Quantity or quality traffic

Often when we create links on our website, there is an over emphasis on quantity over quality. Although it has been accepted that links only bare value when it shows up on Google, the inherent value of links from other channels are often ignored.
By carefully analyzing referring links from various channels, there are some surprising results.
Looking at the chart below, clearly Google is still the number 1 driver of traffic to my website. The number of visits generated from Google is several times the total combined from other sites. However, we need to look at the big picture. Although Google is the top generator of traffic to my website, it is not the top generator of traffic that spends time browsing through the page. In order to get people to stick around and actually look at content, group memberships and discussions boards offer far better traffic quality.

The above chart shows the source of traffic delivered to my website and the traffic generated is ranked from highest to lowest.
Although Google is the winner in this category, let’s look traffic generated where people spent a greater amount of time and visits to my website.

As you can see, the top 3 drivers of traffic are from group membership sites such as compshop.com and buyitcanada.com. Forums such as discussion.apple.com has also proven been effective in this category.
These 3 sites gave me a greater average time spent and more visits.

Bounce rates are indicators of people who had visited your website buy didn’t stay on. As you can see, the 2 sites with the lowest bounce rates are from group membership and discussion sites.
Instead of looking how Google can generate more traffic for you. A better indicator of traffic quality is the amount of the time spend and the number of visits to your website.
By analyzing the data this way, you can begin to see the power of group membership and discussion board sites. The actions you make/contribute on these channels can directly influence the flow of traffic generated to your website.
This is just one example of how quality traffic can be generated to you website. By actively participating on group membership and discussion boards, you can directly influence the traffic flow. As mentioned before, this is actually quality traffic where people spent a greater amount of time and visits.

Leave comments >>