Modern Advertising Versus Traditional Advertising

If you’ve read this blog at all you know we talk about the advertising value of your content. To use one very simple example, each time I look at our traffic analytics there’s a post written June 2008 that continues to drive extraordinary traffic. Titled Pictures, Copyright and your Business Blog , it details the use of images in blog content and copyright law. Short tracking actual conversion from each and every page, what would be the cost to take it down and establish that same qualified traffic in other ways?

We advocate site platforms that network content all over the web  with an admitted bias!  We feel that done right and versus traditional advertising, blogging or publishing good content is not only a cheap method for getting broad visibility with potential prospects, but it may have an unlimited shelf life. It’s possible that one well positioned key word or phrase [from any one page] will deliver lead pipeline for a long time. Consumers search, network and/ or subscribe to get ’the product & service answers’ they want; and a company that publishes good, timely & useful content can meet that consumer intent … but what is lost when we do away with it?

What Is The Advertising Opportunity Cost Of Content?

It’s hard to say, but a good start toward answering the question might be to look at what deleting good content would do away with , including:

1. how much search engine indexing has each page generated for topics, key words & key phrases
2. how many backlinks
3. how many bookmarks
4. how many feeds to social network accounts or other sites
5. how many direct subscriptions
6. how much commenting occurred AND
7. what is the time value [of all the above] in terms of a potentially unlimited shelf life?

Start With The Traffic Data

To begin to get a feel take a look at what traffic there is and from where it came. What topics, keywords and key phrases brought someone along to you? What referral back links brought others?  What pages and posts are popular? What have remained popular for long periods of time? If shelf life is prolonged on the web or even unlimited, what is the long term value or multiple of that versus a traditional block of time? Comparatively, what would it cost to match in traditional advertising dollars? Again, all hard to say … but versus the cost of traditional advertising alternatives it’s likely pretty high.

Related Information:

Leveraging A Networked Web To Your Advantage Yet?

Do You Maximize Advertising Visibility Everywhere On The Web? … we sure try

‘The Long Tail’ as it Relates to Search Engine Visibility

1.Become a Content Networker
2.Meet Consumer Intent With Answers & Relevant Information
3.Expose Them To A Current, Authoritative & Appealing Brand
4.Measure Past To Optimize Future Content
5.Convert!

Measure Past To Optimize Future Content

Something we’ve been focused on lately, namely because it’s proven,  is “you cannot optimize what you do not measure and analyze!” In this post we’re taking a look at ‘data mining’ analysis and the success it brings. I’ll add that we all understand the power of great data, but often we accept generic information, at best. We settle for spreadsheets and default reports. Yes, it’s important to understand how much traffic has increased, but is that what’s truly actionable? No it’s not! What sites referred traffic and how can we leverage that information to further reach that audience… is actionable! This is just one basic example of data mining! This is the game changer!

It’s certainly been successful in California Olive Ranch’s [COR] 1.5 year content networking campaign. On a monthly basis COR leverages quantitative traffic data to gauge growth for a number of different data points and that’s certainly very important, but they take it a step further by  leveraging qualitative ‘data mining’ analysis as well. By ‘data mining’ they’re able to sniff out the clues that truly drive growth and conversion on a networked web.

Does an 8,000 % increase in total page views, 6,000 % increase in unique new visitors and a 2,750 % increase in subscribers sound like something is working to you?

Featuring California Olive Ranch:

On the Goal With Blogging & Social Networking: [COR] intends to maximize highly targeted traffic; to answer all EVOO consumer and chef questions; to drive direct COR subscriber conversion and to maximize COR EVOO brand recognition.

On Data Mining and Traffic Analysis: “Analysis is the only way to truly optimize what you do month over month. It tells us what topics attract visitors to our blogs, either directly or via Google and other search engines. Believe it or not, a post we did last year on rotisserie-grilled pork ribs [using our extra virgin olive oil] has been extremely popular in web searches. Again, we know that from our traffic analysis. So we made sure to showcase that recipe in a post we did about a Labor Day menu this year. In the month of September, searches surrounding the subject of rotisserie ribs labor day were a leading driver of traffic.”

On Social Network Traffic Identification & Furthering the Commitment: “We’ve seen that our new Facebook page has been an important traffic driver for our blogs. Thanks to Kinetic Knowledge we set up an automated system that posts our blogs to the California Olive Ranch Facebook page. That, in turn, attracts Facebook readers to our blogs. Because of the positive results we’ve had we always aim to integrate our social media —blogs, Facebook, eNewsletter, Twitter — as much as possible. In the end it benefits the California Olive Ranch web site and the company’s brand.”

On Modern Versus Versus Traditional Forms of Advertising AND Sales Conversion: It’s by far the lowest cost per impression of anything we do! Our blogs are outpacing PPC advertising for traffic and at fraction of the cost, approximately 30%. Blogs also seem to drive more engaging visitors than advertising and PPC. People come and read the blogs because they want to. We can also quickly see what people are reading and fashion our topics accordingly. Blogging also lets us maintain a relationship with our readers [via subscription] month over month. We found blogging attracts very loyal readers who are engaged with our brand. After 6 months, 97.3% of our subscribers remain subscribers. It eventually drives those readers to buy our product on the site or at their local grocery or retailer. Speaking of retailers, a blog we did about our new COR EVOO store locator – which lets people see if a local store sells our EVOO – was very popular and no doubt helped our store sales. We are actually getting individual retail outlets emailing us that we inadvertently omitted them and asking us to add them to the locator. Ultimately, we can reward our most loyal readers with things like free shipping or complementary product. That just makes every $1 spent on blogging remarkably cost-effective for us.”

‘Data Mining’ and Traffic Analysis Summarized

The environment for advertising has changed. Each day 21% of all US- based adult consumers research their future purchases, so ultimately you have to invest in methods of advertising that meet the consumer intent online. It’s one thing to leverage a blogsite, content, search, subscription and social  networking: COR not only dedicates resources to these very things, but they take that effort a step further and analyze the effects of their past work in order to optimize their future effort.

At 30% of the cost with giant month over month increases in traffic and subscription COR is demonstrating how to successfully operate in a modern advertising environment. Clearly!

See Kinetic Knowledge Data Mining, Strategic Analysis & Guidance Services

Related Posts:

• Want More Sales? It’s Time We Get Serious And Analyze Traffic Data!
• Sure, You Have A Blogsite & Social Network Accounts, But What is Your Plan To Succeed?

It’s only from here we can begin to dig into how to successfully navigate this new world of organic marketing & advertising. Success online is available very affordably versus traditional forms of advertising, but it never occurs just because there is a site, social network accounts and some content. While focused consistent publishing may win some of the battles, winning the war stems from the development of a content networking and conversion plan that translates to a pipeline of leads and new business.

This post means to outline steps for executing an Organic Internet Advertising Plan.

Define The Modern Organic Advertising Environment

The environment for Advertising has changed. In fact, we like to refer to it as the age of content marketing. The consumer has an unprecedented, reliable, fast and free means to research [via search, social network and subscribe] unlimited information on any product or service, at any time. When they do, they’re exhibiting intent to buy creating both an opportunity and a challenge for the organic advertiser. The opportunity stems from the intent of their activity and how that qualifies them as more ‘likely to buy’; the challenge rests in figuring out how to be present where and when they exhibit intent AND also with what is ‘the right message’. Again, folks can get information and answers, so limited soundbite advertisements are becoming invisible to them.

What Works In a Modern Organic Advertising Environment

There isn’t necessarily one way when it comes to successful organic Internet advertising, but in a modern world we believe execution with the following steps is proven:

1. Become a Content Networker
2. Meet Consumer Intent With Answers & Relevant Information
3. Expose Them To A Current, Authoritative & Appealing Brand
4. Measure Past To Optimize Future Content
5. Convert!

Breaking It Down: How Do You Approach An Organic Internet Marketing & Advertising Plan?

1. Become a Content Networker: Site’s That Generate Visibility & Content! – It begins with defining your purpose. Getting into the discipline of publishing consistent focused content follows. Just having a static website to present your brand isn’t going to cut it these days. You have to establish a website designed for publishing; you must commit resources to publishing regularly AND ALSO networking your brand everywhere possible through that published content. Content powered by highly search engine optimized, network and subscription ready site gives the organic advertiser a platform with limitless potential; however, just creating content isn’t the whole picture either. In California Olive Ranch’s case, they have resources dedicated not only to a highly focused blogging campaign, but also to networking that content amongst like-thinkers [other blogs, forums, social networks, directories, Q & As, etc.] with the goal of reaching new audiences.
2. Meet Consumer Intent With Answers & Relevant Information: Being Where They Are, When They’re Ready! – Publishing current informative content that will appeal to ‘answer & information seeking consumers’ is the start. Distribution to these same consumers is achieved via different search engine, social network and also subscription channels. Channels offering exposure to a critical mass of consumers. But that’s not all: 
   1. Be sure your site and content is marked up properly with things like tags,  categorization and informative page URL strings to support search engine spidering & indexing. See: Top 10 Reasons WordPress is Important For Your Business!
   2. Be sure your content is well formed and key phrase optimized for competitive search indexing. If you’re target market is Berkeley California, relate the subject matter to Berkeley California. It won’t do a Berkeley CA based real estate brokerage’s business any good to support someone in Brielle New Jersey searching for answers about distressed property. See: What Are The Best Practices for Business Blogging?
   3. Optimally tag and describe all video and image content. Search engines place emphasis on finding and indexing these alternative sources of content. Your competition for Google’s favor with alternative content is a great deal less than for text based content. See: Google Wants Your Pictures!
   4. Auto- network your content to wherever it may capture the interest of new traffic and leads. No need to constantly duplicate your effort when you can  automatically feed content into different social network environments, especially when it leaves you more time to participate in other productive ways. See: You Really Must Have A Blog Networking Strategy!
   5. Identify qualified groups in these social environments, participate & comment often so you can expose your informative brand to these qualified potential consumers. See: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing
   6. Register your blogsite in directories and networks, such as Facebook’s  http://www.networkedblogs.com and the Open Directory.
   7. Identify sites and blogs where participation & commenting is welcome, add back links to relevant posts of your own that will support and enhance the conversation. If so, people are likely to follow them to your brand. See: Social Networking and Blog Commenting Can Help Drive Traffic
   8. Offer visitors a simple means to digg, retweet and /or to ‘like this’ in their  facebook accounts’, etc., etc. with your content so that they can help network it for you. This has become a viral opportunity – let visitors help to network your content and brand to theircircles of influence!
   9. Let the local news media know you’re committed to consistent coverage in your trade. They can’t begin to get as granular as you in their coverage, so they might appreciate you when they need a  good resource. If so, you’ve now tapped into their audience too!
   10. Look for opportunities to get links back to yourself from other relevant sites, preferably with good page rank [note: page rank is relevant in a competitive set, but depending on the subject topic a 3 or 4 can be great.] Comments on other blogs can support your own back link counts, but getting folks to link to you in their core content is an even better scenario! See: What Are You Doing To Get More Back Links?
   11. Offer visitors the opportunity to subscribe on every page and post, if possible. Seriously, ‘one to one’ marketing amongst volunteers is arguably the most effective way to stay on radar screens for when they’re ready to buy. Subscription should be a priority! See: Get More Permission Marketing… Using Your Blog
   12. and more and more opportunities emerge every day… because the web is a network without barriers to your good content!
3. Expose Them To A Current, Authoritative & Appealing Brand: Bring Them To Where You Sell The Best! – No matter the channel [search, social, subscribe], always leverage it to bring consumers with intent back to your comprehensive brand environment where you have a current and organized history of content information. Social networks are incredible channels, but not your brand. They have valuable audiences, but the environment is not in your control and historically social network audiences are here one day, gone the next. In lieu of that possibility, your site is in your control and it’s where you should focus on brand engagement. You must deploy strategies to drive more page views, lead capture & conversion. Identify what it is they want or might like so that no matter where in this cycle they engage, you’re always giving them good reason to register. Is it a FREE offer? Is it informative news or data? Whatever it might be, give them something that will insure you keep them coming back! See: Online, Only Blogs Establish Brand!
4. Measure Past To Optimize Future Content – “We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs[ites]. The [traffic] analytics are a gold mine!“ – California Olive Ranch DOM Claude Weiller. This statement really says a lot, but to further cement Weiller’s point he invests in strategic traffic analysis & guidance services. The investment in content & networking mentioned earlier has been the catalyst, but the investment in analysis has spurred enormous traffic & subscription increases since his April 2009 start. But let’s be a little more specific: 
   1. General traffic growth data such as page views, unique visitors, repeat visitors, average page views per visit, subscribers and bounce rate. These are the obvious indicators of success and /or failure. They should be scrutinized month over month for growth or declines; however, the truly valuable answers that spur future success lie deep in the data.
   2. Examination of referral links and where referral traffic stems from for different opportunities is one. In doing so, a business may identify potential allies or even new target markets. Can you pursue them and possibly even reach their entire audience? Are there any links from influential bloggers, good directory sites or even highly useful Q & A sites? If so, will comments with back links and participation demonstrate an authoritative value to those audiences?  Those same referral links may serve as guidance for research into similar sites and audiences.
   3. By examining the most popular existing content, future content emphasis  is easily vetted. Imagine publishing lots of recipes, only to discover the audience was most enthusiastic for a post dissecting the health benefits of a recipe. California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil is an ingredient in that recipe spawning an entire effort to disclose how it can be used as a healthy and also tasty substitute for butter. A huge opportunity discovered and pursued with incredible success. If that popular subject topic you discovered interest for, but had yet to focus content on could drive more referral links, bookmarks, subscription, traffic and new business wouldn’t you want to know?
   4. What about the searches driving traffic? Imagine you are a realtor targeting searches for Hoboken NJ Real Estate, placing incredible amounts of time & effort into publishing content with that very key phrase. Later, with analysis, you discover a post you did on Hoboken with the key phrase ‘hudson tea building condos’ is performing. It drives incredible search traffic and you can correlate it to a couple sales? Would that tell you  something about targeting more specific local neighborhoods and buildings with informative content? Would it prove the value of  more qualified local  searching activity surrounding these subjects and key phrases, rather than fighting everyone online for less specific key phrases like Hoboken Real Estate. In this scenario, what target searcher is more likely to buy? Ever hear of  the long tail of search?
   5. How are each of the social networks you automatically push content too performing? What’s in the data from those channels and how can we further optimize participation in those environments going forward?
   6. … and endless other opportunities to further optimize future content creation and networking!!
5. Convert! – Business people may or may not have a feel for what their existing and prospective clients want, but an ‘Internet plan’ must look at converting traffic to leads and new business OR it’s all for naught. For Realtors, traffic is likely interested in property search, home appraisal and current market data; however, maybe these days support with ‘tax assessment’ can help to drive new business. For executive recruiters & staffing, it’s job openings, career & resume support; however, maybe these days salary comparison data for different markets is the driver. With foods there’s probably an interest in health and ingredient disclosure. Would health & ingredient information targeting mothers help to drive more subscription & loyalty? Whether the plan is sign ups for a service or an e- book, ongoing subscription or even immediate sales, the focus becomes what can we can we identify in the data that converts more visitors? See: Want More Sales? It’s Time We Get Serious And Analyze Traffic Data!

Strategic Traffic Analysis and Guidance Services

While it sounds simple enough, its traffic that we need in order to measure AND to improve our success. Without a blogsite to create & network content, to drive traffic and to support conversion this could all get very difficult and expensive. The challenge is not only to bring these elements together, but to find efficient sustainable means.

If you don’t understand how to interpret traffic analytics, or maybe just don’t have the time; if you don’t know how to translate the data into actionable items, or maybe just don’t have the time; if you don’t know how to communicate the information visitors seek visibly through content or if your site simply lacks the proper tools to convert we have designed Strategic Traffic Analysis and Guidance Services to support.

Related Posts:
“Lowest Cost Per Impression of Anything We Do… By a Huge Margin! It’s Been Somewhat Amazing.” – California Olive Ranch On Business Blogging
When Does Traffic Analysis Improve Lead Flow And New Business? – Ask California Olive Ranch!

“You can’t optimize what you don’t measure.” – Johns Wu, Former Owner of Bankaholic, which he sold to Bankrate.com for $14.9 Million Dollars!

As we continue to roll out new products & services, it’s become painfully apparent that we *must* help busy business people better understand traffic and what’s happening with their content. If one wishes to further [...and further and further] improve return on investment of their time, effort and money we’re here to support with strategic analysis.

If you don’t feel you can do it; you just don’t have the time or you’d simply rather hire some help we are here to support you! Traffic Analysis Services should be customized to a client’s needs, but at minimum we recommend keeping a close eye on:

Monthly Data Points – Month over Month Comparison

• Bounce Rate – What percentage looked at one page and left?
• Unique Visitors – Do we have new visitor growth?
• Return Visitors – Are we building visitor loyalty?
• Total Page Views – Do we have page view growth?
• Avg Page Views Per Visitor – How is our overall stickiness or brand engagement?
• Subscription – Is direct subscription improving?

General Analysis:

• Referral Websites – Where are we getting traffic from and are Twitter, Facebook, etc. driving traffic?
• Most Popular Pages – what are our most popular subjects and can we expand on them?
• Search Phrases – What do we have, do we not have and can we target similar phrases?

The interpretation aspect of traffic analysis cannot be underestimated – and we’re comitted to doing it with this service. Leveraging what the data shows to identify trends, solve problems and improve performance is crucial! After all, to be a trusted brand these days you really must share every day practical knowledge; however, if you’re not focused on what’s happening as a result of that effort you’re NOT going to to improve traffic, lead flow and new business!

“We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs. The [traffic] analytics are a gold mine!“ - California Olive Ranch DOM Claude Weiller

Related Posts:

Want More Sales? It’s Time We Get Serious And Analyze Traffic Data!
When Does Traffic Analysis Improve Lead Flow And New Business? – Ask California Olive Ranch!

Get Over How Much: Get Into Attracting High Quality Traffic!

If we want to generate business with our blogsites and social media marketing, we’ve got to find the discipline to analyze our traffic data!

California Olive Ranch DOM Claude Weiller, for whom we provide in depth traffic data analysis, has been ecstatic about the effort claiming, “We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs. The [traffic] analytics are a gold mine!“

Marketing Tactics

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing are tactics. If tactics don’t eventually translate to business then they’re a waste of time! And don’t be misled by those who’d have us believe raw traffic volume is the win. It’s not - lead conversion is!

Performance Indicators

We’ve got to identify the performance indicators that help measure the effectiveness of our tactics. Once we have those  indicators, we can actually begin to translate tactics into more and more new business. Having traffic convert is a process and it’s also about getting the right message across. With Social Network Marketing the message may be more about creating buzz & conversation to get attention because people’s intent for being there isn’t really business; whereas, with search they have very specific intent so that activity can & should be targeted as business. In either case performance indicators might help us to understand that ‘Denver Real Estate’ is a popular target phrase that gets us lots of traffic & visibility, but maybe it’s the phrase ‘Denver Neighborhoods’  that’s really converting.

Conversions

It starts with capturing anyone who’s looking for something specific and that identifies our content [somewhere, anywhere] as potentially useful. If they visit, then we need to be current, knowledgeable and appealing. Are they subscribing, signing up, filling out forms or even buying something? To make it happen, we have to understand what makes them tick. And the answers are in our traffic data!

Data Points

Some of the data you should be analyzing, or at least outsourcing, for valuable interpretation [See Our Traffic Analysis Services ] might include:

Key Data Points:

•Bounce Rate – What percentage looked at one page and left?
•Unique Visitors – Do we have new visitor growth?
•Return Visitors – Are we building visitor loyalty?
•Total Page Views – Do we have page view growth?
•Avg Page Views Per Visitor – How is our overall stickiness or brand engagement?

Interpretive Data Points:

•Most Popular Pages – what are our most popular subjects and can we expand on them?
•Referral Websites – Where are we getting traffic from and are Twitter, Facebook, etc. driving traffic?
•Search Phrases – What do we have traffic from; what do we not have traffic from and what should we target more often?

Key Performance Indicators:

• Percentage of Traffic Subscribing To Our Blogsite
• Percentage of Traffic Driven To Specific Area of Our Blogsite [e.g. Search The MLS]
• Percentage of Traffic Completing Lead Capture Forms
• Percentage of Traffic Converted to Sales

What works for one company may be different for the next, but let’s think bigger than just pure numbers. Personally, I cringe when someone says “so and so has X thousand page views per month.” There are lots of tricks that can drive traffic, but what’s happening when the visitors arrive?  Tell me about what it’s doing for their business!

The interpretation aspect of traffic analysis cannot be underestimated! It can’t be automated and it takes time, but leveraging what the numbers say to identify trends and solve problems is what leads to improved performance. Once you understand it, you can begin to improve your focus for giving visitors what they truly want. Do that and we’ll begin to convert more!

Related Posts:

1. Overcome the Google Analytics Learning Curve in 20 Minutes
2. When Does Traffic Analysis Improve Lead Flow And New Business?
3. Get Over How Much: Get Into Attracting High Quality Traffic!
   

One of things we strongly advocate to clients is that they make the

We review California Olive Ranch’s {COR} data month over month not only to identify growth, but what might actually cause more growth. The service can’t really be automated; it needs to be based upon a sincere interest in identifying trends, solving problems and making a difference. Let’s ask VP Sales & Marketing Claude Weiller how traffic analysis has worked for COR: 

Frerecks: California Olive Ranch {COR} keeps a close eye on its’ traffic analytics data. We asked Claude if he could share a little bit about why?

Weiller: The analytics are a gold mine. The information – page views, unique visitors, etc. – tells us how we’re doing each month in attracting people to our Olive Oil for Chefs and Olive Oil for Consumers Blogs}. It’s also valuable to see the sources of the traffic: Google, Yahoo, other web sites or blogs, etc. And it really pays to see what topics we’re writing about are generating visits – like baking or deep frying with extra virgin olive oil, for example. That way, we can highlight these topics in future blogs or do related posts. Finally, we can see the geographic distribution of our readership – from countries such as Australia or India down to individual cities around the globe.

Frerecks: Are any traffic data points particularly important to COR?

Weiller: Page views and unique and return visitors are the most important yardsticks. Those are the basic numbers that tell us how we’re doing when it comes to attracting and retaining readers. When those numbers are compiled on a monthly basis we can see whether the overall trends are favorable or unfavorable – and adjust our blogging practices accordingly.

Frerecks: Has COR been able to identify new opportunities or direction from the data?

Weiller: Absolutely. We’ve expanded from olive oil culinary topics into olive health topics. Baking with extra virgin olive oil instead of butter has been a huge hit for us. We’ve been collecting additional baking recipes to write about and feature, underscoring how more and more professional bakers are making the switch to EVOO from butter. The change is not only for health reasons. But professional bakers tell us they like the flavor component that EVOO adds to baked goods. We’ve also seen strong interest in sautéing and frying with EVOO, telling us people want more information on these topics.

Frerecks: Does looking at your most popular pages, referral back links and key phrase searches help to determine what you’ll write going forward? 

Weiller: Yes. I’ll give you an example. We recently featured a menu that included almonds fried in extra virgin olive oil. That dish, popular in Spain, has been a good generator of traffic to the blog. In particular, a Spanish food blog in the U.K. picked up and featured our post, driving a notable amount of traffic to our site. That tells us that Spanish tapas dishes have a real following out there. Our posts about the different olive varietals that we use in our EVOO also have been a good traffic generator. That tells us we want to hit that topic down the road. Another thing we’ve learned from keyword data is that Olio Nuovo is a very hot topic. It refers to our limited-release EVOO that we crush and bottle right after harvesting the olives. The keyword data has spurred us to mention or feature Olio Nuovo in several posts. And, as I’ve said, the data we’ve seen about baking with EVOO has inspired us to pursue that topic more aggressively.

Frerecks: In summary has tailoring your blogging, based upon the traffic analysis you’re seeing, been a productive marketing exercise for COR?

Weiller: For sure. We’ve adjusted our marketing strategies in response to the data we get from our blogs, putting a greater emphasis on health matters in addition to culinary topics. We just devoted our entire monthly electronic newsletter to baking with EVOO. We interviewed professional bakers and featured several new baking recipes. We’ll be blogging about each individual recipe in the coming days and weeks.

Claude and his team certainly exhibit how to maximize the value of their blogs with month over month analysis. It’s one thing to get out there and share every day practical knowledge as an advertising strategy – to be a trusted brand these days you really must! It’s another thing to focus on what’s actually happening as a result of that strategy so that you’re always tuning for improved traffic, lead flow and new business.

Interested in blog traffic analysis services, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We can easily tailor a program for you.

 Related Posts:
•  “Lowest Cost Per Impression of Anything We Do… By a Huge Margin! It’s Been Somewhat Amazing.” – California Olive Ranch On Business Blogging
• Get Over How Much: Get Into Attracting High Quality Traffic!
• Bounce Rate: Are Site Visitors Translating to Leads?
• Hits aren’t necessarily traffic

Recently someone complained they had only reached 23 new blogsite visitors per day. We’re not speaking of page

Traffic growth takes time & effort. Shear traffic volume may offer some conversions, but this is the web where most visitors come because they’re already looking for something you’ve written. The media and so many online marketing coaches often confuse business people with talk of quantity, rather than quality traffic. Unless you sell advertising [at a rate per thousand page views], your business doesn’t necessarily depend on huge amounts of traffic. What makes people visit and then buy? These days most transactions relate to a buyer who identifies your content somewhere, likes it enough to visit and then decides to trust you.

Looking At Traffic Metrics Strategically

Are you looking at your traffic strategically enough to understand what’s happening and how to leverage that information for improvement in subscriptions, lead capture and sales? An average of 23 new visitors a day from highly qualified searchers & subscribers may actually be good, depending on market potential & realistic sales goals.

That’s 690 qualified unique new visitors per month versus traditional advertising methods, which are often wasted on uninterested individuals. In this day and age empowered visitors mostly visit you via a 1) specific search, 2) an interesting back link from another site, a 3) bookmark they’ve kept, a 4) direct RSS or email subscription or a 5) site they visit that has picked up and/or runs your RSS feed. All things, by the way, your blogsite will develop more and more offor you… so long as you’re blogging useful content.

Traffic Data Points We Watch Month Over Month:

• Bounce rate – what percentage looked at one page and left
• Total unique new visitors – the key metric/ do we have new user growth
• Avg unique new visitors per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or have growth
• Return visitors – do our visitors come back/ are subscriptions working
• Avg return visitors per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or growing returns
• Total page views – are we improving engagement with our brand
• Avg page views per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or have growth
• Avg page views per visitor – to think about architecture & content presentation
• Referral websites – who brings traffic to us [Twitter, Facebook or other sites]?
• Most popular pages – can we expand on those popular subjects?
• Searches that bring us traffic – can we target similar phrases?

For us blogsite bounce rate was, at one time, near 80%, which meant virtually everyone that visited was leaving. In the below video Google suggests bounce is common for blogs… and they are wrong!! We looked at that carefully and I understand their assumption’s basis, but we decided to redesign to a blogsite that wasn’t completely consumed by it’s most recent posts and we successfully reduced bounce to between 7 and 9%. Simultaneously, our page views per visitor increased by a multiple of 3, which we believe is also due to a better content architecture and presentation. That engagement with our brand drives more leads! We also noticed we weren’t getting referral traffic from other sites, which was disappointing considering so many business development deals, so we began looking at auto- feeding our content to various social networks and outside blogs. While not nearly enough, we also do some commenting on other sites, etc. but we now see traffic coming from Twitter and Facebook to the tune of near 15% total traffic.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK7i084W2w]

Folks, get over how much and start thinking about the traffic metric much more strategically! And remember the crucial pipeline for future qualified leads and sales is content! Good consistent blogsites are a primary business asset because they will help you accumulate key phrase search indexing, back links, RSS subscriptions, email subscriptions, bookmarks, feed connections to other sites and more and more visibility – the currency of the web!

We’ve been thinking a lot about our sites, how to better engage our visitors and how to reduce our ‘bounce rate.’

Effective November 2008 we made changes to our blog site that brought some phenomenal results, including a dramatically decreased ‘bounce rate’ AND an impressive increase in total page views. In fact, ever since those changes we’ve seen a reduction in bounce rate of approximately 60+% and a simultaneous increase in page views of over 500%. And those results have remained consistent for 4 months running!

Wikipedia says, “A bounce occurs when a web site visitor leaves a page or a site without visiting any other pages.” Bounce rate is obviously good when the percentage is very low, bad when it is high. It can be an effective measure of traffic quality OR it can be a dose of reality for how poorly you engage visitor traffic. These metrics are available with most any website analytics software and are important as you look to improve your advertorial business blog. And remember, when people search or follow back links to you they may arrive on any page. So far as Google is concerned, all content is important to their search index… not just that on your home page!

Reducing Bounce Rate

Because our bounce rates were so high we felt, inevitably, that it was translating to lost lead opportunities. After all, can ‘one and done’ visits equate to much in the way of leads? Clearly we had to improve, so we started to look at our sites, the presentation of various content and, generally, at raising the ‘status quo.’ Admittedly it was basic analytic data that gave us the heads’ up, but with regards to decisions we made about change… we mostly fell back on logic & experience.

With our home page we pursued a less traditional blog ‘look & feel’, going part website and part dynamic blog.

OLD HOME PAGE

NEW HOME PAGE

And then we also wanted to have lead capture forms where ever possible, offering education & instruction for basic contact information.

Less Bounce Rate = More Page Views, Leads and New Business

One influential blogger recently referred to bounce rate and his blog saying “With blogs people come mostly only to read your latest post, they’ll read it and then they’ll leave.”

While we used to agree, based upon a more democratic presentation of content and information we’re feeling pretty much the opposite these days. We’ve got a lot to learn here and we’ll report back while we do, but as bounce rates decrease and visitors find reasons to go deeper into our content… we’re definitely driving more page views, qualified leads and new business.

We wanted different categories of content, our ‘Business Bloggers Bible’ ebook offer and other free educational tips positioned where they were much more visible.

In a release dated January 8th 2008 VisiStat , a leading- edge Web analytics technology provider, suggests that home buyers and sellers are ‘without a doubt’ using web- based resources to research Real Estate. Their Real Estate- based data suggests that the home buyer is increasingly leveraging these resources to the tune of overall 2007 traffic growth (compared to 2006) of 36.8% and an increase in overall repeat site visitors of 47%.

Tina Bean, Director of Sales and Marketing Visistat [a Kinetic Knowledge recommended resource] suggested, “We provide data for thousands of brokerages and agents across the country, and because of this, I have been working closely with brokers and agents for some time. It’s no surprise that the figures in this report coincide exactly with what I have been hearing from them, and that is, home buyers are using the Internet to educate themselves and find properties, often long before they engage an agent.” – Read on here

Consider questioning a site provider if they report ‘no. of hits’ because when ’hits’ include non- human bot visitation AND/ OR the multiple files [often dozens] downloaded for a single web-page view, the nos. won’t reflect an actual return on investment. In the latter case, each file gets counted as a hit when a page is downloaded making the number of hits more reflective of complex website pages than actual traffic. In the first scenario, bot [crawler or spider] traffic is typically a lot more than, if not the majority of, total visitor traffic.

It’s worth adding that Google Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. bot [crawler or spider] visitation is very important to a website or Blog owner. For those not familiar, the Google bot is software deployed to collect documents from the web in order to build a search-able index for their search engine. So not all bots are bad and without a visit from the Google bot one cannot be indexed or show up in a Google search result. However, there are millions of other bots that continuously crawl the web, many with ill- intent.

Kinetic Knowledge offers VisiStat, which not only offers rich business metric data  and solely based upon human traffic, but an undeniably layperson- friendly dashboard. In summary, only humans purchase products & services: websites and blogs are marketing solutions and folks should have true business metrics so they can actually evaluate a return on their investment of time, effort & money