Traffic is your blood
Written by Matt B · first published 20/12/2007
For a blog to be a success beyond the satisfaction of simply writing it you need people to read it. We can use a number of words to describe people in relation to our blog and each describes the same people but within a different relationship.
The most important word we use is "Traffic" this is simply a measure of the number of people passing through. Traffic includes people that open a page from out blog in their browser but close it without reading and also those that find the blog and read ever last page. Generally the more traffic you get the better.
Traffic is disable into two groups human and nonhuman. Nonhuman traffic is things like spiders, bots and other automated scripts. They happen but for general analysis we can ignore them. When I talk of traffic in this blog I am almost always talking of the human kind.
Next comes "visitor". If a person loads a web page from the blog then they have visited the page. Generally we talk of visitors as people who are actively looking at the site.
If you appeal to your visitor you may get them to comment in which case they become a "commenter". Quite logically a commenter is a visitor that comments. Comments are a good barometer of the level of engagement you offer visitors.
A person that comments is likely to return again. They return to read the newest content. In which case they are no longer just a visitor but a "reader". Readership is also used to talk about the average number of eyeballs on articles just to confuse things. When I talk of readers I talk of those that have read content on more than one visit.
When you are using you blog to sell something these readers will slowly grow to trust you and your opinion and may become "leads" or even "customers". A lead is a person that expresses or demonstrates an interest in your product. If you can convert a lead to a sale then this is a good thing. When a person clicks an advert to visit your site they have expressed (by clicking) an interest in what you have to say or sell and are considered a "lead". Such leads can be converted to fans (readers) or customers.
A conversion ratio of 4% is considered to be quite good when dealing with advert traffic in general. So to make a large number of sales a high traffic rate is needed. This brings us to another topic.
Traffic quality. If you are sent 100 visitors by a blog all about brick laying then your traffic from that source is likely to be interesting that sort of topic. If your blog is about needlecraft then the quality of the traffic is likely to be almost zero. On the other hand if you are a site that talks about brick types then you have highly target traffic and may be able to achieve higher conversion ratios.
Whatever else you do with your blog traffic is vital. Over the coming weeks I hope to address the specific issue of bringing traffic to Thanet specific blogs. I also hope to address some related issues of search engines and such.
The most important word we use is "Traffic" this is simply a measure of the number of people passing through. Traffic includes people that open a page from out blog in their browser but close it without reading and also those that find the blog and read ever last page. Generally the more traffic you get the better.
Traffic is disable into two groups human and nonhuman. Nonhuman traffic is things like spiders, bots and other automated scripts. They happen but for general analysis we can ignore them. When I talk of traffic in this blog I am almost always talking of the human kind.
Next comes "visitor". If a person loads a web page from the blog then they have visited the page. Generally we talk of visitors as people who are actively looking at the site.
If you appeal to your visitor you may get them to comment in which case they become a "commenter". Quite logically a commenter is a visitor that comments. Comments are a good barometer of the level of engagement you offer visitors.
A person that comments is likely to return again. They return to read the newest content. In which case they are no longer just a visitor but a "reader". Readership is also used to talk about the average number of eyeballs on articles just to confuse things. When I talk of readers I talk of those that have read content on more than one visit.
When you are using you blog to sell something these readers will slowly grow to trust you and your opinion and may become "leads" or even "customers". A lead is a person that expresses or demonstrates an interest in your product. If you can convert a lead to a sale then this is a good thing. When a person clicks an advert to visit your site they have expressed (by clicking) an interest in what you have to say or sell and are considered a "lead". Such leads can be converted to fans (readers) or customers.
A conversion ratio of 4% is considered to be quite good when dealing with advert traffic in general. So to make a large number of sales a high traffic rate is needed. This brings us to another topic.
Traffic quality. If you are sent 100 visitors by a blog all about brick laying then your traffic from that source is likely to be interesting that sort of topic. If your blog is about needlecraft then the quality of the traffic is likely to be almost zero. On the other hand if you are a site that talks about brick types then you have highly target traffic and may be able to achieve higher conversion ratios.
Whatever else you do with your blog traffic is vital. Over the coming weeks I hope to address the specific issue of bringing traffic to Thanet specific blogs. I also hope to address some related issues of search engines and such.
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