals from other sites – This could come in several forms. Other sites may simply link to you because they like your site, or you may have chosen to purchase advertising (either as a link or a banner ad) on others’ sites. Either way, if a highly-trafficked sites in your niche recommend your site, there’s a good chance that you’ll receive nicely targeted traffic from those sites.
- Participation in forums/communities – If you participate in forums and communities related to your niche, you can build up an element of trust. That trust helps send others community participants to your site via any links that you’ve listed in your signatures or profile pages. This may not send large quantities of traffic, but it will probably be traffic that has a strong bond with you. Those visitors may then go on to either link to your site or recommend your site in other ways.
- Guest blogging – Like the community participation above, guest blogging helps build up others’ trust in you, and your name becomes well known. This in turn builds up your personal brand, and you become more recognizable. At some point, people will know who you are, and that almost always translates into more site traffic. Obviously, you should be creating quality posts on others’ blogs if you hope to succeed with this method of traffic generation and increase blog traffic.
- Social networking – Traffic from social networks such as Digg and Stumbleupon, or social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, or popular video sites such as Youtube, can be huge. However, the traffic comes in spikes, usually only lasts for a few hours or at most a few days, and the visitors rarely stick around. These visitors may not be very targeted, or they may just not be all that interested in what you have to offer. Nevertheless, you may get some much-needed attention (buzz) or a few nice links, so social networking traffic is worth getting. It’s just not worth as much as the factors mentioned above, in my opinion.
- Article marketing / Directory submissions – Submitting your site to directories or writing articles that will be syndicated via article marketing sites are both useful for obtaining a few links to your sites, and perhaps a handful of visitors. You won’t see much direct traffic from these sources, so put this a bit lower on your list of things to do. It’s not a bad idea, and it can be useful for link building purposes, but it’s just not highly useful.
- Purchasing traffic packages and traffic exchange programs – In general, you should avoid these, and I only include this in the list so that I can warn you about them. If you are tempted to “buy millions of visitors for only $99″ or whatever the offer is, ask yourself if you enjoy throwing money away. These types of programs may or may not send you traffic, but the traffic they do send will likely either be fake or it will consist of visitors who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your site. You will be wasting money. Likewise, traffic exchange packages usually consist of webmasters visiting each others sites, just to obtain more traffic for their own sites. Again, they aren’t interested in your site at all. They only want to increase their own traffic, which won’t be useful traffic for them either.
I’m sure there are other traffic sources, but those are the ones that I receive the most traffic from. If you know of any other great sources, please share in the comments below.
Tags: article marketing, directory submissions, forums, Google, guest blogging, high search engine rankings, Organic search engine traffic, search engine, search engine traffic, search engines, SEOs, social networking, social networking traffic, social networks, sources of site traffic, traffic exchange, Youtube
| Sources of Site Traffic – Best To Worst | |
 | We all share a common goal – increasing traffic to our site or blog. Without traffic, our sites are invisible. Traffic, however, can come from many sources. Some of those sources are gold mines of highly targeted traffic consisting of visitors who are wanting to consume and interact with our content. Some sources are next [...] |
26 Responses to “Sources of Site Traffic – Best To Worst”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
[...] strokes what the posts will cover over time. 3. Understand the basics of social networking. 4. Attack from all sides. Get traffic from many [...]
I am an eBusiness Coach, Web Developer, Internet Marketer, SEO, Inbound Marketing Consultant, and General Web Geek, making my living from home.
If you feel my blog has contributed to you in any meaningful way, and would like to throw some loose change into a tip jar (metaphorically speaking), a click on the donation button below would definitely be appreciated.
Good info, Donna! I’d really be interested to learn what percentage we should give to each source. For example, I’ve heard people say you should only get 30% from search, but I’m wondering if you would put that number higher?
Thanks!
Nathania, I’d have to say “it depends”. For most blogs, 30% is probably fine, since blog traffic can be pretty easily obtained elsewhere. For some non-blog sites, however, it might be pretty tough to limit search to only 30%. I have some sites that rely on search for probably 90%, not by choice, but it just is what it is.
Great post Donna!
Interesting post, Donna. I’d add the implicit #0, direct traffic. I still find that people who type in a URL from word-of-mouth or offline marketing convert better than just about any form of online referral. Of course, a lot of time may have gone into some of those people (i.e. if I talk to someone for half an hour at an event and then they check out my site, of course they’re a qualified lead).
Great list and I’d agree on the whole. The only thing I’d say though, is that it’s worth considering what you want the traffic for as well. In many cases, PPC traffic will convert better than organic, and even forum sig links and direct referrals can be very lucrative. Really depends on the business / campaign / objectives / etc.
Scott
Good tips. Thanks!
Thanks for the post Donna, definitely a good read.
Great post, although I would put a well-placed guest posting above forums.
Great post, Donna! I would also be interested in the percentages allocated to each avenue of traffic. Although, I would assume that would very a bit depending on the type of website being promoted.
The percentages really would be different for every site, and would be very hard to estimate in an article like this. Just keep track as you go along as to which is helping you the most, and which is helping the least, and adjust accordingly. But I tend to start out by spending the most time on that list in that order, and then tweak and adjust as I go along.
This blog is the Holy Grail of SEO. Too many companies focus only on one side of this. A blended approach takes many man hours but the rewards are worth it.
Hello Donna,
Traffic from traffic exchanges is not all that bad. there are several different keys that will increase productivity:
1) Never submit a full blown webpage. Use a very fast loading page instead with some catchy verbage on it.
2) Always include on the page an e-mail capture form for visitors to give you an e-mail address. Then you plug the e-mail address into a autoresponder to send the visitor more information about the page they just seen.
3) The autoresponder message should be short and sweet. Just the bsic information and a URL is good enough. Offer a way of subscribing to your “List” at this time. Let the reader know you will be sending them further updates about your site via e-mail.
4) Always use Traffic Exchanges that give the most bang for your buck. There is nothing more disheartening than having traffic that is somewhere in the 10% unique range. You want the most unique visitors you can find.
I hope these tips help…
Phil
Learning a lot from this post. The best traffic I get is referral or social media: that’s 60% of my traffic. Only 30% is search, and I can’t begin to tell you how frustrated I am with that. Over 1,000 entries, and I’m lucky to get 70 hits from all search engines in a day.
I’m wondering if I have to invest that much more in referral and social media, because search is pretty much a waste for me, despite the fact that you’re right – that would be exactly the traffic I want and more than likely need.
ashok recently posted..Anna Akhmatova- “Reading Hamlet”
Sometime soon, let’s have an extended conversation about search, ashok. I can probably give some tips that will help you get a lot more search traffic. Let’s hash it out and get you going in that direction. Hit me up sometime when we can both spend some time talking.
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
Hi Donna
As a newbie to blogging I am always surprised when I get people searching my my small niche, clicking on my site and staying to comment. I get a lot of my traffic via other blogs where I have commented or from a blogging community I am active in. Also I notice Twitter and Yahoo have been sending me traffic too. Slowly the word is getting out there as I publish post and stay active in the blogging community. Thanks for all the suggestions here; some of which I have not tried yet.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia recently posted..Lavender Health-Lavender in treatment for hair loss
Patricia, I imagine your niche is small enough to warrant extra effort at times, and yet, I’d also bet it stands out and gets noticed more often amongst the noise as well. Good luck!
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
Thanks for sharing your list. For me, most of my traffic from CommentLuv and DoFollow blog sites.They provide quality backlinks to increase my PR and traffic.
vhien recently posted..Pediatricians warn parents of dangers of boxing
Your list is very helpful for me, because I sometimes find myself hyperfocusing on one strategy, especially since I am new to this! I have a lot to think about after reading your advice, and restructure the way I am going about my marketing. Thank you so much.
Monica recently posted..How to Build Good Credit: A Beginners Guide to Credit
As for number 7, article directories, I’ve build my own online business with this traffic generation technique. It’s true that I started in 2006, and at that time, I managed to get top rankings for every keywords I targeted on my site. At this time, all I had to do was writing two or three articles with the keyword that matched my page (the one I wanted to be ranked), and a couple of weeks later, I was on the first page.
It’s not the same today though, with all the competition and the recent panda update. I had to change the way I drive traffic to my site.
Franck
I love having organic traffic. I agree that one shouldn’t depend solely on search engine traffic. Sometimes, I also tried to get traffic from social networking sites to have more option. I haven’t tried purchasing traffic and guest blogging though. Maybe I should check out other things you’ve suggested.
Kristen B. recently posted..Toshiba DVR670 DVD/VHS Recorder Review
Thank you Donna for that informative post on sources of traffic.
I think what is critical is diversifying one’s traffic sources so that one is not dependent on one or a few alone.
Subsequently, tracking becomes important to identify which sources to now concentrate on while still not entirely neglecting the other sources now identified as less crucial.
Agreed. Diversity is critical, as is tracking, so 80% of one’s focus is on the core, while the remaining 20% handles the rest.
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
Hey Donna,
I am just wondering why you placed Guest Blogging so far down the list. I know that I get quite a bit of traffic from Guest Blogging. What has been your own experience with it?
Thanks
Everyone is different. In general, guest blogging tends to send less direct traffic, though it has great benefits in other ways. But if you get a lot of traffic from it, then that’s great!
Donna recently posted..5 Futuristic Ideas for Decorating your Home Office
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
This is a nice list of traffic sources ranking from top to bottom. There’s no way other traffic sources can beat SEO, because it is still very powerful (as long we know how to optimize the site well after the Panda update).
Dan Lew
Dan Lew recently posted..CBPoster Case Study – An Easy $75,000+ Per Year [Proof Inside]