2018 – In real estate, the saying goes that the most important thing is: Location, Location, Location. Well, with websites, it’s Traffic, Traffic, Traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of a website. Nothing is more important in terms of exposure, getting eyeballs to your site, engaging prospects and turning leads into customers.

Website traffic can be defined as the number of visitors to your website, the number of pages they view, and how long they stay on those pages. These metrics can be monitored by your internal admin back end or via external services such as Alexa or Google. It  is people who view your website and do business with you online. In the end, your website and business will not survive without steady traffic flow from the right demographic.

The most fundamental and effective way to increase targeted website traffic is by optimizing all of your content for search engines – SEO.  This allows the people who are most interested in your site, or the targeted users, to find your site. Ultimately, Search Engine Optimization is the biggest factor in generating long-term success of your online business.

You can also use social networking to your advantage by listing your site on Twitter, Facebook or other popular social networks to drive people to your website.

That said, you want quality traffic, not junk traffic like pop-ups or visitors totally unrelated to what you do. All other factors aside, organic or natural search traffic is preferable to purchased traffic.

According to Incapsula, “bots” (robots) accounted for 56 percent of all website traffic in 2014 and for smaller websites, bots can make up 80 percent of all website traffic.” There are multiple ways to quantitatively increase traffic to your website, but without this traffic being qualified it’s likely you’ll see a sharp drop in conversion rates and little effect on your bottom line. It’s therefore vital that you attract qualified traffic using an online marketing strategy that is aligned with your consumer’s intent.

High traffic means that you can do the following:

• Rank high with Google and the search engines. Your site gets noticed and another person or company may want to buy you out, partner with you, run ads on your site, or some other venture that can make you money.
• Run affiliate program ads that generate commissions for you. Use systems like Commission Junction and Share A Sale.
• Charge people for advertising
• Sell more stuff, whatever you sell – more traffic equals more leads, more buyers.
• Your authority improves.
• Lots of natural search traffic means that you don’t have to spend a lot of money buying traffic. Google AdWords and Facebook, for example, are expensive. In-demand key words and phrases may cost $5.00 per click or more. That adds up quickly.

But, traffic doesn’t guarantee purchases, which is why conversion is important.
Conversion simply means how many of your visitors you convert to paying customers (in one way or another). In the case of ads, it is usually measured through your click-through rate, or CTR, which shows a percentage of people that actually clicked on the ad, after seeing it.

So, what’s better for you? To have 100 visitors with 20% conversion rate, or have a 1000 visitors with 1% conversion rate? Simple math says that the first one will bring in 20 paying customers, and the other one 10.

One other important thing to consider is audience retention. If you build loyalty to your brand and have a lot of satisfied customers that can have a better impact on your revenue in the long run, than trying to swindle your audience with some misleading ads or cheap marketing tricks. Satisfied customers become return visitors and customers, and they might even become the promoters of your brand if they are really satisfied. 

Simply put, high, quality traffic opens up whole worlds of possibilities in terms of joint venture partners and monetization, giving you flexibility to pick and choose the best deals.

Note: To view ongoing business posts by Marketdata’s President and Research Director, John LaRosa, and to learn about our various market & industry reports, and to obtain free Press Releases, visit marketdataenterprises.com, or email: john@marketdataenterprises.com.