Critical mass?

Is there a turning point when traffic rockets away?

[wolfadeus]

Over the past year, I have seen an amazingly linear increase in the traffic of a fairly new website: Approximately 100 visits a day more once every two months. It correlates with the number of pages in the index of google, which - as it is common with new websites - is very reluctant and slow to index the entire website. The theme of the website is travel, a very competitive area.

So I was wondering if there is a turning point to be expected - a certain number of people to visit a day who would trigger a cascade that would result in a rapid and significant increase in traffic.

Any experiences? Is there a "critical mass" for traffic-leaps?

[FourDegreez]

I think it would depend a lot on what kind of content you have. If it is viral content (which may be posted on social networks, for instance) there is definitely a critical mass, at which point traffic may increase significantly and rapidly.

[caribguy]

You may also see a seasonal pattern. Don't know if there is a specific "turning point" and later a "saturation point" - that would be very specific to your site.

We launched a new site, travel destination related, about 7 months ago - the most important correlation I've noticed is with our improved ranking for specific keyword combinations. Content indexing has been good from the outset (about 1,000 pages - including user-generated).

Trust from your key users and increased brand adoption may also drive towards achieving exponential growth.

[maximillianos]

We see linear growth as our content grows. That said, events can occur do boost you to another level fast.

For instance, the more traffic you have walking through your door, the more chances that someone with connections will take interest in your site. If that occurs, then you may get some big press and a huge boost.

For us, it has been a roller coaster that is steadily climbing. And the higher you get, the slower the climb because you start competing with just a few top sites at that point. Since you can't own spots 1-8 on the SERPS you may start to see a plateau until you branch out into more content areas or audiences.

[dataguy]

I'm not sure if your site has members, so this may not apply. We have found that what we (me and my employees) add to the web site leads to linear growth and what our members add leads to exponential growth. This means that our time is best spent empowering our members.

This could be something like creating banners that members can use to display on their web sites which link to our site. It could be having a referral tracking system which gives credit to members for referring more members. There are myriad possibilities.

[BillyS]

As your site popularity grows, so does the chance of gaining quality links. Quality links will then fuel future growth.

[wolfadeus]

dataguy: Does the banner-thing still work? That would be nice - my site has no members, nor forum or even a trace of web 2.0; it is a simple travel guide to a European destination, but I meant this thread to be rather general anyway.

BillyS: This can't be the whole story, otherwise, only old and established sites from the 1990ies would dominate the web and newcomers woulnd't have a chance.

[caribguy]

The "new" banner is called a widget: countdown ticker, rss feed, badge or whatever :) The idea is to involve your regular visitors and engage people who visit their blogs etc...

Same old tactic, really :)

[BillyS]

BillyS: This can't be the whole story, otherwise, only old and established sites from the 1990ies would dominate the web and newcomers woulnd't have a chance.

I do believe this is most of the story, however, your conclusion is not logical.

Press releases often attrach much attention to a website and a flurry of links result, thereby fueling even more traffic. This type of even is more the exception than the rule.

Most websites do need to build crital mass. At first you might get a lone website to link to yours because you've got some unique content they're looking for. As trust builds, your site starts to appear for more terms - and so traffic builds until you reach some form of "terminal trust."

[maximillianos]

BillyS: This can't be the whole story, otherwise, only old and established sites from the 1990ies would dominate the web and newcomers woulnd't have a chance.

Unless a "newcomer" is going viral and getting tons of links, they shouldn't be dominating. That is the point. You have to put in the time to get results... Otherwise everyone and their mom would be doing this for a living...

9/10 brick and mortar businesses fail before they make it 5 years... I would guess that percentage is higher for online businesses...

Sites established in the 1990's that are still around are doing a lot more right than just being old... =)

[wolfadeus]

This is going a bit off-topic, but regarding the "old vs young" content: I think that google creats a good mix of sites for the SERP.

For example, I have noticed that an old and established website I run (which is treated well by google) has "immediate impact" potential; new articles go up on the SERP instantly as soon as they are indexed. Then after a few days, they drop to their "permanent" position and then slowly and graudally work their way up according to the usual SE criteria.

As for the web 2.0 things: Does that help with "critical mass" aspects - the social networking buttons, I mean? What about a classic travel guide with very few returning visitors and little or no potential for community building - would you expect that to work better with such features? I never really considered that, with digg and stumble upon I didn't get any traffic at all.