Internet Marketing Traffic
The phrase “internet marketing” has become a catch-all term that usually means “making money online” (although it now includes the realm of “offline marketing” as well). There are many different ways to make money online, but for the most part they tend to fall into just a few ‘business models’, each of which might have many variations.
Some of the more common business models are affiliate marketing, Adsense and other contextual advertising programs, eCommerce or direct sales, and offline marketing. How we go about it will depend both on the business model, and our particular focus, or strategy.
Affiliate marketing might be our business model, while creating ‘review sites’ would be out strategy. Similarly, Adsense might be our business model, and creating informational niche sites our strategy. Whatever we choose, we’re going to need traffic, and we’re going to need to convert that traffic into revenue. Different approaches might work better or worse with different traffic sources and tactics.
Traffic Terms
Before we launch into the ‘meat’ of these articles, I want to clarify some terms and ideas, so that we’re on the same page.
When we talk about traffic of course we’re talking about visitors. How we get these visitors, or more accurately how they get to us, divides them into three basic types: search, referral, and direct.
Search refers to search engine listings, visitors who do a search, and click on our URL in the search results. Search accounts for the biggest “pool” of available traffic. It is also sometimes referred to as ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ traffic;
Referral traffic means anyone who clicks on our link somewhere other than search results. This can be from a blog comment, an article we publish, the link in our Youtube video description, etc. Although no single referral traffic source equals the volume of search traffic, the combined potential of referral traffic is actually considerably larger; in other words, if you count the total number of clicks on search results versus the total number of clicks everywhere else, there are far more clicks ‘everywhere else’.
Direct traffic refers to those visitors who typed in our website address directly.
For the most part, we will focus on search and referral traffic.
“Targeted” or “Qualified” vs. “Untargeted” or “Unqualified” Traffic: While this may be obvious, I want to touch on the whole ‘targeted’ vs ‘untargeted’ idea. “Targeted” or “Qualified” traffic refers to visitors who have an interest in what our site or page is about. It does NOT mean they will necessarily buy or ‘convert’ on our site. While ‘qualified’ visitors are generally what we’re targeting, there are times where that isn’t always the case, and sometimes it is intentional.
There are a number of traffic sources that can send ‘unqualified’ traffic to us, and in some cases that works – if your ‘offer’ or other conversion means is extremely compelling, and/or widely applicable.
Specifically, “traffic exchanges” of various types operate under the idea that virtually any traffic is worth getting if our offer or conversion is attractive enough. While we talk mainly about getting ‘qualified’ traffic, we will touch on some of these other ‘unqualified’ traffic sources further on. After all, if we can get enough ‘unqualified’ visitors easily and ‘cheaply’ enough, it can be worth doing.
“Targets”: We will often use the term “target” or “target site”, not to be confused with “targeted traffic”. What we are referring to is the “target” that we ultimately want to send our traffic to. In many cases, this will be our own website, but not always. For instance, we may want to use some of the tactics presented here for ‘direct linking’, or sending traffic directly to an offer. In other cases, our “target” might be a Web 2.0 platform such as a free Blogger blog.
Bounce Rate: The time a visitor spends on each page of your site. This is often stated as thresholds, such as ‘under 30 seconds’, ‘over 1 minute’, etc. Knowing your Bounce Rate can help determine what and where you might need to make changes. In some business models, a high bounce rate may be preferable – for instance, if we are using Adsense, we don’t necessarily want visitors to get so caught up in our site that they don’t click on an ad. In other cases, a high Bounce Rate might indicate insufficient or inadequate content that isn’t holding a visitors attention long enough for you to promote your product or affiliate offer.
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