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.
- 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
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An ebusiness coach, web developer, Internet Marketer, SEO, and all around web geek who makes her living from home doing all of the above.
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