Every webmaster wants traffic. They want it in huge amounts. But little do they realize that sudden bursts of traffic are just the thing they don’t want coming to their websites.
Confused? Let me explain.
First of all, by “ready for it,” I mean “ready to take advantage of it.”
As a blogger, your goal is to get your website and your name out there. You want to be known. You want more ad-clicks, and more sales. And part of that is getting traffic. Those are all common, realistic goals.
But the part of blogging that makes it a unique opportunity is that giving up will get you nowhere.
First of all, if you’re prone to throwing up a red flag when something goes wrong or something becomes difficult, reconsider blogging.
Seriously.
Because you’ll never learn how to use your traffic effectively by slacking off. It’s that easy.
If you’re like most other bloggers, (lazy) all of your hard work in getting that massive traffic you were always dreaming of will mean nothing. Why? Because your traffic won’t help you.
Traffic by itself is worthless. However, if you know how to use it the right way, we have a completely different story. With a proper strategy for taking advantage of your traffic, success becomes within reach. After that, all you have to do is get traffic, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.
The problem with blogging is that it’s so easy for your visitors to take advantage of YOU. A visitor will have no problem going to your blog, getting the information they need, and leaving without another thought. A typical scenario. After all, that’s the idea behind the World Wide Web. It’s a quick way to find the information you need. But what did you get from all of your hard work writing content? Nothing. Just a new visitor in your statistics.
But as I said before, that visit and that visitor are completely worthless to you.
That same visitor will probably never stumble across your site again. You didn’t even get an ad-click from that guy. So an important question rises: As a blogger, how do you properly take advantage of your readers so that they aren’t the only ones benefiting from your content?
Make Them Want More
Remember, your visitors came to your website looking for something. Probably content. So you’re going to need to make your content amazing. You may argue that this will only let your readers take advantage of you even more, but trust me: it won’t.
Making your writing amazing helps you the most in the end. More subscribers, more dedicated readers, and more people to click on your ads.
Do you think some of the top bloggers today made it to where they are by writing garbage content? They did it by writing content that’s so useful that it makes readers want more.
If a visitor likes your content enough to stay on your blog and look for more, here’s another opportunity to make something of them:
Help Them Find Exactly What They Want
Your blog can easily confuse a visitor. Because as bloggers, we have more knowledge on relevant topics, than our readers. It can be easy to turn a satisfied reader into a confused one.
To avoid this, you’re going to need to make your blog design as simple and inviting as possible for potential new visitors.
To make it easier for visitors to navigate your site, make sure you have a search form available. Luckily, if you’re using WordPress, this is already done for you. But you can also make the search form easier to find (like putting it above the fold) so that your readers won’t have to waste time looking for it.
This should go without saying, but your navigation bar should highlight pages on your website that would help a new visitor. For example, links to your blog categories are a great thing to put in your navigation bar. So is a link to a contact form, just in case your new readers have any questions or comments on your content.
Now what happens if a visitor wants to subscribe to your blog? You’ll have to make a link to that pretty visible, or your “massive traffic” will be a massive fail.
Remember this old post on Blogussion on how 2 guest posts got them 200 new subscribers? Want to know Blogussion’s secret? They were… ready (surprise surprise!) for the massive traffic that comes with a guest post.
They converted traffic into subscribers, which later have a higher chance of becoming customers. If you want to gain that many subscribers with only a couple simple guest posts, you’ll have to be ready.
Here’s something that is overlooked by most bloggers: (yes, even me, until a few days ago) their 404 page. Often, when a reader is looking for something, they end up on a 404 page. Whether they were referred from a search engine or a a backlink from another site, they didn’t find what they were looking for. There’s been a mistake. But you can fix that mistake.
Because this post isn’t about 404 pages (but this one is), I’ll stop here.
The point I’m trying to make is make your blog as easy to use as possible and as accessible as possible. If people can’t find their way around your blog, what’s the point of them even coming to your blog in the first place? They’ll just be another one of those worthless visitors.
What’s Traffic Without Conversions?
I hope it’s obvious now that the traffic to your blog isn’t everything. You can have all of the traffic in the world and still fail to get a single product sale. Instead of pure quantity of website traffic, measuring your success as a blogger is more about how you take advantage of it.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Great post Karan.
And I completely agree. It is very important to make it simple for the visitors. There should be no obstacles for the visitor to access information and navigate through the blog.
So many people also forget the rule of KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
Do not over complicate things for the visitors. Never assume that your visitor will know something (like how to subscribe). Lay it out for them in the easiest way possible.
Kindest,
Nabeel
Great point, Nabeel. Keeping your site simple makes it easier for your visitors to do what you want them to do. For example, subscribe.
Many people forget the formula of satisfying the people who visit their Blogs. Its the main problem of many people, and its the only think which makes inequipped to convert traffic in to profits..
The other thing that sprung to my mind was infrastructure.
Serious traffic needs some serious hardware to provide a smooth experience. The commerical site I worked for had 10 beefy load balanced web servers yet we’d still lose a significant number of potential customers when we got some prime time TV exposure.
For the average blogger running on a shared server I guess this is analogous to getting to the front page of Digg or similar. You finally get there and boom! Your site just goes offline.
There isn’t much you can do about it, the best option is to install a good cache plugin. We can’t afford to rent a server farm on the off chance we get a spike!
Cloud hosting is an option for those who anticipate spikes, but as said above, handling a spike is no good if your conversion rate drops off!
I also thought this post was going to be about servers and hardware and how to optimize your server for big bursts of traffic – which is quite important but not essential if you don’t experience big bursts very often.
I agree with the post, traffic is useless unless the traffic does something for you. You must utilize it.
Really great post Karan,
You are absolutely right and all your points are really effective.
“Traffic by itself is worthless. However, if you know how to use it the right way, we have a completely different story. With a proper strategy for taking advantage of your traffic, success becomes within reach.”… This is so true, it is not the traffic but the type and conversion of the traffic.
Thanks so much for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Hey Karan,
Nice Post. Those are some great points.
“Help Them Find Exactly What They Want” Great Point. Satisfying readers/clients is most important.
Thanks for sharing this great Post dude. Great work.
~Dev
You know one thing I think can put this traffic off from visiting again? those floating forms that load up on some blogs asking you to signup for newsletters and stuff.
I couldn’t agree more. Clean easy to use designs that make optimal use of their above the fold space are the hallmark of a successful blog. Your blog should be all about the reader. Not your personal likes and dislikes, but about the things your readers will find appealing.
Strategic placement of subscription options, a search box and site navigation can’t be over-emphasized.
And white space (which isn’t always white). Leave lots of space between each section on your site. Crowding everything together will only assault the readers eye and frustrate their attempts to find what they need quickly.
This exact same thing happened to me, I was away and one of the posts I had scheduled went viral and when I was able to get back to my blog 4 days later I discovered that single post had surpassed every other post on my site in just 2 days! however I didn’t know about it and wasn’t prepared for the sudden increase in traffic so I had to scramble when I was back to try and get something from all that traffic!
How true..My traffic is increased in the last months, and i did changed my real name to my “Internet” name in “my about me page” lol..so funny.
Because at first i don’t think i am ready to be known..but then i changed it again, back to my real name..sigh.this is a newbie’s feeling about being known on the Internet.
Ok, I mostly agree. I guess it depends what niche you are in. I figure, even if no conversion happens, I may talk someone off a ledge, or help them find their passion and never know about it.
Traffic is a funny thing. Like you said, we all want it. I just keep in mind however, that while thousands of daily visitors is great, I only need ONE if that person happens to be someone who can make something happen and I touch them somehow (ie a producer, publisher, etc.)
Very informative post, and thank you.
Great read. Getting traffic is tough, but the only thing worse to not getting any traffic is when something significant happens (like a guest blog post, front page of digg) and your site goes offline. You will loose many potential return visitors as they think if the site is offline the content may not be that great. I dont imagine an average internet user knowing that traffic overloads will cause a site to go offline. Great advice, be ready for it! (I learned the hard way myself).
Agree! Sometimes we are success in getting huge traffic for particular article or post but we are too happy with the statistics without taking advantage from it. And I absolutely with your opinion of visitors taking advantage.. yes, it’s how we deal with WWW!
Great article, Karan and thanks for sharing your opinion with us!
I used to think that you need lots and lots of traffic to make a sale. I now realized that’s not necessarily true. You can have 1,000 visitors and make one sale. But you can also have only 50 visitors and yet make a sale. I guess it’s the readiness of your visitors to buy and a combination of other factors and not just the amount of traffic alone.
This “make them want more” is almost every blogger’s target to accomplish, but creating great content is not such an easy task for everyone…There is where small and efficient tricks come into play.
hey Karan,
what an insight.
to be honest, i thought it was some sort of ‘secret’ post you would be giving. by your title, it somoehow tells me that “i’m not ready for exposure and you are going to show me how”. =P
but as i scrolled down and continue reading, in fact, secret isn’t just as secret as i thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong. I am not disappointed.
In fact, this is just some of the wonders of working online that proofs that simple thing does makes a difference.
providing valuable content, ease of navigation, fixing 404( i am sure most neglected this.so did =P woops ) , never giving up, these are exactly the sort of attribute any successful blogger or internet marketer should have and i must say, must not be neglected.
anyone can work online. any one can get traffic. but true to an extent of how we utilize and improve it that matters.
I have learnt alot yet again from this great post.
keep up the good work,man.
cheers
Another thing to consider, from the technical point of view, is if the web server is prepared to handle a HUGE amount of traffic, if it fits a limited badwidth account that many server services provide.
But i have tested in my blogs that garbage content gets the maximum ad clicks and sales than the posts we write for days with lot of research.But i accept writing such silly content we can’t take our blog to the next level
Some heavy information but so true. We all have the path in mind about gaining traffic but I don’t think many actually zoom out to see the larger picture. Even though it’s hard to even make a 6 month goal with the speed of which the world goes, it’s still really important to strive for a long term goal so when something such as success does bite, you can be ready to land the hook
I couldn’t agree more. Traffic is nothing if you can’t use it effectively. That’s why conversion optimization is important.
This Excellent Post helps me a lot to stand out to the top of my competitors of my niche business.
Fed up with getting low amounts of useless visitors to your website? Well i have good news. Maybe you already heard of the new underground secret product called Auto Traffic Avalanche that I myself use to generate $800 on the daily basis completely on AUTOPILOT. There’s no need to say anything more. Just watch the video on AutoTrafficAv.info before it’s gone!
I love the point made in this post about what to do with the traffic. Traffic means nothing unless visitors eventually click on something. I totally agree that getting people to come back depends on great content. Or at least good content.
There is so much spun, thrown together garbage online now that good, well thought out content stands out. Whether it’s a personal blog or a commercial/personal blog makes no difference. Good content will win out because people want good information. I’m glad I stumbled upon this site. Thanks!
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