Whether you create a website or blog as a hobby or as to improve the online presence of your business, you will always have the dream that somehow (maybe magically!) people will flock to your website, fall in love with it, and keep coming back.
The reality couldn’t be much different.
Consider this: back in August 1995, there were only about 18,957 websites in total around the world, which means that any new website had a better chance of standing out from the others. As of 2003, Reuters estimated the number of websites on the Internet to be about 550,000,000,000. When you fast forward to 2010, the numbers just become unimaginable.
How do you expect to increase website traffic? Here are 5 issues to consider.
1. One Site Fits All or Better Having Microsites?
Many website owners as they find a need to increase website traffic come to the dilemma of splitting their sites(s) into a few microsites so they can rank better for their targeted keywords. There are several advantages and disadvantages to microsites. 2 aspects to pay careful attention are: 1 ) that you will need to reduce the content from the original big website so that you can create several microsites, and 2) that you might also reduce the number of average pageviews from visitors coming to your main website.
2. Are you Using the Correct Keywords?
Keyword research is essential to any plans to increase website traffic because it is estimated that 80% or more of all website visits being from a search engine. It helps to put the time and effort put in to attain high rankings of well selected keywords to increase the amount of conversions. Your main focus of keyword research though, is to highlight the most rewarding keywords to focus on in terms of traffic driven. This is not really an easy topic and there is a lot to take into consideration.
3. Should you Use Social Media Tools? If So, Which Ones?
For business, the rising popularity of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks presents a great opportunity for reaching out to their consumers. As millions of people (e.g. Facebook reports more than 400 million active users as of March 2010), flock to social media networks to chat, flirt, swap photos, and talk with each other, companies have the chance to tune into these conversations.
However, website owners often forget that the medium is not the message. Before starting a Facebook Page, you have to ask yourself: What is my objective? How will I measure it? Do I have the time to update this on an ongoing basis? Do I have the skills to do this? Facebook may not necessarily be the best or most appropriate venue for your website. Think about your goal, then select your tool.
4. Use PPC Campaigns?
PPC, or pay-per-click advertising is a hugely successful concept that has made Google rich. Pay only when an interested visitor clicks on your ad. The system allows for an incredible amount of control compared to other advertising mediums, and can be tweaked to perfection (if you are willing to spend some time on it).
5. Are you Capable of Doing All of This or Should You Hire an Expert?
From the first 4 issues analyzed, you may start having second doubts about whether you have all the skills to achieve all of these correctly and on time. For example, if you live in Phoenix, you should consider hiring a Phoenix AZ SEO not only because you would be able to achieve faster results, but also because you need to still concentrate on the creative process of delivering amazing content to your website or blog. Having an experienced Phoenix AZ SEO company or professional consultant could very well a great investment, if you can allocate the required budget for it.
I have a popular website and we get about 30% of our traffic from search engines. Nothing near 80%.
Hi Jeff,
The 80% figure is a rule-of-thumb that has been used by Avinash Kaushik and Seth Godin in the past. idaconcpts.com gets about 30% of monthly traffic from search engines as well. Given this fact, this could mean 1 of 3 things:
1) We need to better SEO. ^_^
2) There are just to many bigger websites that get much larger portions of their traffic from search engines. Therefore, these large outliers bring the average (80%) way up.
3) Online marketing and web analytics pundits should take another look at this rule-of-thumb.
– Damian