Google is #2!

Links are important for more than PageRank

[Sasquatch]

I just got a prominent new link from a manufacturer about 24 hour ago. In that one day, that link has matched all the traffic from Google in the month of October!

To be completely honest about it, we only have 14 pages in google at the moment, and our highest count was 22 pages with the fresh pages. Our real content pages will not make the index till after this update.

I just wanted to make the point that sometimes there is too much attention to how a link affects your PageRank and not enough into the value of an authoritative link.

Oh yeah, our average visitor hits 14 pages, the visitors from the manufacturers site averaged 38 pages.

Of course being the ONLY outgoing link from a page immediately off a manufacturers home page won't exactly hurt our PR. ;)

[DrCool]

I recently received a link from a site that is sending quite a few visitors per day. It is currently accounting for about 4% of the sites traffic. I was not expecting this many visitors from this link. It is kind of buried on the bottom of thier index page and was just hoping for the PR boost but the traffic is a nice bonus. I was never a big believer in using links for traffic generation until now. A good link from the right site will give a good amount of traffic.

[Paully]

Very good point Sasquatch.

[shady]

Fantastic, you are receiving hits from a referer. Personally, I have a number of incoming links and receive about .3% of my hits from these in aggregate!
Given the difficulty finding reciprocal links for a commercial site, you have been very fortunate with this one. Good luck to you!

[2_much]

There is a significant boost in traffic, but the conversions are nowhere near as good as a link from a search engine. Of course there will be exceptions, but I have a few sites getting hundreds and hundreds of hits from other related sites, and we only get a couple of orders a month, whereas the same amount of traffic from Google or Yahoo would've been gold.

[Paully]

whereas the same amount of traffic from Google or Yahoo would've been gold.

How do you come to this conclusion?

[2_much]

By analyzing stats. I handle many many sites so sometimes I can't tell you exactly how this comes to be true (too much in my head), but for example, I have one commercial site that has never ranked in Google and was getting an avg of 1200 hits a day from links from other sites.

This month, it got on the 2nd page of Google, and Google is sending us an average of 20 hits a day, and for the first time that site is making money. I guess it's because SE traffic is so qualified and targeted.

[edited by: 2_much at 11:10 pm (utc) on Oct. 21, 2002]

[Paully]

hmmm. Weird. I see the opposite trend.

From the SE results I get a .3% CTR on my ads. From approriate directed links I get close to 5-8%

I guess it all depends on topic and website function...

[Sasquatch]

2_much,

I think that in your case you are probably correct. Not all links are created equal and not all traffic is created equal.

As I have nothing to sell (in the normal commercial sense), I cannot use the same qualifiers that you do. What I am looking at is that numbers of pages that I served to them is over twice the number served to the average person who finds our site.

I do think that the right link could deliver some incredibly well qualified traffic to a commercial site, but getting that link could be a lot harder.

If "Universal Widget" were to have a "where to buy" link for their limited edition fuzzy pink widget that pointed to "Bob's World of Widgets", wouldn't you expect that link to provide at least the same conversion rate as Google traffic?

[Powdork]

I recently discovered one of the wedding directories we traded links with is using a cgibin redirect to link to us thus robbing us of our well deserved pagerank. My immediate inclination was to go and remove the reciprolink, but then I thought about it. We get 50 visitors a month each of which could book a reception that could total well into the $1000s. So I kept the link. I even let them have their little bit of pr that comes from one of twenty or so links on the links page.

[Marcia]

Note: Side topic moved to new thread on Links and Page Rank [webmasterworld.com]

[mayor]

Well I had quite a surprise here, too. I put up a new highly themed site and got a few relevant links to it immediately, in a matter of a couple of days. Bingo! I had a sale right away. Wow, I said, a search engine came in early. Checked my logs and found out it wasn't a search engine at all. I was getting traffic from one of the links. A couple days later, Bingo, another sale. I could hardly believe it. This traffic was so targeted it was converting at ten times the rate I would expect from a search engine. Conversions from that traffic continued and now the search engines are kicking into gear also, making the site a nice performer.

So I've found there's plenty of incentive to get relevant links for your site. They can add a source of high-quality traffic for your site. They are just as easy, if not easier, to get than non-relevant links, once you've learned to walk that path.

I've got a feeling if we spend the same effort analyzing link relevancy that we spend on analyzing search engines, and designed our sites around link traffic, we could sleep a lot better when the full moon approaches.

It was the intent of the Web to work like this. People following relevant hyperlinks to find what they are looking for. Search engines would only provide a starting point.

In a twist of irony, Google's link popularity concepts just may force the Web to work the way it was intended, reducing surfers' dependency on the search engines.

[Paully]

I totally agree Mayor.

[chiyo]

We have for many years viewed search engine traffic as a means to the end to people finding your site and putting links on their pages. Yes we get useful traffic from Search engines as an ends themself and some good enquiries, but the real sales/newsletter sign-ups/intelligent enquiries come from links form synergistic or very relevant incoming links and reviews.

One day, hopefully we wont need search engine traffic, (of course exagerrating nit noy) and you can all breath a sigh of relief that chiyo will shut up on at least the Search engine threads of these boards!

Somehow unfortunately i think the day is still a long way away, on both accounts.... :)

[Brad]

There are huge parts of the hobby web that only get about 5% of their traffic from all search engines put together. They still get their traffic from direct links, webrings, top sites, forums, mailing lists and topical directories.

Most of those webmasters have no idea about SEO, and no time to learn it. Some have sites, like art sites or online comics that just don't have enough text to rank well.

In a sense they really are the content sites Google was intended to index, but they are stuck on page 400 of the SERPS. So Google is a pretty small blip on their radar.

Those direct links are providing a lot more traffic to them. (Of course they are not trying to run a business either.)

[caine]

This is one of the more special instances of the internetworking that pertains between certain industrial sectors, and for big industry, links from key manufacturers of interest, is like word of mouth, people listen to who they trust and respect.