Diversity of Traffic Sources = A Happy SEO Campaign

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz.org wrote a great little study a few months ago on the importance of having different forms of traffic coming to your website. The basic idea is that if you have people coming to your websites from a variety of places, such as search engines, RSS feeds, and social media, Google will reward you with better traffic.

It’s hard to control how Google decides to rank your website. While there are proven strategies put in place, it’s impossible to tell how and when Google will rank you on the first or tenth page in their rankings. As SEO has evolved, it’s become more clear that the more ‘natural’ a website seems in terms of popularity, the better (or more safely) you’ll perform on Google’s rankings.

Search engines want to reward sites that naturally attract people to their websites. Simply having all your traffic coming from one source (ex. direct traffic or search engines) doesn’t seem all that natural if you exclude email, RSS feeds and social media. Since the internet is quickly becoming a social-focused medium, with the growth of sites like Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, LivingSocial and Quora, more emphasis is being placed in gaining traffic through social platforms. By tapping into these platforms early, you gain momentum and attention from Google.

Another benefit of diversifying your traffic sources is that you lower your associated risk. No one traffic source is 100% safe. Social Media rules may change, your profiles may be hacked, or your rankings may be suddenly dropped for whatever reason. By diversifying your ‘traffic portfolio’, you minimize the risk of losing all your traffic at once.

By thinking outside the box, and attempting to gain traffic from new websites and sources, you may also discover new ways to interact with your clients, and learn a little bit more about your business. For example, you may have never considered interacting on Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers or Quora, which could not only be a great source of traffic, but a good place to showcase your expertise and improve your reputation.

Much like SEO itself, diversifying your links is not an overnight project. It takes time, dedication and a lot of brainstorming in order to make the most of your website. This is a great benefit that you get from hiring an internet marketing agency to help you. In the same way you hiring financial advisers to help manage your financial portfolio, an agency can help you gain the appropriate traffic sources and maximize the amount of business you make from each one.