If you believe ranking high on a search engine is the holy grail of marketing a web site, then you have a missing link in your strategy.
Search engines are important, but they are not the sole source of traffic to your web site.
Millions of searches go through the web every day, but people also click on a link from another site to reach you, type your web address in to a browser or have your site bookmarked.
That does not mean you should drop search engine optimisation (SEO), but you should consider a broader web strategy to include link building, blogging, lead nurturing and social media networking.
Here are some alternative ways to find traffic:
- A report by comScore showed that internet users in the US accounted for 20 billion searches from the world’s biggest search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, so the number of visitors originating from search engines is still significant. The research also revealed that 10 billion or more searches were carried out on secondary search sites, such as mapping sites like MapQuest, video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and retail sites Amazon, eBay, Craigslist.
- Revisits account for a lot of web traffic. These are people who know exactly where they want to go and zoom straight in. They either have the site bookmarked or type the site link straight in to the browser. These are repeat visitors not new visits. New visits come from search engines, which act as a net to scoop up new visitors every day.
- Online shoppers research their purchases through a search engine before buying and then go on to compare prices on sites like Amazon, Craiglist and eBay. Yes, these sites are search engines, but are orientated towards products rather than information.
- Social media can add traffic through ‘likes’ on Facebook fan pages, tweets on Twitter and positive comments on forums.
SEO optimisation is important to any web site – but don’t forget those missing secondary links and search engines that can bring in more traffic.
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