It’s All About The Traffic

November 7, 2005

By Rick Schwartz
President
eRealEstate.com

You can have the greatest site on the Internet, but if you don’t have traffic you don’t have anything. And if you do have traffic and it is not the right traffic, you still don’t have anything worthwhile.

There are several questions that must be asked and, even more importantly, must be answered if you want to close more sales and make more money on the Net.

- What is the cost of acquiring a new customer?
- How many visitors must you get to close a sale?
- If you can close 1 in 1,000 customers, what are you doing with the 999 visitors that don’t make a purchase?
- More importantly, why are those 999 people leaving without becoming customers?
- Would it be a benefit to spend the same amount and close 10 in 1,000 or 100 in 1,000?
- Can your website function without traffic and customers? Can any business?
- Do you know the difference between targeted traffic and worthless traffic?
- Do you know they usually cost the same?

Just like fuel runs a car, traffic is the fuel that runs the Net. And similarly to real life there are many grades from which to choose - from crude oil to rocket fuel. Traffic also comes in various grades, but only the sophisticated traffic buyer understands the difference and buys the most potent traffic. You must be keenly aware of the subtle differences in traffic. There is no other information that is more valuable if you have a website and plan to make a profit. Not only that, bad or worthless traffic and potent, targeted traffic cost the same in most cases.

Five years ago getting traffic was truly difficult. You needed to be a search engine guru and stay up half the night so as not to lose your position or get lucky and get a good listing. Today you can bid on keywords at google.com, domainsponsor.com, fabulous.com and a dozen other paid search engines. So dollars have replaced time and talent in getting traffic.

It’s not a mystery that someone typing in “cubic zirconia” is about as qualified a customer as you can find looking for fake diamonds. Just the fact that they spelled it right makes them highly targeted and potent. In all likelihood they should be a customer when they arrive at CubicZirconia.com. No search engine, in my opinion, can offer anything that targeted.

The purest form of traffic on the Net does not come from search engines. The purest and most potent traffic comes from what the user types into the browser bar to go to specific domain names. Folks bypass search engines use “direct navigation” instead by typing a specific domain name on the browser bar and hoping to find what they are looking for.

Finding traffic is not so difficult. Finding potent and targeted traffic is a challenge. The value of dotcom domains has skyrocketed since this information became known. Imagine an endless supply of targeted traffic every day. That is what a top notch domain name produces. It’s like having a brick and mortar retail store and everyday 1,000 people were lined up at your store to make a purchase. That is exactly what a domain with “type-in traffic” represents. That “type-in” traffic is the bulls eye, the arrow splitting the apple on William Tell’s head. That traffic is available for sale by domain owners and it has become the most sought after traffic in the entire world.

The only major difference between those making money on the Net and those that aren’t is the traffic they are buying and how capable their website is of closing a sale with that traffic. Buying traffic from search engines is no guarantee of the quality you will get. - quite the opposite. They mix the best with the worst and there is no difference in price for either and it’s unclear they care to control it.

Until now that has been the standard, but the secret is getting out as the more sophisticated traffic buyer realizes what they are doing. Eventually the search engines will have to find some answers and filter out the bad traffic that is not capable of making a sale. Do they have a choice? Will buyers stand for getting garbage and paying premium prices? I don’t think so. In the meantime it is your job to make sure that worthless traffic is filtered out before you get it and pay for it by specifying what is acceptable. No other information is more valuable for the success of your website and the product or service you sell.

Source: revenuetoday.com