| A blog or website that is created for the purpose of online exposure needs traffic. If you own a blog and are writing good, informative content, you want to know that it’s not just going into thin air, where nobody even knows about it. If you own a website for the purpose of a money-making scheme, visitors need to be driven into it in order for people to even know what you’re offering. |
|---|
Online traffic must be gained and maintained in order for your site to keep its spot in the ever expanding World Wide Web. To do this, several factors must be considered. First, you must put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and think about the reasons you would visit a website and then why you would want to come back. Of course the topic of your choice must contain relevant information. As an example, if you’re a new mother, you may run into certain situations that you had not been prepared for. Your baby might be filled with pimples that seem to be multiplying every day. Besides calling the doctor for advice, you feel the need to reassure yourself by searching for information about pimples on infants. You pull up Google, the most popular search engine to date, and you enter the words “pimples on infants.” It pulls up thousands of results, but you automatically assume that the most relevant to your search would be whatever is located on the first page of the results from top to bottom. You search through the titles or phrases that have the most meaningful information. You go through the first 3 searches and see some specific answers to your worries. One of the sites you visit has other great baby material, which gets you off track. Next thing you know, you have spent at least two hours going through various materials on the website. |
|---|
|
The example given is exactly what great traffic is about. Not only do you gain good, quality visitors, but in the grand scheme of online exposure, if you were a company who was thinking of spending money to advertise on a specific website, you would want it to be on a site that gains quality traffic. Quality traffic not only gives you front row seats to the search results on Search Engines, but also provides you with great success. Websites with quality traffic have accurate, descriptive keywords that perfectly match the content of their site. However, having descriptive keywords is the least of your concerns with achieving the goal of quality traffic. Search Engine Optimization You now know that in order to gain quality traffic, you must provide good material in order to get your visitors to keep coming back. First impression should be the best impression. So your first step is to focus on your site’s content and overall appearance. Once you’ve done that, you will then be ready to go through the many tricks used for driving online traffic to your site. Tricks we now call Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Backlinks, articles, social networking, directory listings, and RSS feeds are 5 of the most common techniques used in SEO. The quality of traffic gained will be calculated and viewed with results based on how these techniques are used and the frequency of their use. Backlinks Backlinks are links from a website to yours. There are two types of links that help in the determination of your rank on Google. There are good, quality backlinks and there are low ranking, non-relevant backlinks. Good backlinks are links that come from a website with quality traffic. Low ranking, non-relevant backlinks, although they don’t sound too appealing, don’t hurt the website, but it also doesn’t provide as much of a benefit as good, quality backlinks. So if time will be wasted on backlinks, I would put my focus on trying to gain them from the good backlinks. Articles Writing articles gives your site great credibility. However, it can’t just be any random information you post as an article. An article written typically makes you look like you are providing expert advice on a specific subject. Therefore, you must be mindful about what and how you construct your words as you would not only be judged by the general public and ranked for your submissions, but you may also be amongst other expert writers, who may be quite critical of what you do post. Directory Listings Entering your site in a directory is one of the most popular techniques for gaining traffic. Take the example of the mommyhood blogosphere. Bloggy moms comprise of a large category of specialized sites. There are working moms, stay at home moms, moms who specialize in arts and crafts, writers, reviewers, couponers, etc. When someone finds a directory in any particular site, they won’t know about your blog unless they go to the specific category you are placed in. This is because, no matter how disorganized anyone can be, the ultimate choice when time management is involved is the use of an organized system. RSS Feeds RSS feeds provide your members or subscribers with syndicated and updated information of your site. Traffic is gained when there are eye catching topics that run through these feeds, because it sometimes persuades previous members and inactive visitors to come back to the site. Social Networking Social networking has become a marketing phenomenon. Through this immensely popular form of online exposure, social networking has redefined marketing for businesses. Old as well as new connections are being made in the most cost-effective way possible. Social networking sites provide a platform for members to openly and privately communicate, while at the comfort of their homes and wherever else they prefer to be. Each successful social networking site provides specialized features that fit the preference and convenience of the users. Quality Traffic vs Quantity of Followers Quantity of followers does not necessarily mean you will gain "quality" traffic. As you may already know, the blogosphere consists of many "followers" who ARE NOT really "followers." This means that many site owners simply spend their time gathering members to increase their numbers, without realizing that this does absolutely nothing for their traffic, but perhaps hurt it. One of the most important factors that determine your site's rank and value is your bounce rate. I previously wrote a message regarding bounce rates once before. It states the following: Search engines like Google can determine whether or not your site is providing "quality" information through your bounce rate. The bounce rate is a measuring factor that allows them to determine whether or not keywords provided by your website have quality information. Take for instance a search you'd like to make on Google. For example, if you want to search for "household products," you typically go through the first page and sometimes the second page and sometimes even the third page. Am I right? Well, you're not the only one. Most users never go past the first three pages. Therefore, other sites are just not searchable and will not gain the exposure that advertisers want. When the bounce rate is lowered on your site (or pages on your site), this tells Google that you may have quality information there. A good bounce rate would be anywhere from 30 - 40%. Anything over 70% is NOT good. An average time spent on a site should be anywhere from 4 to 7 minutes to give it a good bounce rate (of course anything over 7 is fantastic). Google Analytics is one of the best tools to find out what your bounce rate is. So if you haven't already inserted the Analytics code on your site, it may be to your benefit to do so. So how do you gain this "quality" traffic? Stick with your blog's focus, provide information that pertain to your site's theme, provide "informative" articles and posts. For example, if your focus is on Green Products, perhaps writing some well thought out information on "How to be more eco-friendly" or "How to get kids to go green" would be appropriate. Tip: "How to" articles and posts tend to gain some great traffic. They also get people to stay on a page for more than a few seconds at a time. Find ways to engage your visitors into activities or good reading. Get them to stay and/or keep coming back for more. Leave meaningful comments on people's blogs/sites, because meaningful comments are usually returned with pleased visitors. DO NOT write "follow me I follow you" on blog comments. This type of behavior may cause Google to penalize your site for misbehavior. Also, please DO NOT just drop the voiceBoks name on people's blogs without writing meaningful comments. It doesn't help voiceBoks by any means just to have floating statements that say "here from voiceBoks" without anything meaningful behind it. Online Traffic Education voiceBoks is not created by Lexie Lane. It is created by a group of genius moms who specialize in various areas of the mommyhood blogosphere. voiceBoks was relaunched with the added focus of educating moms about online traffic. Growth is in place and since the beginning of August 2011, we began a series of online Events, covering a variety of topics including Blogger, Technorati, Giveaways/Reviews, and many more. Please don't miss out on your chance to gain knowledge and interactive online help that may improve your website's traffic. |
|---|