Quality Traffic Equals Quality Customers!
Any increase in web traffic is a great 'ego boost' to any business website builder. However, an increase in traffic doesn't always equal an increase in quality customers!
In fact a sudden increase in your web traffic can often significantly interfere with your web stats and in particular your visitor to new sales conversion ratio.
When the 'quality' of traffic isn't good enough to turn enough visitors into paying customers, then this can become very demoralising and it's just like owning a shop with a whole load of timewasters visiting every day.
There are plenty of immediate ways of significantly boosting traffic to a website, some more legitimate than others. Google AdWords is obviously totally legitimate as are any of the similar 'pay per click' advertising programs with the leading search engines.
However, be prepared to pay 50 cents a click and unless you are selling a high value product or service which has a lot of profit; pay per click advertising is becoming less and less profitable and far more difficult to achieve a return on investment (ROI) - especially for small businesses or start-ups with limited budgets.
Some start-ups, including some of my competitors, have obtained huge amounts of venture capital in recent months; the majority of which is to be spent on online advertising. Some of them have had tens of millions invested and frankly I see little chance of their investors getting a return on their investment - not for a very long time anyway. Anyway, that's their worry not mine.
There are many 'instant traffic' scams out there so be very careful. Anything that guarantees to significantly boost your traffic in a short space of time will either be a scam or generate very low quality traffic which in my view virtually equates to a scam anyway.
Even some very well-known big social media players run advertising programs which are next to useless when it comes to generating quality traffic. In my view these are verging on a scam due to the low quality traffic their schemes provide. Please don't ask me to name any names!
Avoid opt-in email mailing lists claiming to send an email to zillions of people for just a few dollars; avoid 'pop up or pop under' advertising as let's face it, they are very annoying and the chance of anyone actually being interested in your pop up/under advert and then proceeding to buying something from your site is highly unlikely.
Focus your marketing budget by spot test advertising, or posting (for free) on quality, relevant sites that have a high Google page rank. Set up Google Analytics for your site and closely monitor on a daily basis which of these sites deliver the best in terms of quality traffic to your site or blog.
I always look at both the average time spent on my site from that source, as well as the 'bounce rate' to decide whether or not the 'quality' is good enough for me to continue advertising or posting to a site or blog.
I generally consider that if the bounce rate (the percentage of people who visit your site and then leave straight away) is under 30%, then the quality is good enough. However, visitors from that source must also have stayed for an average time of more than 5 minutes.
I've set 5 minutes as my benchmark simply because I know that anyone who leaves my site in less than 5 minutes hasn't really looked at it seriously and what it has to offer them - hence they are unlikely to be serious enough to buy.
You'll need to set your own time limit based upon the size of your site and its content. For example, if you've created a specific product or service landing page, then I would consider that a couple of minutes would demonstrate quality as there is just one page of content and one product/service.
The bounce rate of 30% is generally considered by e-commerce experts as good, so I've used this as my benchmark and recommend that you use this too in your own quality analysis, if you're not sure.
Content rich sites that are regularly updated and therefore popular will have a low bounce rate, as the content draws people in and then keeps their attention for a fairly long time. With the introduction of video integration bounce rates have improved considerably, as this content is more interesting to the user.
A large site full of static and boring information about a subject that generally is not of great interest to the majority of people will generally have a high bounce rate. This doesn't however mean that it's not profitable or forms an important part of the overall marketing mix. Let's face it not every business can 'jazz up' their offerings to make them generally more intriguing to a mass market.
Analysing the websites or blogs referring traffic to your site on a daily basis will enable you to quickly identify which referring sites are working for you. You then focus on those sites by either advertising more or increasing the size of your advert, or by posting more content such as blogs, articles, videos or by placing comments to other people's blogs/articles on that site.
It is great when you find a quality resource referring quality traffic to your site because you'll not only see an increase in product/service inquiries, but also genuine sales inquiries followed by new sales themselves. You'll also get a chance to meet potential customers and sell them the benefits of your business, or show them how friendly you are and how great you will be to deal with if they buy.
So always focus on quality over quantity and don't be tempted to ruin your stats by being tempted into an 'instant traffic' scam, no matter how appealing and convincing the marketing spiel may be. You'll see the quality of your users increase, so you can then focus on turning inquiries into sales as soon as possible.
In fact a sudden increase in your web traffic can often significantly interfere with your web stats and in particular your visitor to new sales conversion ratio.
When the 'quality' of traffic isn't good enough to turn enough visitors into paying customers, then this can become very demoralising and it's just like owning a shop with a whole load of timewasters visiting every day.
There are plenty of immediate ways of significantly boosting traffic to a website, some more legitimate than others. Google AdWords is obviously totally legitimate as are any of the similar 'pay per click' advertising programs with the leading search engines.
However, be prepared to pay 50 cents a click and unless you are selling a high value product or service which has a lot of profit; pay per click advertising is becoming less and less profitable and far more difficult to achieve a return on investment (ROI) - especially for small businesses or start-ups with limited budgets.
Some start-ups, including some of my competitors, have obtained huge amounts of venture capital in recent months; the majority of which is to be spent on online advertising. Some of them have had tens of millions invested and frankly I see little chance of their investors getting a return on their investment - not for a very long time anyway. Anyway, that's their worry not mine.
There are many 'instant traffic' scams out there so be very careful. Anything that guarantees to significantly boost your traffic in a short space of time will either be a scam or generate very low quality traffic which in my view virtually equates to a scam anyway.
Even some very well-known big social media players run advertising programs which are next to useless when it comes to generating quality traffic. In my view these are verging on a scam due to the low quality traffic their schemes provide. Please don't ask me to name any names!
Avoid opt-in email mailing lists claiming to send an email to zillions of people for just a few dollars; avoid 'pop up or pop under' advertising as let's face it, they are very annoying and the chance of anyone actually being interested in your pop up/under advert and then proceeding to buying something from your site is highly unlikely.
Focus your marketing budget by spot test advertising, or posting (for free) on quality, relevant sites that have a high Google page rank. Set up Google Analytics for your site and closely monitor on a daily basis which of these sites deliver the best in terms of quality traffic to your site or blog.
I always look at both the average time spent on my site from that source, as well as the 'bounce rate' to decide whether or not the 'quality' is good enough for me to continue advertising or posting to a site or blog.
I generally consider that if the bounce rate (the percentage of people who visit your site and then leave straight away) is under 30%, then the quality is good enough. However, visitors from that source must also have stayed for an average time of more than 5 minutes.
I've set 5 minutes as my benchmark simply because I know that anyone who leaves my site in less than 5 minutes hasn't really looked at it seriously and what it has to offer them - hence they are unlikely to be serious enough to buy.
You'll need to set your own time limit based upon the size of your site and its content. For example, if you've created a specific product or service landing page, then I would consider that a couple of minutes would demonstrate quality as there is just one page of content and one product/service.
The bounce rate of 30% is generally considered by e-commerce experts as good, so I've used this as my benchmark and recommend that you use this too in your own quality analysis, if you're not sure.
Content rich sites that are regularly updated and therefore popular will have a low bounce rate, as the content draws people in and then keeps their attention for a fairly long time. With the introduction of video integration bounce rates have improved considerably, as this content is more interesting to the user.
A large site full of static and boring information about a subject that generally is not of great interest to the majority of people will generally have a high bounce rate. This doesn't however mean that it's not profitable or forms an important part of the overall marketing mix. Let's face it not every business can 'jazz up' their offerings to make them generally more intriguing to a mass market.
Analysing the websites or blogs referring traffic to your site on a daily basis will enable you to quickly identify which referring sites are working for you. You then focus on those sites by either advertising more or increasing the size of your advert, or by posting more content such as blogs, articles, videos or by placing comments to other people's blogs/articles on that site.
It is great when you find a quality resource referring quality traffic to your site because you'll not only see an increase in product/service inquiries, but also genuine sales inquiries followed by new sales themselves. You'll also get a chance to meet potential customers and sell them the benefits of your business, or show them how friendly you are and how great you will be to deal with if they buy.
So always focus on quality over quantity and don't be tempted to ruin your stats by being tempted into an 'instant traffic' scam, no matter how appealing and convincing the marketing spiel may be. You'll see the quality of your users increase, so you can then focus on turning inquiries into sales as soon as possible.
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