Dude, where is my traffic?

26 very exhausting steps to 15k/day

[wolfadeus]

A year ago I decided to launch a new website that was based on the smae idea as a previous project of mine - following the legendary 26 steps to 15k/year posted by Brett Tabke ( [webmasterworld.com...] )

I used the well-tried and proved layout and CSS from my previous website and started to follow the 26 steps with my main attention to new, useful and informative articles.

Now, from SE behaviours and user responses I am still convinced that I am on the right track. After one year of very hard work, I have more than 500 articles online and natural links are beginning to show. All indicators that mark a good site seem to point into the right direction.

Alas: My traffic is on average at 190 unique visitors a day, when I was actually hoping for something like 500 plus. I earn less than a Dollar a day with AdSense.

I blame this not on anything in particular, but a combination of fierce competition and a very hesitant google (all pages get crawled regularly, but only about 200 are in the cache on contrast to other SE).

Luckily, the making the website is fun and friendly e-mails from my readers are encouraging, so I will not give up - besides, as I said, I am still hopeful that the site will make it if I keep going.

However, I post this in order to warn newbies: The web does not mean easy money for everyone - and even if you follow established guidelines and develop a product that is the best in its niche, success is not guaranteed.

[malcolmcroucher]

What sort of marketing are you doing for the site?

How many links to do you have?

[wolfadeus]

Very little marketing: I regularly submit to directories and occasionally e-mail people with relevant websites. I post things on appropriate forums. Nothing else.

Links: With "linkdomain:", yahoo indicates 1,400 links. However, this includes internal ones - when it comes to "actual" links rather than DMOZ-MFA-copies, other MFA rubbish and internal ones, I guess I will have around 200 links.

[Green_Grass]

wolfadeus

I can vibe with you. It is not easy anymore to get free traffic. Natural linking to any site with adSense is very very difficult. The past is past, the present is mostly SERP manipulation and paid traffic. I also have a couple of sites with lot of unique content. I get appreciative emails from users on the lines of .. you site is our bible.. It is great fun.. ..thanks for sharing so much information etc etc.. BUT

Very few incoming links..
Google adwords traffic is inconsistent. The domain gets hit by a low QS every few months, then takes ages to come back to normal.
Natural tarffic from book marks and very little organic traffic.

I really don't know..

Maybe if I removed adsense for a few months and then put it on.. but that is actually not very fair to the websites which link to me....?

[wolfadeus]

What I tried to say with my original post: I do believe that the 26 steps are still mostly valid, however, things become a lot more difficult and getting 15k/day is on average a much more tedious task than what it used to be a few years ago.

[malcolmcroucher]

The problem is now days you established sites with links ect that have been around for 9-10 years . there are sites with thousands of links

here in south africa salaries are really fairly cheap on the international scale . I see we have job postings for link negotiators . People sit all day and negotiate links they get paid between 1000 dollars and 2000 dollars a month (which is a faily good salary here )

interesting stuff.

[oddsod]

dude, nice title :)

I think traffic from Google is really easy. It may not have been as easy as it was some years ago and it takes a different mindset to get Google traffic now but it's still child's play.

You may need to focus a bit less on the churning out quality content. I know, I know. My suggestion: Use some of that time saved on promotional activities. Not link exchanging and spam email requesting links! But the more savvy, 2007 versions of that game.

[malcolmcroucher]

What do you mean by a more savy version of that game?

[centime]

Can I make a suggestion, simply based on something thats immediately obvious to me,

You need a site on a topic that a sufficient number of people actually want to see.

Otherwise, perhaps the satisfaction of having a great site is all you're going to get.

It probably wouldn't matter how much marketing you do if not enough people are looking for what you're offering

[oddsod]

>>what do you mean by a more savvy version...
[webmasterworld.com...] , for example.

[HarryM]

One problem these days is the supplementary index, and it hits information sites. The fact that some of your pages are not cached may indicate this.

If a page is about something that Google recognises as a semantic term the page will probably be in the primary index and will be competing on a more-or-less level playing field. But if Google doesn't recognise the main keyword phrase it can end up in the supplementary index which makes it much more difficult for users to find.

For instance Google might recognize 'shaving soap' (say) as a semantic term, but a page about 'shaving tips' may be seen as just another page about 'shaving' and get dumped in the supplementary index.

It also hits the users. For a given search a lot of valid pages do not appear, unless the user puts the search term in quotes, and people rarely think to do that.

[wolfadeus]

centime, you raised a good point - but I certainly did research the topic before I started working on my website (this is where my expectation of 500 visitors/day after a year is derived from).

However, the problem is not the number of queries - I simply don't rank good enough in the SE yet. It is improving from month to month, but very slowly.

[ispy]

AdSense is probably not going to do it for you. There has to be something more, subscriptions, products,?

[wolfadeus]

I agree regarding alternative means to monetize the website - but first I really need at least some traffic. With 200 unique visitors a day, there is no point starting an online shop, really.

[Jane_Doe]

I think in the past you could just put up a whole bunch of pages on almost any topic, get some links and you'd get decent traffic and perhaps make some money with Adsense. But things are much more competitive these days and will continue to get more competitive as time goes on. Now it helps to spend more time picking your topics and making sure you are in an area where at your skill level, marketing budget and time availability your site can rank and hold its own in the serps.

You might want to check out your competition for your topic to see how many links they have and gauge the quality of their inbound links. In some areas you almost need thousands, if not tens of thousands, of links to really get much traffic. Also you need to have keywords that people are actually searching for and that have a decent advertising pool at competitive rates.

You might want to consider how much you make per hour of article writing and not add any more new articles until you can get the ones you have to make a decent rate of return on your time.

With 200 unique visitors a day, there is no point starting an online shop, really.

Some sites can by quite profitable on 200 visitors a day or even less but then you just need to be targeting higher paying topics.

[edited by: Jane_Doe at 9:30 pm (utc) on Nov. 11, 2007]

[King_Fisher]

I wonder if Brett needs to revisit his 26 step program?

As he wrote those in 2002 some might not be quite as valid as they were then.

Especially in light of all the changes that Google has went through in the past

couple of years. After all five years is a lifetime on the Internet.

*** Excuse this post if it has been updated in the interim...KF

[wolfadeus]

I think that the 26 steps are essentially an fundamentally as useful as they were back in 2002 - but things got more competitive and much slower.

This is something that needs to be made clear to people that are new to website development - especially those with a small budget.

[dailypress]

its funny how people tend to link to websites that dont have google adsense. Its true!
Solution: I removed google adsense on one of my websites and instead linked from it to my other websites. I realized more backlinks a few months later!