As a business, you know the importance of breaking customers into different targeted segments in order to understand their needs and address those needs with products and services. Before you get involved in any SEO activities it's useful to keep in mind what type of prospects benefit your online business presence most. When it comes to traffic, e.g. number of visitors attracted by a site, you should know that you've got two kinds of traffic:
- Targeted traffic - People are interested in information or products similar to the ones you are offering. They are the audience you wish to target. They use search engines, ezines, newsgroups or directories to look for sites that can offer them what they are looking for. Targeted traffic are those users, part of your targeted audience who arrive on your website. They may not be interested in buying right away but it's important to keep their interest alive and increase chances of conversion at a later stage.
- Untargeted traffic - Surfing is made up of clicks. People click on links and banners. They quickly scan web pages, absorb the information that is of interest to them and they move along. And then they click some more. Sometimes, they don't know exactly what they are looking for and they end up click on links that are not really of interest to them. Sometimes they are tricked by advertisers into clicking on links that they believe are of interest to them but in fact are not. These users are always near impossible to persuade that the information or products on your site interests them if they know that it's not the case. Untargeted traffic are users that end up on your site by accident or through random clicks.
Banner networks and ads are the main untargeted traffic generator and they work very well in delivering that sort of traffic. However, there is a growing tendency to focus on obtaining targeted traffic as it brings the highest returns and has lower overall costs.
Some SEOs consider traffic more important than rankings and that's a very good approach. However, don't let the numbers fool you. Your website might have thousands of visitors a day but if only a fraction of them are targeted traffic your daily sales will be minimal. Always ask your SEO to show you the overall traffic and targeted traffic as well. They will be in the position to do that as the statistical data from the website will be available to them.
When establishing partnerships with other sites for search engine optimisation purposes always make sure you have a rough idea whether the traffic you get from them can become targeted traffic for your site. Always pay attention to the difference between page views (the total number of pages visited by all users) and unique visitors (a visitor may very well access 10 pages in one go). Some advertisers profit from the lack of experience of business owners and greatly inflate numbers to make their offer more attractive.The differences are always very significant and it helps you form a better idea as regards how deep you should dig in your pocket.
This article was first published on 24 August 2004 and does not necessarily match current events or the current opinions and views of bigmouthmedia ltd.
