Thursday, April 12th, 2007...11:28 am by Leroy Brown
Why Google traffic and link traffic are the same
You can’t browse webmaster or blogging related blogs without reading about how important it is to get your traffic from different sources, and not rely entirely on Google. I can attest to this personally - I’ve had blogs that got ~75-80% of their traffic from Google. One day, the traffic faucet just turned off, and that caused some serious problems, that took a long time to recover from.
The biggest problem with Google traffic is that it’s unpredictable - you can get a ton one day, and none the next. Whenever the Big G changes their algorithm, things can start going sideways, and your traffic ( and income ) can drop like a rock. That is no good for anyone, and certainly no fun. So, the obvious answer is to focus on getting your traffic from other sources. What other sources are their besides Google?
Besides search engine traffic ( I say Google because it’s so dominant usually ), most of your traffic is likely to come from links on other sites. Whether they’re large directories, blogs, static websites, forums, or whatever. There are tons of places to get links, and I could get so sidetracked by talking about it that I’ll save that for another post. The point is that links bring you traffic - the more links, the more traffic.
Now, since you’ve worked hard to gather a lot of quality links, you’re now less dependent on Google traffic. You have a steady stream of traffic coming in via your links - not a bad situation to be in. But, that’s not all - there’s a hidden bonus in this. While you were busy building those links to get link traffic, Google was keeping tabs on you. As we all know, Google loves links - the more, the better. In addition to all that link traffic that you just worked so hard to build, Google is likely to rank your sites higher, and send you more traffic.
So in the process of building up your link traffic, you also built up your Google traffic - not a bad deal is it? So while Google traffic and link traffic aren’t technically the same ( perhaps I picked a bad title for this post ) , they absolutely go hand in hand - it’s hard to work on one without affecting the other.
3 Comments
April 17th, 2007 at 6:44 am
[...] One of my commentators, Leroy Brown, left a comment a while ago. He runs a blog called Green Llama but he also runs BloggingBlog. The latest post is entitled ‘Why Google traffic and link traffic are the same‘. [...]
April 20th, 2007 at 12:34 am
It’s really like investing into the stock market. You have to be diverse with the stocks you invest in… just as with your site, you need to be diverse with where your traffic sources are. Yahoo, MSN and AOL can deliver quite a bit of traffic too… Life really isn’t just about Google.
When you buy a brand new computer, most of the time where is the home page set to? MSN!
When you get online for the first time who do you use, AOL!
Who gets to newbies first before anyone else, Yahoo!
What does the newbie do after he/she has been online for a few months and starts to get a brain? Change home page to Google, Cancel AOL, and question why he/she ever used Yahoo.
More experienced users use Google. Newbies use MSN, AOL and then learn to crawl a little bit in Yahoo.
Depending on what you are marketing on your site… Google Adsense comes to mind… who would you rather have visit your site anyway? (Again if you care nothing but making money online) one would prefer the newbie…
The newbie is going to click Google Adsense links… and get forward to another page that has Google Adsense links and click them… and keep on and keep on and keep on… “I see my other family members who aren’t very computer literate do this all day!” I keep telling them, “Man, you should be my #1 site visitor! You would make me millions in PPC revenue” Their response, “What is PPC?” LOL!!
Ignorance is bliss… and if you are out to make money online, it is better to diversify your traffic and in many ways its better to target the search engines and places where the newbies are born into the wonderful World Wide Web.
Just my thoughts…
Garry Conn
April 20th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Garry, you pointed out a terrible habit of mine. I refer to search engine traffic as “google traffic” - even though the other search engines should never, ever be ignored.
You’re absolutely right about the newbie angle - MSN users rock if you’re an Adsense publisher. Several of my sites get mostly MSN traffic, yet generate more revenue than some of my sites with mainly Google traffic.
Yahoo, I’m still on the fence about - I don’t get much traffic from them across the board. Perhaps I need to focus on that a bit, and see what happens. I’d bet the average Yahoo user is worth more than the average Google user.
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