Search Engine Traffic - The Most Profitable
Get Searched? Make Cash
In a previous post, I wrote about how social networking sites, especially Digg don’t drive profitable traffic. From a standpoint of trying to immediately monetize your webpage, social networking sites are more or less worthless. They do have some redeeming qualities, and are good for driving up your traffic and your profit long term though.
So if social networking sites drive bad traffic, who drives good traffic? Google. Search engine traffic is some of the most profitable around. In fact, many webmasters who operate the most profitable sites report that they get 80% or more of their visitors from search engines. Less than 20% of their visitors come from direct referrals.
So why is it that searchers make more profitable visitors than other users?
Well the fact of it is that the average person using a search engine is less tech savvy than the average user reaching your site from other means. The average person who clicks on your page from Google is likely to be using internet explorer, which is one of the best internet browsers you want your visitors using. People who reach your website through a means such as Digg are likely to be using a browser such as Firefox, which allows users to download a plugin which will block ads. Clearly if they are blocking your ads, they aren’t likely to click on them.
Additionally, think of the people who get your content through a service such as Bloglines. These readers don’t see any of your ads at all. The only way to monetize those users at all are to put links in your posts to other posts of yours, and hope they click through. Needless to say, that click through rate will be low.
The bottom line - If you want to get the most profitable visitors to your site you have to rank highly in the search engines. SEO is critical to a webmaster who wants to maximize their profits. Social networking sites can be a godsend for driving long term traffic to your page, through backlinks and blog syndication readers; however they are unlikely to be a good source of immediate money for your webpage.
on May 1st, 2007 at 2:03 am
Yeah, I’m totally agree with you. The most valuable reader is less tech savvy person. They are the one who always click the ads while they actually didn’t aware they just clicked an ads :P.
I don’t know how they set their mindset. What is so bad clicking an ads? Take it as supplementary links in your articles that you’re reading.
on May 1st, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I know that judging from my own mindset that I used to not click on ads at all. Even if I would see an ad I liked I would often not click on it.
However now that I am running my own website I will click on ads for things that I think the company might be able to sell me on. I know it’s not “evil” for the website to have the ads, and if I like it… why not click?
on February 4th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Link Building focus on highly targeted keywords that exactly match what you are trying to sell. When some one will search using the same keywords by search engine..
on February 4th, 2010 at 5:41 am
I currently use a ton of different strategies to get traffic to my website. I was wonder if there is something better then PPC and basic search engine traffic..