How to Get First Million, Billion, Trillion Visitors For Your Site

I see it time and again: how website owners are obsessed about generating more traffic to their sites. So much so that now one will come across case studies and articles shared by other business marketeers on how to draw a billion visitors to a website.

Such expectations however are not extraordinary. According to the current Google search statistics – a total of more than 100 billion searches are made every month. So every business owner can think about how to generate at least a fraction of that 100 billion traffic for their website.

But then, how much traffic should a website really get every month? And this is something which appears to be an inconsistent question that is hard to trace.

Image Souce: youtube.com

Tracking the Growth of a Website – a Report Based on Nielson Norman Research Observation

Websites and the internet have an exponential growth. That is why, website statistics can be better understood, when analyzed in terms of growth rate instead of a linear growth. The exponential growth of online traffic can also cause variations in the traffic flow and behavior.

Below is a diagram drawing out a regression analysis of websites and the traffic behavior online. The traffic stats have been plotted on the y axis, based on a logarithmic scale. The red curve in the diagram represents the best-fit growth curve.

Source: nngroup.com

From the diagram, calculation of the regressive analysis will give an equation of R²= 0.26, leading to a 26 percent of variation in data caused due to the underlying growth of traffic. The remaining 74 percent of the variance in website traffic occurs due to random fluctuations. However, the calculation leads to a statistical regression of p = 0.37 – which is equal to 37 percent of the data traffic from a website. Whether this calculation is significant enough to reveal whether a site is growing or not depends and some some digital scientists would simply identify it as lower than the significant level ( that is p < 0.05 or p < 001) of hypothesis. Since we are not concerned about finding some kind of scientific truth, it is best to take the analysis as a likelihood of a website growth.

The main purpose of studying a web-site’s traffic growth is to enable marketeers to plan a future business model and server capacity. And to do so, one needs to take into concern not just the possible traffic growth of a website but also its possible range of growth. According to Nielson reports, a percentage of 442 percent is likely the best-fit regression analysis of a website growth. Meaning that number of page views for this website will be somewhere around 662 page views per week – which again seems to be something of a big hurdle for a newly launched website.

Image Source: seoauv.com

Goals should therefore be realistic when you are new in the digital marketing outset. It would not do you harm to expect a billion dollar traffic generation if your business already has a reputable establishment. But then when you are new to the game and don’t know what to do, carrying a hockey stick the size that you are unable to maintain is definitely the wrong rule to start with. According to this post, a website can generate an average of 1000 visitors every month. But what if your numbers are not scaling anywhere near it? Continue reading the following tips –

8 Tips to Keep the Traffic to Your Website Flowing

#1- Start with Your Target Audience

Your target audience will give you the early indications regarding the amount of traffic that your site can generate. Whom are you targeting? Does your website have the potential to generate a large pool of traffic? This potentiality can also depend on the level of interest in what your website does. That takes you again to identifying the right target audience.

#2 – Build Your Keyword Database

Leave no stone unturned when you are out identifying the right target audience. Go through all your target search verticals in order to identify the highest search volume keywords. Evaluate your targeted keywords thoroughly so that you can discern which are the categories that you would have to focus the most. Start out with the low-hanging fruits first – the keywords that are capable of generating a minimum level of traffic within a period of three months. Watch phrases or topics that are trending for the season.

When research pays off successfully, try doing some more keyword research to find phrases and concepts that are relevant and complimentary.

#3 – Maintain Information Architecture Keeping SEO in Mind

Your website’s information architecture should be supported with the three components of SEO that form the pillar to your site’s accessibility. They are –

• Scalable Architecture
• Crawlable Architecture
• Tiered Architecture

A scalable architecture is a system that every website needs with its growth.

A crawlable architecture allows your website content to be crawlable so that search engine robots can easily index your website pages. Make sure that your content is properly rendered in the most ideal format. Check whether the codes are properly placed and how the crawler sees your page.

The tiered architecture ensures the proper built-up of your website’s URL, so that the information can flow through all the relevant places to feed upwards through the location specific directory.

#4 – Design a Content Strategy

Creating a content strategy is supposedly the hardest part of a project. However, the key to a successful content strategy is to watch, learn and follow the strategies implemented on other web development projects.

This strategy includes – asking all the tough questions that range from user likes and dislikes and their behavioral approaches to specific website elements. Do not forget to take down their feedbacks and if possible deploying the after-observation-changes within a week. Keep track of your observations like the total time spent on a website, the number of page visits made and the course of direct and indirect traffic flow. When you find the engagement metrics ticking, move to the next strategy, that is, analyzing your audience. New surprises await you here, for you will suddenly discover your target audiences being able to find you only from a handful number of categories.

#5 – Get Time Sensitive

Time is an important factor when it comes to publishing content with important news events. Capitalize on news that are coming and try promoting them in advance. Major brands launch a new product or a service in the market, they promote that for weeks or even months in advance. Poise your promotion by developing an average of 20 pieces of content and publishing the first four in the first day. Here is a breakdown table based on the equation – 4:4:2:1:3:2:4 that you can implement on the first week on the launch.

1st Day – 4 posts

2nd Day – 4 posts

3rd Day – 2 posts

4th Day – 1 post

5th Day – 3 posts

6th Day – 2 posts

7th Day – 4 posts

Once you are done with it, go back to content production to find new pieces to write about. However, this time let the behavioral demands of your target audience drive your editorial calendar.

#6 – Prepare for a Pre-Launch

The purpose of doing this is to build an advanced prospect list that will help you to pull the trigger when going live. This is how a project was able to its first 2,000 visitor base within a period of 30 days, which later grew to become 1,00,000 per month. Building a list of users before you go ahead to publish your website can guarantee you immediate traffic upon the launch of your website.

Apart from this, there are other advantages of going for a pre-launched website, which are as follows –

• Your website will already get crawled and indexed by the major search engine platforms
• You can build your audience data base
• You can even gain some invaluable feedback so that you can make changes

This will help you to steer your website successfully across the harsh tides that an entrepreneur after the final launch. This is however another set of the work when website maintenance post launch is a must.

#7 – Promote Via Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms give you the power to spread positively online. It is also a very credible source through which you can spread information faster. In a recent CNN study report, 43 percent of the news got shared via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. This is followed by 30 percent of email share, 15 percent of SMS share and 12 percent of the shares via instant messenger.

Social media promotion is a medium through which websites can reach out their target audience faster, better and that too with very little effort.

#8 – Show Some Empathy

Showing some empathy should be on the top of your list when you are trying to connect with people. It helps to develop a rapport, which is essential for triggering your first business sales. Work on your promotions effectively to make your prospects believe as if you understand their likes, dislikes and even their problems. Talk about the things that they love and hate and on topics that are popularly trending. A live chat stream embedded in your website can help a business sit down for a direct face-to-face interaction and even tap into the potential pain points.

This will help to create the first sparks of client interaction that your business needs for effective promotion.

The End Result

That’s for you to share and tell how have you benefited after reading these tips. Which one of them was the most effective of the lot? And do try making an observation of the average number of visitors coming to your site. Choose a number that you believe should be the standard and use it as a measuring scale. I call it the Confidence Level – an inspiration from the Nielson report.

Whatever may your strategy be, make sure you do not miss out the basic strategies for the advanced ones. Keep your basic foundation strong before you start looking at the more advanced options. Do not forget to split test though, for it will give you new data to look into that you can use to make your own changes from thereon.