Since mid 2008, I have made the habit of looking at the last quarter, and comparing that traffic to the previous quarter for this site. What I find is an average growth of 20%. That is especially nice as the numbers continue to get bigger. This quarter is looking like it will pull in a 30% growth rate over the previous quarter, and the main reason for this was not site improvements. It was because I started targeting other sources for traffic.
Everything Went Up!
Looking at all my sources I found everything had gone up. Direct, search, returning, and referral traffic had gains. The most noticeable was referral traffic, and I believe that was due to my decision to start testing other markets.
I spent less time making blog comments, and forum posts on my usually locations. I am already visible in many webmaster forums, and trying to squeeze more visitors out of them has become increasingly difficult. I had to tap another source, so I moved my focus from webmaster professionals to website owners. The two are not always the same. I have specifically begun targeting small business owners.
What I found, is that my advice to the new audience has had a bigger impact. They are not used to seeing the same old advice that many of us seasoned webmasters are used to seeing. They see it as new, killer, and highly valuable. I have basically used the old marketing advice of spending 20% of your time or money on new sources. To start it out I bumped that 20% up to 50% to see what is really working.
What I got out of this was a 26% increase in referral traffic. It’s usually far less. Most of my growth comes from increased search engine traffic.
So my word of advice for today. If you are trying to get more traffic for you website, and the numbers just don’t seem to be going up lately, start experimenting with new sources. You may have a pleasant surprise.
go paperless (4)
event entertainment (3)
Airport transfers... (1)
apartment cairns (1)
bauchband (1)
that’s great! congrats! I constantly seek for new opportunities to increase traffic on my websites and sometimes I get lucky too;)
hi, can you go into the specifics? surely talking to private business owners alone can not increase search traffic. if they add links on their sites, how much are we talking about?
Thanks
For one example. I wrote a 500 word article on a business network site. I was offering tips for a small business owners on how to improve their sites. Two days later it was hosted on their home page, and I receive a couple of hundred visitors from it. I still get traffic from it.
When commenting on forums make sure you fill out your signature with link to your website, and make sure that signature is a call to action with those forum readers in mind. Even just one comment on a forum a day, can generate a little traffic.
Thanks for the clarification
dam it’s really great tips, i really enjoy in this blog
I think the designing the website is the most important part of it. A good design especially as per the SEO standards can work wonder and help increase your page visibility and ranking.
wow great tips. I can use this is I’m newbie and internet marketing
great way to increase traffic in new so i don’t really know about marketing advice
Good analysis. I need to focus more on referral traffic. We’ve focused mainly on SERPs up until this point
not sure i understand what you tip is here .. lol .. look for something else than comments and forums .. can this be considered a tip? lol
i was looking more to some more inshghts .. experience stories and stuff .. mk
I started targeting other markets…not just webmaster related sites.
Useful tip, Rob, thanks.
My blog gets 3/4 of traffic from Google, which is scary. I diversify as much as possible, but Google is simply enormous.
Guy.
Congrats that is a really big jump. I need to diversify my site as well.
Thanks fore this great tips ! Looking forward for new ones…
Your tips is a little bit a basic., and very obvious that you hide something real., I don’t even believe that you can get hundred of visitors in article writing., I’m sorry .,