This is a truth of the Internet: When traffic comes to your site without focused intent, it bounces.
75% of all unfocused visitors leave within three seconds.
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So, what should you do about silly traffic?
The tempting thing to do is to obsess over it. If you could just convert 10% of the bouncers, you’d be increasing your conversion rate by almost a third! (7.5% is about a third of the 25% who don’t bounce). There’s a million things you can do to focus on this, and almost none of them will show you much improvement.
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I think it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.
1. Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
2. Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent…
What this video really demonstrates is how we tend to not pay attention to secondary matters when our attention is focused on one main subject.
Online advertising has been increasingly treated as a ‘secondary matter’ that has to vie with specific content to grab users’ attention. Flashy banners, pop-ups that block content, sponsored links, such as AdSense; all try to guess what the user is searching for, all vying for space and attention with the content of your web site.
It is inevitable that, just like in the video, these ‘secondary objects’ will be overlooked by the majority of people, or that, in those cases where they do manage to grab attention, they tear the focus away from what’s truly drawing the user: content. (If you had been paying attention to the “moonwalking bear” you probably would have missed the number of passes!)
Due to this inevitability, and due to the driving need for increased publishing, publishers are forced to join the fray for mass audiences, and thus are born the black-hat SEOs (Search Engine Optimatization). The black-hat SEO is the art of directing a maximum flow and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines by applying algorithmic manipulation techniques in ranking of search results for targeted keywords (especially on Google).
But hang on. If I’m a publisher why on Earth would I associate my web site with advertising material that vies for my user’s attention? Moreover, why would I use SEO techniques that bring users who are not really interested in what I have to say to my web site? It is a vicious cycle: a drive for bigger traffic equals black-hat SEOs, which equal less influence of content over users, which in turn ignites a new drive to attract an increasingly larger user traffic to your web site.
We at boo-box believe that the publisher shouldn’t be pushed into this vicious cycle. On the contrary, you should captivate a loyal following by creating innovative content and investing in attracting those people who are truly interested in what you are publishing (and not in the most frequently typed Google keyword).
The respect you garner from your followers for the quality of your content can and should be rewarded. Your endorsement maximizes product and service recommendations and each time the user finds a good recommendation or review, a positive cycle is strengthened: good content equals greater respectability, good recommendations in turn equal better financial results, which generate a greater interest in publishing good content.
A number of publishers have been achieving success and getting better financial results using boo-box without having to fight for that extra traffic. In a recent event, Paulo Henrique from GraveHeart and Lucia Freitas from Ladybug both declared they increased their revenue by more than 100% in some affiliate programs without having changed a single thing, just by adding boo-box links to their content. We gathered statements from other users that attest to having tripled or even multiplied by 10 their gains using boo-box while maintaining (or even reducing) the number of hits on their web sites.
By using boo-box you will be taking the advertisement on your web site from a ‘secondary object’ to being an integral part of its content; after all, these are products and services you are recommending to your users!
p.s.: This is a substantial topic to cover, so be on the lookout for new posts on the effects of the loss of relevance to advertisers.
The nearest mankind has got to an oracle these days are the search engines. They know everything, they answer everything, and if they don’t, it is because the question was not properly formed. Thanks to this unheard of capability, a lot of people use search engines as their start point (pt-pt); therefore, the bulk of internet traffic comes from them. The greatest generator of traffic to blogs, are for instance, search engines.
There is a whole economy that was created around content search engines, and a lot of second-generation Brazilian web startups are dependent on them to create revenue streams. A classic example occurs when content index services from other websites create optimized pages for searches; place ads around the content; and wait for traffic to come from search engines, when the so called “keyword droppers” are going to click unwittingly at ads, generating revenues.
The problem with this business model is that if the search engines change any parameter in its relevance algorithm, the traffic to the service can be severely affected, and the startup can agonize to death. As any beginner knows, it is dangerous to build a business that relies on a company that is not yours.
If you have an online business, imagine the following hypothetical situation: the greatest search engine in the world has disappeared, with no explanation, no warning. What would happen to your business? Would it get a little shaky before getting back on track or it would head straight for the badly-executed-good-ideas pile?
In our philosophy content is king. Fugita once said that search engines are the Web’s foundation stones (pt-br), and we agree with him. Search engines are n’t going anywhere for quite while, but they can change the way content is indexed or their relevance algorithms; harming companies that have as their single business model place advertisement around content selected from the web. The only certainty we have is that search engines are going to privilege good content, therefore, once more, whoever makes good, original and relevant content wins.
My company does not rely on search engines. If the greatest search engine ceased to exist boo-box would still be in business, and furthmore, we would feel almost no impact in our number of boo-boxes opened every month. We rely on good content, and that has been around since someone decided to paint a hunting party on a cave wall.
Besides that, we are working around the clock to fix any bugs that are still loitering. If you find any of these little nuisances please let us know ;)
