TRAFFIC is THE Ingredient For Your Success!
Without it, you’re knackered!
But what’s “good” traffic?
What can you expect when you get a new web site underway?
What amount of traffic is going to generate “results” that you can be happy with?
How long will it take to get to that level?
And how do ya get it?
And it is NOT the TOTAL number of visitors you get that determines your success! It’s the QUALITY of that visitor (targeted and interested) that counts, along with how successful you are at converting them (to join your list, or make a purchase, etc).
You have a better chance of success with only 1,000 qualified visitors in a year, than from 100,000 a month who aren’t really interested in what you are doing!
But let’s just try to talk “generic” figures for a second… A typical small business web site should aim to get in the vicinity of 30 visits a day – so that’s about 1,000 visits a month.
From brand new, it WON’T happen overnight from organic traffic… in fact it WILL take several (maybe six or more) months to get to that level.
Why so long? Well, again, back to Google…
They seem to have what some people call the “sandbox” - a place where all new sites go and play for several months to prove their worth… or mainly to prove they aren’t scam or fly-by-night sites.
Their thinking being… If you are still here in six months, we’ll put you in our index.
Some people say the sandbox effect is minimal, but from the figures from 9 sites I launched early 2006, there is an obvious surge in traffic around the six to eight month mark - a jump from around 900 visits one month to 1,500+ the next for some of these new sites.
The only reason I can see for such a surge is the possible coming out of the sandbox???
While these sites could be found in Google in the first few months, not ALL the pages were in their index - despite doing all the right things ala site-map submissions etc. It seems that only AFTER the sandbox period were the greater number of pages included.
Also, if your new site is NOT linked to from an established site, it will not simply get found - possibly ever!
As long as that established site IS being spidered regularly by Google, your link will get picked up quickly. Submitting your site through Google’s addURL page by itself will take forever 
Link to a new site from:
- Established sites (paid or free DIRECT links) or
- Sites in your OWN network of web sites.
This will ensure your new site gets indexed quickly… and through any sandbox period (if it really exists) faster.
These links you establish WILL drive some initial traffic to your new site to get it going…
If you can grow and use your own network of web sites to do this interlinking, then half the (initial) battle is one.
But while that battle may be won, the war is far from over!
As you strive to grow your traffic, remember the 80-20 rule of time management as it applies to traffic building…
“You could spend 80% of your time (or more) chasing links to your site that account for less than 20% of the qualified/targeted visits to your site!”
The standard approach is to build relevant inbound links to your site - perhaps through link exchanges with other relevant sites – note the emphasis on the word RELEVANT. Complementary links are essential!
Link building is a very slow, long-term approach.
And, when you consider the 80%+ of traffic that comes from the major search engines, it’s probably not worth the time investment to pursue too vigorously.
Sure, chase a relevant inbound link or two as they become obvious to you, but don’t waste too much time on that task.
Another approach is to take part in a variety of traffic exchanges, or surf for traffic schemes. Again, look at the QUALITY of the TARGETED traffic that comes out of such schemes, to decide how much time to spend on these.
And banner advertising?
Well, response rates on these are now extremely low. But if you have to give it a go I’d suggest a pay-per-click system, rather than buying per-thousand impressions (unless you can get a really cheap rate!).
But remember, the VAST majority of your visitors will come to your site from the major search engines (80+%)!
A sound approach then is to keep building new and relevant content on your web site.
Add extra pages. Update the old ones. Create a blog. Add your own RSS feeds. Use other people’s feeds. Add lots of content that offers even more value to your visitors!
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