Topic: content

No traffic is useless traffic

September 30, 2008 by evl

Sometimes while reading blogs I find people saying that certain traffic is useless. For instance I have read many people saying entrecard and stumbleupon traffic is useless. Also people sometimes claim that traffic from digg.com is useless. I used to agree until I actually learned that no traffic is useless. Its what you make of the traffic that you have that counts.

What is useful traffic?

Any traffic

What is useless traffic?

Actually I dont know, according to me its what you make of the traffic that you get that depends if you see it as useless traffic. But I see a lot of people blogging about it. So I will try and give my reasons why I believe no traffic is useless.

Visits = rank

Many places where you can register, like blogging services etc determines your rank by how many hits your site gets, therefore every visitor your site gets pushes your rank up on that certain blogging service. A example of this is: When I was a member of Amatomu ( a south african blogger site) which uses every visit to your site to determine how you rank, I used traffic from entrecard to push me into the top 100. And when you get in the top 100 your site gets more traffic and subscribers. Because entrecard pushed up my rank I got more visitors from Amatomu and since I got more visitors from Amatomu I got more stumbles which in turn gave me more traffic and so it went till I got kicked from Amatomu for having to many blogs. Not only did then Amatomu and Entrecard help me there but that pushed up my Alexa rating which gave me more advertisers and even more traffic. So we see how we can use blog traffic and even big bounce rates to increase the value of your blog by using one thing to gain at another

Alexa

Every visitor you get that uses Alexa toolbar pushes your Alexa rating up a bit more thus resulting in a lower Alexa rank which could make you more money from advertisers since people still use Alexa to determine if they would like to advertise on your site. I have seen a lot of people say that installing the alexa widget on your site will also help your rating with Alexa but to be honest I dont know if that makes a difference, Maybe someone can share in the comments if it really does work. But I do know any traffic with Alexa toolbar is traffic worth getting.

Stumbleupon

I dont believe any stumbleupon traffic is useless, as I said its what you make of it. I actually like stumbleupon traffic more than Google traffic. Even though Google traffic brings clicks to ads. Stumbleupon people are those that already know how the web works and you dont need to beg them to subscribe or comment because if your content is good enough they will join your rss feed and subscribe. They will also comment. Many people say stumble users dont subscribe but I have gained many subscribers that liked something I have blogged about. Stumbleupon users most likely also have the Alexa toolbar or Firefox plugins installed since most of them have their own blogs as well. That is great because as I said earlier it pushes up your Alexa rating (or actually down which is how Alexa works). If they like your site they will also bookmark it on sites like Reddit or Digg since most people are loyal users on other communities apart from stumbleupon, they would want to submit great content to those sites that have not been found by other users on those certain sites. So having a Digg, Reddit or Sphinn button will also increase the chances of turning Stumbleupon traffic into even greater traffic than it already is.

Trust me, no traffic is useless. People browsing your site is not useless traffic but that is why we blog for people to read it and to have a impact on them.

Another thing about Stumbleupon is when someone reviews your site and for everyone else that reviews your site you get a link back from their profile page to your blog.

Technorati

Adding a small technorati "add me" button will help you. You might not think it would but people do click it. Even those stumblers that's on a rush to get to the next site. If they enjoyed your post they will click it.

Pay per impression

There are advertisers that pay per impression. Now that does not sound to bad does it. For every single visitor to your site you get paid a small amount. Although the pay per impression affiliate companies are not everywhere, in fact I dont have one at the moment that I use but there are lots of people using these and the do work for certain blogs.

Audio ads

If you want to kill your blog use Audio ads. But if you have a blog that gets traffic where readers are not important as passers by then by all means go for it. I dont know who would have such a blog where you dont really need the readers but have the traffic but I would advise you to use audio ads only at cases where you have no other options. The point is that you can make money from any traffic using these kind of ads.

Get them hooked

Another way to go by is to type the best content on the internet and get them hooked on your blog. This is everyone's goal but do you really do your readers justice by writing a paragraph a day? To get your readers hooked you need outstanding content which is getting harder now days because everyone has a blog and produces great content. So to get people hooked on your blog you can use "series" of posts. You just better make sure that part 1 is very good. There are probably more ways to get people hooked on your content but this is just the one I can think of now.

Comments

No matter what traffic you call useless, most of the time someone will stop and comment on your blog, then its always good to have the " notify me of future comments" . When people comment they usually want to know what they guy after them says, maybe he tells the guy how wrong his comment is. And people know that. So whenever they leave a comment and that option is there, most people take it. Displaying recent comments or top commentators will encourage people to comment even more when they quickly pass by your site. Why is this? Because the top commentator plugin and the recent comments plugin both contain their Blog or website's url. Not just that but there is something about these two plugins that I will share in a later post that will make you smile. So dont forget to subscribe.

Competition

People want to win, whether its a link or another prize, they want to win. Lets say you have entrecard on your site, why not write directly under that, that you have a competition. People known as chain droppers wont all pass by. Entrecarders love competitions as I have come to know. Attracting so called "useless" traffic with competitions will not only increase your comments and readers but it will also increase your backlinks if that is part of your competition resulting in even more traffic. So it might not be "useless" after all.

Link bait

We all know what link bait is. But having linkbait on that certain page you see people enter your site will also increase the chances of them going further into your site instead bouncing.

Design

I have stumbled through many sites and sometimes it's nothing but the brilliant design of a site that makes me look further. I mean I dont even see the content. I just see theme. I might be a sucker for site designs but if I go further into a site because of the design and layout I bet you there must be more people that will check out a site and not just bounce because of how the site looks. Having a great theme or design will increase your chances of turning that bounce rate into history.

Email and Rss subscribe

The more visible these buttons are for those who only come to your site for one article or a stumble the greater your chances are of getting some subscribers. Once again I would use myself as a example. If I stumble and I read a great article I usually join the rss feed for more great content

Where they came from

Even if there is a high bounce rate you can still see where the users came from. That is a indication that the content you have might be of interest and if you keep on in that direction you can even increase your traffic more by analyzing where users come from.
Where they are going to

Using mybloglog and similar places or tools you can see where users went from your site, what they clicked on. That is a indication of their interest. Knowing the interest of your readers gives you the opportunity to write better content.

People, mybloglog, blogcatalog

Having a bunch of faces on your site might be annoying to regular users but for someone who just bounce your site that might get their attention. As I wrote here on a short post

Tell a secret

Saying something like "10 secrets to more traffic" is always a good idea and placing it where you know the bouncers would see it would also decrease your bounce rate. I guess this is the same as link bait.

Give something away

Offering free wordpress themes around the places people usually bounce from for instance getting Entrecard chain droppers to go further into your site you can put links under your card that says something like "theme of the day" which will attract people to click on it. It works for me. Whenever I visit a site and I seem to be stumbling through or when I used to chain drop while checking out how things work on Entrecard and I see something like that I would click. Free stuff attracts people and especially free wordpress themes. I dont need themes, I cant even design wordpress themes but I still like browsing through them.

Sooo. I hope you found "No traffic is useless traffic" useful and interesting. Please subscribe or be so friendly and Digg or stumble this post.

Leave some comments and tell me if I missed something.