Website Traffic is Generally the Missing Puzzle Piece
“If you build it, they will come…” is a quote from the classic movie Field of Dreams. Perhaps for baseball field this may be true but it is not necessarily true for websites and blogs.
Getting traffic to your site whether it is new or been around for a little while will take some thought and planning. It is important to have a website and blog traffic generation strategy in place as soon as your site is setup.
Website without Traffic
An analogy about a website without traffic, the one that has stuck in mind from when I first started creating online businesses is one from my teacher and mentor James Martell. It’s about building your dream home and it goes something like this: -
- start with a solid foundation, rough plumbing, and electrical
- Then, you need to build the envelope (floors, walls, doors, and windows)
- Install bathroom and kitchen fixtures and all the cabinetry
- Paint and apply all finishing touches
- Install appliances, drapes/blinds
- Purchase furniture for each room
At this point you would have a lovely home in which you could live… except there is one vital thing missing. The utilities have not been turned on! There is no power and water. Of course, you made provisions for the utilities by installing rough plumbing, electrical outlets, etc. But until the utilities are turned on from the outside of the house, no power, water or gas comes into the house. Now, how long do you think you can live in the dream house without utilities? How long will the house remain your dream house?
And so it is with websites or blogs that don’t have their utilities, i.e. traffic turned on. Having a great looking website with quality content, but without a steady flow of visitors, is very tough to keep operating for any length of time.
Mixture of Traffic is Best
As with everything on the internet, website traffic generation techniques have evolved greatly over the last few years. With the social media revolution, there are some new techniques that have come into play. There are also some tried and trusted techniques that have worked for many years and still continue to be effective today.
One thing is certain though, getting traffic to your site is just as important as ever, but not just one type of traffic. You need think about having traffic from a variety of different sources. This is because this is how websites and blogs evolve naturally over a period of time. A benefit to having traffic from multiple sources is that your website will be impacted less (hopefully) when external factors such as search engines undergo algorithmic changes. In 2011, tens of thousands of sites literally got wiped out from their strong search positions because of changes made by a major search engine company.
Website Traffic Acquisition Ideas
There are multitudes of ways of generating website and blog traffic. Below are just a few: -
- Pay attention to website design and user experience. Sites that excel in this area and ones that provide high quality content will naturally attract more traffic.
- Backlinks. One of the best ways to build traffic to your website or blog is to make it an authority site, i.e. a site which other websites link to because of the quality content provided to your visitors. Back linking is a primary tactic that can be used for this purpose and has proven very effective.
- Build your website and content in such a way that it encourages social sharing.
- Make thoughtful blog comments on other sites to get your site known and on the map.
- Run Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. This is paid advertising to get traffic to your site very quickly.
Traffic building strategies should be integral part of your website planning, right from the very beginning.
Revisit: Website Design and User Experience, Website Usage Tracking, Website/Blog Setup.
