Traffic Matters

Traffic Matters
4-12-07
Andy Stetzinger


The one thing all webmasters have in common, regardless of personal preferences in browser type, programming environment, or operating system choice is traffic. Every webmaster wants traffic. The more the better. Bring it on, give it to me! That's the only thing one needs to be successful. Traffic. Right? Actually, no.

A few years ago, I found myself working for a small support company with a handful of products. They were doing "OK", but definitely needed some guidance on systems and sales. After trying several times to steer the CEO away from the disasters he was headed for, I finally left the company. His mentality was to put as many things as possible up in front of a customer, and hope that "something" would stick. A fellow co-worker there coined our CEO's vision as akin to "a humming bird on crack". To date, the CEO hasn't changed, and the company continues to struggle.

The same thing will happen to your website if you think all you need is just traffic. Guaranteed.

Without relevancy, the traffic hitting your website will bounce off, much like the ideas the poor CEO was trying so desperately to get people to buy into. It simply won't work.

Recently, Scott and I finished up the "KeyThing 24". At the end of the event, we released a Press Release. The next day, we started getting an increase in traffic. Soon after, I released the latest installment of KeyThing TV, and it got picked up by Digg, Redit, and a few other aggregators. The next day, we got another increase in traffic.

The most interesting thing to me was watching what people did when they got to the website. The social linking sites outproduced the amount of traffic that the press release generated by about a 5:1 ratio. However, the Press Release traffic ended up producing far more new signups for our Newletter, and more subscribers to our podcast.

The reason is simple. The Press Release was targeted to webmasters, programmers, marketers, and people with specific interests. The social linking was directed to... well, everyone.

Relevant traffic far out weights general traffic. Sure, a whole lot of people saw our website, and that's not a bad thing. However, those people may or may not ever be back. On the other hand, those people who subscribed to the podcasts and newsletter... we'll see them from here on out.

The techniques I will be sharing with you always have the end goal of an increase of relevant traffic, and relevant traffic management in mind. Both of these will lead to an increase in your "list", or as Dan Kennedy likes to call it, your "herd".

Tune into the podcast this week for the first "Reveal" of many to come. I recently saw this concept being sold for about $200.00 (US)... the only thing you have to do is listen, and then act on what you hear this week.