Web Traffic: It’s not all the same

Traffic. Traffic. Traffic. When it comes to internet marketing, a common belief is that if you have lots of traffic, you’ll get lots of business. While this is true for the most part, it’s not as simple as more traffic = more money.

The fact is, you could have a massive amount of traffic and zero sales; if that traffic is not appropriate to your business offerings. For example, if you own a art supply website, and you advertise on a popular celebrity gossip blog, you could get a massive amount of traffic, however the people there aren’t looking for your kind of products.

The real traffic that you want is called ‘targeted traffic’. This mean that people coming to your website are actually looking for something related to your product or service. So for example, you’d want to advertise your art supply store on similar websites relating to art supplies, painting, etc, etc..

Targeted traffic is usually more narrow and less populated than general traffic, however the conversion results are well worth it. You could try getting 10,000 people go to your website, and have 1% of those people purchase a product (100 sales), or you could aim for 1000 people as targeted traffic and have 5% of those people purchase a product (500 sales).

The web has allowed a lot of businesses to efficiently find targeted traffic. As opposed to traditional marketing, such as TV, radio and billboards, you can decide what kind of people see your advertisements or website. Search Engines are a perfect example of a place to get targeted traffic (through specific keywords you optimize for). Finding popular blogs related to your service is another strategy of finding traffic sources. Additionally, almost all advertising networks online provide segmented targeted website that can provide you with your target visitors.

Spend some time to distinguish what kind of visitors your site best provides value to. Then make sure to stick to looking for people that fit those categories. You may not get as many people seeing your business, but you will certainly get more sales.