Archive for October, 2007
How a Bit More Content Means Much More Website Traffic
1 Comment Published by elias October 30th, 2007 in General.Let’s explore whether or not we can get more website traffic by adding more content to our website. I’ll try to make it scientific and later we will tackle the issue from a human perspective.
Create in your imagination a world with the following characteristics:
- The internet has only two sites: 123marketing.com and ABCmarketing.com.
- Pages indexed on search engines are two hundred pages, split in half between these two sites.
- Each page talks about on of the only two topics; marketing or advertising.
- All pages are ranked equally on search engines, meaning they have the same degree of optimization, and therefore, they are all equally likely to show up as the first search result for their respective keywords.
- 123 has 80 pages about marketing and 20 about advertising. On the other hand ABC has 20 pages about marketing and 80 pages about advertising.
The table below hopefully simplifies the whole story:
Marketing Advertising Totals:
123marketing 80 20 100
ABCmarketing 20 80 100
Totals: 100 100 200
As we assumed above since all pages are ranked and optimized equally, they are all equally likely to show up on search results and assuming the first result will always be clicked on, we can say that for the query “marketing” 123marketing.com has a 80% chance of getting that visitor, while ABCmarketing.com has a 20% chance. The same applies to the query “advertising” with the opposite results.
We can now easily see that for every 1000 queries of “marketing” 123marketing.com will be very happy that day, while ABCmarketing.com will feel a bit frustrated. This means that, with all factors held equal, the more pages you have about a certain topic or keyword the more likely you are to get traffic from search engines.
Another way of looking at is by considering that all the pages that contain the keywords you are writing about, are competing with you on that same visitor. The more pages you have about a certain topic (the bigger market share you have of that little universe) the easier it will be for you to get visitors.
That was simple math. Let’s take a human look on the issue, and take a more realistic approach where not all pages are ranked equally, and many webmasters are trying to manipulate the search results. We will also consider that an intelligent human being is searching and she knows what she needs really useful information that will help her in her work or life in general.
First of all, there are many variations of one keyword, and it can be combined with a lot of other words, to form phrases. This means that people will not only be searching for “marketing”, they will search for “internet marketing”, “advertising and marketing”, “radio marketing” etc…
If you have 100 different articles about marketing, then you will qualify to satisfying 100 different people when they are searching. Each will be satisfied differently because they will probably have a certain aspect of marketing in their minds. Remember, the longer the keyword, the more the searcher knows what they are looking for, the happier they will be to find an article just about that niche of the subject.
What about the smart SEOs that can get to the top of the search results of a hot keyword? They will sure get tons of traffic!
But, if they lead users to a site that contains 3-4 pages about a certain query, those users will finish reading those pages, still be hungry for more and never come back. They will keep searching until they find a site that really has enough content to cater for a huge number of search queries, and a huge number of people.
Why does a bit more content mean a lot more traffic?
Simply because pages have more than one keyword in them, and because people search for keywords, and combinations of them.
You will be getting traffic for people searching for the article’s main topic, and for all the related topics in that article.
One last reminder. Search engines are becoming much more efficient and accurate in directing you to the best available site. So, if you are like me, by the time you figure out how to manipulate your way to the top of search results that “algorithm” will have improved and you will be thrown away from the arena.
My simple advice: just try to be useful, write about it, and they will come.
Today, while I was trying to decide which channel to watch on TV, I came across a choice of 1273 different options. Funnily, I wanted to explore them. Discovering that I was on the middle of the list, I decided to go to the top of the list, and start with the letter “A”. It wasn’t long before I discovered how absurd this decision was since there was no logic in the arrangement of channels, and the alphabetical order had nothing to with my preferences.
Although my decision was indeed absurd, it was the only logical thing to do. There is no other classification through which the viewer can make their choice.
A famous study outlines how bad it is to give consumers a lot of choices. They are more likely to buy when given few choices, and they are more likely to be satisfied with their choice. Of course choosing from six choices is much easier, safer, and more comfortable than choosing from 24 or 30.
While this makes sense, the validity of these findings loose their power when faced with the virtual world of, not only more, but infinite choice.
This is demonstrated thoroughly in The Long Tail, which shows how infinite choice leads to more sales, and more satisfaction, if and only if coupled with a mechanism of filtering and ranking.
Amazon was taken as an example in which customers are faced with literally millions of products, but they have the power to filter according to their taste, they can read other people’s reviews, and they can see the best sellers in the tiniest of categories.
If you want to present your customers with a decision tree, make sure they are faced with a limited number of choices in each stage, and make it easier to navigate through your store, website, or company.
Keeping in mind the streets we drive in could be a good metaphor. Although there are a million different possible way to go to a certain place, you only have three or four choice to choose from on each crossroads. This is how you should plan your website navigation and make use of the infinite choice presented to your users.
