The Free Website Project

Compulsively monitor your stats for as long as I have, and you’ll start to realize that different kinds of traffic do different things for you. You might see, for example, that an improved Google ranking doesn’t bring very many comments, but success on Digg does. Overall, though, some types of visitors are “better” for your site than others, which is why it is necessary to recognize the different types you can get and aim for the best.

There used to be 2 tiers of traffic, but now with the prevalence of social media and bookmarking there is a clear 3rd tier which we must address. Some people are referring to social media baiting as the new SEO, but the fact of the matter is that they’re good for different things and the motivation to visit is entirely different. To see what I mean, let’s have a look at the 3 tiers of traffic:

• 3. Social Media
  Social media traffic is in third place here because the value of each visitor is substantially less in many ways than the value of a search engine or repeat visitor, not because the traffic potential is less. While appearing on the front page of a popular site like Digg of Slashdot brings a huge surge of traffic, it very often doesn’t translate into a high conversion rate to repeat visitors. The reason for this is motivation, people on social networking and bookmarking want to see only content that has been validated by their peers. If a log post you’ve written becomes popular, for example, people would rather wait to see your next popular one on social media than take a chance and subscribe to your RSS feed. Of all these sites, StumbleUpon probably brings the least valuable traffic, even though it’s a wonderful service. The reason is that people visiting stumbled pages have no clue what they’re about until they appear, meaning that many people won’t be interested and will click through. While this traffic might show up nicely in your stats, it does absolutely nothing for you.

• 2. Search Engines
  Search engine traffic’s value lies partially in the perceived authority it can carry with it Obviously, if you’ve made it to the front page of Google for your topic, you must know the most, or so people think. The main benefit, though, is that search engines are more likely to find what they’re looking for, and to be looking for what they find. If a Googler is determined to locate an article on car repair, they’re not going to leave once they get there. Chances are this means the visitors will delve more deeply into your site, and possibly subscribe, always a good sign. This is why black hat SEO techniques like unrelated keywords are such a bad idea, they damage the value of your traffic by providing your search visitors negative feedback. The bottom line is that valuable search engine traffic means depth. If you think about it, aren’t you more likely to look around a site you’ve found through Yahoo or Google than one you saw on Digg?

• 1. Repeat Visitors
  A repeat visitor is the ultimate goal of any successful traffic campaign, just as a conversion is in marketing. This means that all your efforts should be focused on motivating visitors to sign up, look deeper, and interact on your site, blog, or forum. This is because repeat visitors, even if they don’t often click ads, bring something to the table that nobody else does: momentum. Stop updating and submitting to StumbleUpon, and you’ll suddenly feel very sad about your traffic without them. These are the people who comment, give you inspiration, and stimulate conversations that bring more visitors, so keep your repeat visitors happy above all else.

Now you’re probably thinking to yourself: “how am I supposed to bring in and convert all this traffic?” The answer may surprise you: you have quite a few tools at your disposal that you may not have thought of on your own site. Tweaking your design, your approach, and your priorities can help you direct your limited energy in ways that can help you reach this goal. Start by asking yourself some questions like these:

• Are there distracting ads on my website that may drive people away?

• Are there other sites that perform the exact same function but do it better?

• Are there leaders in my site’s community who keep the discussion alive?

• Do I write in a way that promises more updates?

• Do I have a way for people to subscribe to these updates?

• Do I have my login form/email form/feed link on every page?

• Have I encouraged people to bookmark?

• Have I submitted my site to search engines?

• Have I updated my crawl rate?

• Can visitors interact without registering for an account?

• Can visitors reach me with any problems?

• Can I offer motivation in the form of compelling content?

…and so on. Questions like this allow you to map out a clear path you want visitors to follow. For example, on this blog, I’d like it if you:

1. See a post you like

2. Subscribe to my RSS feed

3. Come back again

4. Start commenting

Now that my own list of conversion goals allows me to see what this process will require, I can start making it easier for people. For example, I’ve made sure to place a prominent RSS link and to set up auto-discovery for browsers to follow. Your goals might be different for your site, but the easier you make the experience for visitors the more likely it is to happen.

Now, a quick word back on search engine and social traffic, because I’ve neglected to mention how to deal with these specific cases. While you want to make things extra-nice for repeat visitors, this isn’t a requirement for serving up pages to StumbleUpon users, for example, because they’re not likely to stick around. Therefore, there are coding tricks you can implement to show these people more ads, or to greet first time visitors differently and show them around. This is also called making your page “sticky", and there is a lot more good advice on it here, here, and here that you should read.

The truth is, though, that different strategies work for different websites and the results may will surprise you. If you’ve got some interesting or unexpected results from something you’ve changed, we’d love to hear about it in the comment section below!