Web Design and Development
Networking Is The Worst Way To Increase Traffic
When it comes to building traffic, webmasters often focus on one of two methods: networking or search engine optimization (SEO). Networking is especially attractive for new websites because it can bring swarms of traffic almost immediately, and with very little work. On the other hand, search engine optimization, which is even more effective, takes a long time to achieve.
As a result, it is tempting to ignore search engines and focus primarily on networking as a source of traffic. Unfortunately, if you plan on making money from your website, networking is in many ways not the ideal choice.
Why Networking Brings You THE WRONG Visitors
When you network with others online, you typically find people who you have a lot in common with such as other webmasters, other bloggers, or other business owners. You find people who, like yourself, are trying to improve their own businesses and promote themselves.
So while these are great connections to make if you plan on sharing strategies and advice, these are not the visitors that will buy your products, use your services, or click on your affiliate/sponsor links. Or in other words, you will get a lot of traffic, but your website may not be as profitable as it could be.
Can Networking Ever Bring You THE RIGHT Visitors?
Sure. With a lot of work, networking can bring you great visitors. After all, the type of visitor that you receive depends on the types of things that you do to lure them in.
In many cases, we blindly follow the advice that tells us to comment on as many relevant blogs as possible, or add hundreds of friends on Twitter or Digg. Then we watch our traffic increase, and repeat our seemingly successful actions. Bad Idea!
Instead, it is important to evaluate this traffic. Look at your website statistics and pay attention to what these visitors are doing once they arrive on your website.
- How long are they staying on your website?
- How many pages are they reading?
- Are they making your website more profitable?
Based on this analysis, refine your approach and focus on the particular traffic sources that are bringing you the best visitors.
Summary
It takes a considerable amount of time to build traffic via search engines, so it is understandable if you opt to use networking as a way to jumpstart your traffic and get your website noticed. But remember, while networking is great at bringing immediate traffic, it may not be successful at giving you the type of traffic that you can monetize. However, if you have a good strategy for targeting the ideal visitor, you can turn networking into an effective source of traffic.
Tags: organic search, social bookmarking, social networking, traffic generation10 Responses to “Networking Is The Worst Way To Increase Traffic”
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I think networking can bring a lot of visitors. But you will also bring a lot of your own competitors who will not even bother to make you a cent lol.
The best is to build search engine juice and these are the real visitors who are looking for information and who will also click on your ads as they are looking for such related information they came for.
HOwever its good to build good relationships among bloggers and also other people interested in the same field.
I at time use my facebook group VOI when I post something related to Mauritius. Just a way to let them know that their comments are welcome lol. On my side, as I live in a very small island with less than 2 milllion people, they are quite interactive
However I am still SEOING to get more international visits too these days.
.. I balance my post .. write some Mauritian related ones but also write posts that will be of interest to anyone in the world.
@Kurt: That sounds like a good strategy. I have noticed that you do have a lot of your local readers active on your blog, and I wondered your you ’rounded’ them up. I haven’t used FaceBook for traffic, but apparently it is very effective.
Yes, relationships with other bloggers is important. I have had the pleasure of finding some great bloggers whose blogs I often read and link to. And so that kind of promotion is also great, and can be easily achieved with good networking. (ie. When you swap links in articles and share traffic.)
I never had success with networking, except for blog commenting. Probably this is due to my non-socializing nature online. I hardly spend time on the social bookmarking sites and create a network of friends; all my time is spent on SEO.
From experience though, visitors origination from networking are good in increasing your sites bounce rate. The tickle of visitors I do receive from Facebook are one time visitors; never to return and push my sites bounce rate to above 50%. Its better to have a few hundred loyal visitors than a thousand one-time visitors.
I think you’ve raised the best issue of all. People need to anaylse their results. Google Analytics is fantastic for me, and it provides me with the smallest of details.
Very good post… I agree with your points Shirley. In facts, networking (social or otherwise) can gradually build traffic and awareness but it may not really sustain. For me, networking (for your blog/site) is something that you should use judiciously to run certain ‘campaigns’ or share relevant news.
As Forsaken mentioned, the bounce rate can increase rapidly with most social network/media traffic.
And the worst thing, today’s ‘happening’ social networks may just vanish tomorrow and hence those who are trying to build 2000 or 5000 twitter followers are in fools’ paradise and after very short term opportunities. Known search engines on the other hand has longer life-span. Hence I would concentrate more on search traffic and genuine referral traffic
@Forsaken: Yeh, I totally agree. Visitors obtained from networking are not necessarily looking for your site or the information that you are providing, so there is a high bounce rate. So in most cases, these visitors are really only good for things such as Alexa rank, which I suppose is a main motivating factor for many bloggers…
@Ryan: Indeed. I am always analyzing my statistics to determine where I can make improvement, both in terms of visitors AND content. Thanks for visiting.
@Ajith: That’s a great point. It would be extremely frustrating to focus time and energy on a social networking website that is gone tomorrow. And lately, with all of these popular websites shutting down, you really can’t predict which one will be next.
Great post- I think that if you are just starting out and doing your first or second blog that networking is good because as you network you are in turn learning a lot of good tips and pointers and also refining your writing style to turn it more SEO friendly. I don’t think that every post can be an SEO hit so having some traffic from networking helps with those just conversation posts.
It also helps to network as when others find your blog through the search engines you look more knowledgeable because you have comments and activity. Most people when coming to a blog for the first time won’t leave comments- so in just focusing on SEO you lose that portion of it.
@Jen: You’re right. I hate to admit it, but when I visit a blog and see no comments, I do initially question how go it is. And a lot of visitors are like that.
Yes, networking is great for picking up tips. No one is an expert on everything, so there is always something to learn. And I definitely learn something new everyday in my travels around the blogosphere.
Hmm.. you are right. I have never got good traffic from networking because, from day 1 i only concentrated on getting good SE traffic. and i think i have succeeded a little in that.
@Nihar: Well, SE traffic is better, and more sustainable than networking traffic anyway.