Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Or do all of you go after links only for rankings in the search engines?
Actually, my focus is on SEO, but I'd love to find ways to diversify traffic streams and not depend so much on nothing but Google.
I thought there might be possibilities to get real direct traffic by networking in the field or by buying underpriced links and getting *visible* links from high traffic websites/blogs, that aren't on the web only to make money.
Any experience with this?
visible links
Unless I musunderstand what you mean, "invisible" links have caused getting folks burned somewhere along the line.
Actually, my focus is on SEO, but I'd love to find ways to diversify traffic streams and not depend so much on nothing but Google.
If one of the purposes of SEO is to drive traffic to a site, then you must consider building diverse traffic streams as a part of that. And relying on nothing but Google is an inherently poor and potentially dangerous SEO strategy. Other SEs send traffic from different audiences that is sometimes actually better quality traffic, traffic you should go after. The danger comes when Google either makes a change or decides it just doesn't like the site and rankings are wiped out.
Solid links that can send direct traffic should be one of the underpinnings of your SEO efforts, on top which you can build everything else.
And relying on nothing but Google is an inherently poor and potentially dangerous SEO strategy.
Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm trying to specialize in SEO, but I don't want to be a pure SEO and rely on nothing but rankings, because it's just so volatile...instead I want to take a more balanced approach.
How many percentage of your traffic do you get from links compared to search? On a SEO forum, I was told their traffic from links was only about 10% and that it basically always came down to search.
But then again, I guess, this might be a self-fullfilling prophecy (asking SEOs).
So how much of your traffic do you guys get from your links (as opposed to search)?
On an established site where I rank in the top ten for the most competitive keywords 73% of my traffic comes from search engines and 27% comes from other sources (links from other sites, direct hits, and email hosting sites where my url was emailed to someone).
On a new site (6 months old) where I don't rank for anything but long tail keyword phrases 70% of my traffic comes from search engines and 30% comes from other sources.
My goal was...and still is...to market well enough that I build a brand and eventually get only 25% of my traffic from the search engines and 75% from other sources. Funny thing, my non search engine related marketing just keeps boosting my search engine traffic.
How did you plan to get 75% of your traffic from other marketing techniques? Viral Marketing and offline advertising,PPC,...?
Does that count recurring traffic?
So far I've focused on three things that only cost time and are working. I don't use PPC or offline marketing...and won't use them until I think I've tapped out the more cost effective marketing strategies. Instead here's what I've done so far.
1. Build useful content...in my own mind anyway.
2. Try to get authority sites to link to my content on a page that will actually generate traffic.
3. Viral marketing with useful sofware (the software is not web based and doesn't contain a hyperlink but puts my URL in the user's face).
So far I'm encouraged by both strategies. I get an ititial boost in traffic from the referral links and direct hits. Then about a month or so later I bump up in the serps and get another jump in traffic.
I was just wondering whether the 75% of traffic from other sources were meant to be new visitors. Because that way, you would have had to get lots and lots of traffic from other sources than the SEs :-)
I think, I got it now, though. I think creating software/tools if you can do that is a great way of attracting links, too. Plus you dont necessarily have to be a great coder, if you have a few creative ideas for useful tools.
"Humans first, Search second."
That my motto. (OK - I just made that up.) Another way to put it is: "Some people develop links for SEO. Some of that effort may not be wasted. Develop links for humans and some of that effort may also have a secondary benefit"
In the extreme case:
A site that ranks well for certain phrases, but certain major directories rank even better.
But, that's okay, because they all link to the site.
So, they went out and got the serp ranking and then funnel it in :)
Less than 1 percent of traffic comes from serps.
Of that 1 percent, google has 95 percent of referrals.
WHICH DO NOT CONVERT AT ALL. NOT A SINGLE CONVERSION IN 3 MONTHS.
Yahoo only has 2 percent of that 1 percent, and converts at 1 in 3.
So, Google serp position, in this case, matters not at all. Any effort put into ranking on Google is a waste of time compared to link building.
If the search referrals don't convert, adwords is not looking at all attractive except for site targetted ads. This of course, is the same as buying a link on the site to begin with.
What was that prohibition on buying links again? Has anyone seen the irony of Google advising against buying links when they are the biggest link (shills) of all time? (it was much more interesting when shills was "seller of eve's services")
Hubs that've been there for ages.
Pre-Google places.
At first I was surprised to see, that even the busyest of such pages send some highly valuable traffic.
It's not that the amount can compare to the flow from SEs, and bookmarking/community sites/Wikipedia ( yes, Wikipedia links, if relevant, are actually good for traffic ).
But they catch the attention of the most savvy researchers, hardcore old timer net users, whose opinion is just about 10,000 times more important than of the average SE user.
Just a bunch of well positioned links will get you a few visitors for who you'll be thankful to have served your content to.
More opinions will form about your site, and more links will be posted. And even if those links would not count into SE parameters, they'll invite people from small communities every now and then.
Thousands of such links will mean tens of thousands of people.
And tens of thousands of people will mean... thousands of new links.
These links will tell more about you to search engines too.
If your site is worth visiting at all.
...
But if we're in for faking mottos...
"Where would you want your links to be if tomorrow all search engines stopped working?"
Kind of.
