By Kirk Bannerman
Traffic is one thing, but
targeted traffic is everything.
You have no doubt seen
dozens of offers similar to "10,000 hits per hour driven to
your website!". This type of website traffic is completely
untargeted and will undoubtedly result in a very low
conversion ratio. It's basically "throw it up against
the wall and hope something sticks". The big incoming
numbers give the illusion of progress, but you will
achieve better results with a lower volume of highly
targeted traffic.
I speak from experience because in
the early days of developing my home business, I went for
the big numbers instead of focusing on targeting
prospects. It took me a while to appreciate the importance
of targeting (quality) instead of just going for the big
numbers, but it was a lesson well learned.
Exchanging
links has been an important part of generating
website traffic for quite some time, but the vast majority
of people looking to trade links don't understand that
just wildly swapping links with any willing webmaster is
not the way to go.
For the last few years, most
webmasters have been in a "pleasing Google" mode since
Google had such a dominant position. Now that challengers
are emerging, most notably Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves, the
search engine ranking landscape is becoming much
more complicated than just marching to the tune Google
played.
Many website owners seem to be of the opinion
that the sole purpose of exchanging links is to try to
improve the search engine ranking position of their
website. While it is true that links pointing to your
website can help your search engine ranking, the reason
for obtaining inbound links goes far deeper than
that.
In my opinion, the targeted traffic that relevant
links pointing to your site will bring can be as important
as the traffic that comes to your website from people using
search engines. This is where linking philosophy comes in.
If you limit yourself to exchanging links only with
websites that have a theme highly relevant to your own, the
traffic you receive from those links will be far more
targeted (valuable) than traffic you might receive from
links with websites that have nothing to do with your
theme.
Not only do highly relevant links bring you
more highly targeted traffic, but they also play a
"customer satisfaction" role for visitors to your website
who arrived there as a result of a search engine query. If
someone arrives at your website after performing a search
for, lets say "work at home" and then finds your website
full of links to a bunch of off topic sites (Viagra, online
casinos, hotel reservations, sports betting, etc, etc) the
impression is often not favorable and may actually
drive your visitor away before they consider whatever it is
that your website itself is offering.
Keep your eye
on the bullseye and develop highly targeted traffic by
having good content on your website and exchanging links
with highly relevant sites that also offer good content.
Remember, traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is
everything.
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About the
Author |
Kirk Bannerman operates a
successful home based business and resides in California.
For more details, visit his website at
http://business-at-home.us
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