There are two huge benefits of search engine traffic compared to social media traffic; it pays more and there is less work... a lot less work.
Most bloggers are pursuing social traffic (digg, stumble, sphinn etc) and article after article has been written in the pursuit of this traffic. Vast amounts of a bloggers time is spent fostering relationships and maintaining the network by stumbling and digging and so on. For a while they gain the satisfaction of gaining readers and this allows them to think that they are on their way to internet success. Those that were expecting to make money with their blog are soon disappointed as it becomes clear that this type of traffic doesn't spend money and doesn't click ads. No matter as there is plan B which entails getting even more social traffic so that the blogger makes a name for himself/herself at which point the money will come. This is how the A-listers did it so why can't I?
It is a ton of work for something that is not likely to happen. If you manage to make A list status and you haven't optimized for search traffic then this is the scenario you will face and I can use John Chow's situation as a good example of what is wrong with negating search engine traffic.
At the moment Chow claims to make $20K a month on his site. This number is a bit misleading and I will show you why in a minute. First let's look at his source of revenue - most of it comes from advertising with a dose of affiliate marketing. He generates ad revenue by selling revues, text links and button ads on his site. These ads are all bought by other internet marketers looking to cash in on his large traffic flow. The problem is he will run out of advertisers willing to fork over large sums of money as each one learns a hard truth. His traffic doesn't convert - it is now made up of internet marketers and bloggers who don't buy anything and don't click ads. Go ahead and spend $450 for a review and find out yourself. You may get a one time surge in traffic to your site but you won't make any money from it and the traffic will never return. Will you buy another revue or ad on his site after the poor results the first time? No. And his advertisers are finding out the same thing - they aren't returning due to poor conversions. His main advertisers are now affiliates and primarily affiliate sites that are looking for affiliate sign ups (the only type of site that can use his traffic - think Agloco, Dealdotcom, etc - sites that need other internet marketers to spread the word). There are no corporate ads.
When John Chow got slapped by Google he lost his long term meal ticket and he knew it. He is putting on a brave face and claiming bigger and better things to come but inside he knows he made a fatal error in trying to game Google. He used to rank on page 1 for "make money online" in Google's serp. This was important as it brought a steady stream of beginners and curiosity seekers to his blog - people who did click ads and could be convinced to part with their money for one product or another. He has lost this traffic and his advertisers who used to benefit from it have found that their money is wasted now.
While he professes that Google doesn't matter he has been buying Adwords ads in order to buy back the search traffic that he used to get for free - and he isn't very good at it either. The other day I noticed one of his ads on a search for the term "Blogger Unleashed". With Adwords you pick your keywords which meant he chose to advertise for the term even though his landing page is not optimized for "Blogger Unleashed" and this would be considered a poor quality ad for which Google will charge him a hefty per click fee. The ad is no longer there as I am sure he found out that it wasn't worth the money.
John Chow has another problem with Adwords apart from the fact that he doesn't know what he is doing - he is open to tons of false but expensive clicks from all the people who don't like him. Every time someone clicks his ads it costs him and because he is paying high rates it costs him a lot. In regards to his monthly income - he only shows his Gross sales, there is no mention of his expenses like Adwords. You can easily spend as much as you make running an Adwords campaign and from what I have seen he is spending plenty. The irony is that he has been forced to do this in order to keep his advertising revenue - he has to buy the search traffic that he used to get for free. He isn't making more money each month - he is loosing more each month.
If any of you doubt me you can always take a quick test. Buy a spot on John Chow and a spot on Carl Ocab's site. Carl is the 13 (now 14 I think) year old who has made a name for himself like John Chow. The difference is that Carl is on page 1 of the serps for the term "make money online". Try it and tell me which site provided better sales conversions. I already know but sometimes people need to learn things the hard way.
Most of you don't have enough search traffic to know the whole range of benefits. You get a smattering of visitors for innocuous terms and hardly ever for the same term twice. It's nice but not very helpful. If you, like me, derive the bulk of your traffic from Google then you see the patterns that others don't know about. This blog gets 75% of it's traffic from Google. All my other niches get about 95% of their traffic from Google.
Some numbers.
I am currently getting about 700 - 800 visitors a day to this blog from Google. I have been getting another 200 or so a day from other sites and from bookmarking. The difference between the two sources is that the first source is daily and only increases. The second source jumps up and down daily. You have to work on keeping social traffic by participating in your online networks - all of you who do this know how much time is spent doing this. It's a lot of work. Conversely I just took a couple of weeks off and did nothing. My traffic grew from 400 - 500 visits a day from Google to the current 700 or more mark. How did this happen?
It happened because my keywords all moved up another notch in the search listings. All my main keywords are now on page 1 in the serps in all the data centers with the exception of 1 term - "make money online" which is just now bouncing in and out of page 1. This is the main traffic term in the make money niche as it gets the most searches. Only 15,000 last month which really is crappy compared to high traffic niches. I have been as high as 6th spot on page 1 (see below) and back up to 11 or 12 an hour later.
This is normal as I am competing with sites that know what they are doing. There are no A-listers on page 1 (CarlOcab?) instead it is occupied by SEO specialists which was why I choose the niche in the first place. I started this blog to see how well my SEO system would work in a highly competitive niche - meaning not how many sites I would have to beat out but how many SEO experts I would have to compete with. I have dominated niches with far more sites than this niche but most niches don't have a lot of people who really know how to SEO and it's easy getting to the top. I can usually do it in three months or less - this niche has taken me a full year just to get to page 1 never mind top spot. In my other niches once I gain top ranking I don't have to do much to keep it - a few links a month and one or two fresh posts. Since hitting page 2 for the making money keywords I have noticed that I actually have to keep adding links and posting to maintain my position and in order to gain position I have to build links faster than my competition. This stands to reason as my competitors know what they are doing and they aren't going to let me squeeze in without a fight.
This post is aimed at all of you who think that social networking is all you need to succeed online. I am not telling you to stop what you are doing - there are benefits with social traffic but you will still need search traffic if you hope to make money online.
You get 800 stumblers to your site once in a while and have to come up with a clever unique article to repeat this feat. I get 800 visitors a day and they keep coming back day after day. I am not a statistician so I don't understand why this works but search traffic is stable - once you reach 100 visitors a day you keep getting them. When you reach 1000 a day you don't suddenly drop down to 500 - traffic remains more or less constant - 1050 today - 975 tomorrow. Monetizing a steady stream of traffic is much easier than waiting for bursts and then wondering what you should have done after they are gone.
I can tell you how much this blog will make tomorrow and not be far off. When you run Adsense or affiliate sales on a site that has repeatable daily traffic you will learn that your sales multiply at a fairly constant rate in relation to your traffic. This blog makes about $10 in Adsense revenue for every 100 search visitors. It did this when I only had 100 visitors and it is still doing it with 800 visitors. I will keep adding new keywords (see my payday loans posts) and keep increasing my search traffic. When I hit 2000 visitors a day I know I will be making $200 a day on Adsense. I don't have to guess - I know. The same ratios exist with affiliate sales as well.
If you are dependent on advertisers or social traffic you have no control over your income. SEO allows you to control your income - I know how to increase my serp traffic and I can make as much money with this blog as I want to put into it.
Some of you will contend that I am at the mercy of Google. You are right except that this isn't the threat that people make it out to be. Google does not just take away your page listings on a whim. If you play according to the rules you have nothing to fear. There is no such thing as Googlenoia if you make serious money from Google - there is only good SEO or bad. If anyone tells you that Google doesn't matter then you are listening to someone who has never made money online.
Some Google Tips
The Do-Follow movement - forget all the arguing for or against it. From an SEO perspective you are wasting your time collecting links from do-follow sites. The links are crap. Regardless of the site's PR they are useless because they give out too many links and the links are not relevant to your site and when they are the anchor text is usually your site name or your name - neither will gain you keyword authority (see bottom of page for keyword authority in action) for your site's niche. While you spend your time collecting a hundred of these links I collect a single Link from a relevant PR4 site with my keyword in the anchor text. My single link moves me up in the serps for a keyword that people will search for. Your 100 links do nothing. If you think your PR3 ranking has anything to do with your links I'll let you in on a secret. Every site gets a PR3 if it meets certain requirements. 100 posts will do it - 3 years of aging will do it - 1 relevant PR4 link will do it. If you have been through a PR update and don't have a PR3 then you have not met the minimum or you have been penalized in some way. Everyone with a legit site should have a PR3 - this isn't an accomplishment - it's the minimum that Google hands out for legit sites and the base from which you start climbing the serps.
This post is really directed to those of you who are just now experimenting with niche marketing. You are building your sites properly but I see most of you are still thinking social traffic. You are zooming and stumbling sites that are not built for social traffic. You should be spending your time building quality backlinks - social traffic will not increase your serp rankings and if you are using Adsense you will harm your CPC with all the poor quality traffic. You only want search traffic to your niche blogs. Period.
My next post will be a summation of all my SEO techniques explained step by step with a concrete example of how I have succeeded using them. You have read a thousand "make money online" bloggers tell you that their blog is a diary of their quest to rank on page 1 for the term "make money online". While they are trying to do this I thought you might be interested in hearing how someone who is on page 1 did it.
Till Then,
Griz
The power of PR and Keyword Authority. Do you get indexed instantly for every post?
Vic on Blogger Unleashed ( a real site with real info on making money online) explained how to get instant indexing by using obscure search terms. When you have keyword authority you can get instantly indexed for any and all terms on your site. This post was indexed the minute I published it - this is what PR and keyword authority does.
