Why Getting More Traffic Isn’t Always The Answer

Driving more traffic to their website is a common goal for all internet marketers. They figure more visitors is a good thing. That’s not always the case, however, and too much of the wrong traffic could even hurt your results. Let’s look at some reasons why.

First, let’s look at what we mean by “right” and “wrong” traffic. The right kind of traffic is visitors who are interested in what you have to offer, and have the means to take whatever action it is you want them to – a purchase, clicking an ad, signing up for your email list, etc.

The wrong kind of traffic is visitors who aren’t interested in what you offer, or don’t have the ability to take action on it. For example, if you target an audience that is unlikely to own a credit card, such as teenagers, you’re going to have a harder time selling them something.

A lesser amount of targeted traffic is more effective than a ton of untargeted traffic. You’ll have better conversions even with less visitors, and this can help improve your results, especially in the case of Adsense sites.

If you have a lot of poor quality traffic coming to a site that displays Adsense ads, it will cause your clickthrough rate to drop since less people will click on the ads. This can have a negative effect on your CPC as well. While Google’s algorithm is obviously a closely guarded secret, it stands to reason that they are going to pay you less for lower quality clicks.

If you’re paying for traffic through PPC or some other form of paid advertising, the quality of your traffic becomes even more important. While you can get a TON of traffic by bidding on broad keywords for your market, you’re going to lose money pretty quickly by doing it.

Most of those visitors won’t convert into sales and you’ll just burn through a lot of money. This might make for some impressive traffic numbers, but it’s not going to do much for your bank account!

Again, you won’t get as much traffic when you bid on more specific terms but what you do get will be a lot more targeted. As you find keywords that perform well, you can scale those campaigns up, but start slow and ease your way into it, especially when you’re first starting out in a new market or with a new website.