Details: Website Traffic & SEO

The Importance of Adding Content To Driving Website Traffic

In this article I take a look at how adding fresh content to your website has a tremendous impact on where your pages rank within Google and therefore has a large impact on the traffic any one of your webpages or your total website will get. I always knew posting new content was important for Google rankings but I did not really fully understand the extent of it until I stopped blogging this past summer for a few months. In the article I show what the impact was to one of my highest volume web pages after I stopped posting new content to my website for about four and a half months.

Background

Google is critical to getting website traffic. For most websites anywhere from 50% to 90% of their website traffic comes from people that click on a result in a search engine. In addition over 90% of purchase decisions start with an internet search. Google accounts for over 88.8% of all searches in the world, 86.3% of searches in the United States and 88.0% of searches in Canada. So if you are looking to get traffic and sales from your website, it is critical to rank high in Google for relevant keywords to what you are selling. To get sales from your website your website needs to be found in Google search, since over 8 out of ten of all internet searches are done on Google. You get found by having high rankings in Google for keywords people are searching for.

The Results

The below results are for one very high traffic keyword that is searched for roughly 20,000 times a month that I have been working at ranking high in Google for over the last 3 years.

By ranking anywhere on the first page would result in a good amount of additional traffic per month. If I was able to rank in the top 3 it would easly be an extra 3,000-5,000 visitors to our website each month.

Traffic Before June 2012 = approxinmately 380 search result clicks per month

Ranking June 1st, 2012 = 6th organic search result on page #1

Ranking When Adding New Content = 6th

Traffic After September 2012 = approximately 250 search result clicks per month

Ranking September 30th, 2012 = 10th organic search result on page #1

Ranking When Not Adding New Content = 10th

Note: The one page used in the above example ranks for multiple keywords with an approximate combined 1,000 clicks from Google search per month. The above statistics are related to only one of the many keywords it ranks for. All the other keywords also saw similar declines in rankings.

As a result of not adding new content to the Profitworks website the ranking for this particular keyword fell 4 positions. Over that time I did not make any changes to the webpage or the website for that matter, other then that I stopped adding new content. That might not sound like a lot but it is a big deal given the exponential share drop in the share of clicks each position gets as you go farther down the page. 6th position gets about 5% of the clicks and 10th position only gets about 3% of all clicks. As a result the traffic from the page dropped 35%. That equates to a 35% drop in revenue. My experiment to see the impact of how important adding new content is to a website was very conclusive. Adding content is critical to rankings in Google and therefore website traffic.

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The Recommendation

1. Keyword Analysis

Since posting new content to your website can have such a dramatic effect on rankings and traffic, if you are trying to get more business from your website you need to start with making sure you are targeting the right keywords. If I had create a page that targeted the wrong keyword I never would have been getting the traffic I am in the example above. If I would have picked to target a word that only gets 100 searches a month across the globe I would have already probably ranked at the number one position and maxed out the amount of traffic I could get from the keyword, at about 36 clicks per month. You might ask why only 36 and not 100. This is because the first position usually only gets about 36% of all the clicks from searches. The rest of the clicks go to the other search results or ads. By making sure you pick the right keyword you will make sure you pick a word you can rank for (that won't have strong competition that you won't be able to rank at all) and a word that has enough traffic that it makes it worth while to send time trying to rank high for that keyword.

2. Search Engine Optimization Expert Assistance

Unless you have a lot of time to devote to learning SEO it is best to get an expert to help with the search engine optimization of your website. The rules are constantly changing and require constant effort to stay on top of what works when it comes to search engine optimization. The last thing you want to do is invest a bunch of time doing work that you think will have a great impact to your websites rankings and traffic only to find out they do nothing or potentially even penalize your website within Google. There are not many good affordable services but if you look and interview enough service providers you will eventually find one that will be able to do a better job then you could on your own.

3. Post Search Engine Optimized Content Regularly

Once you have the keyword you are going after and your search engine optimization service provider in place, then the key is to create fresh content for your website or have your search engine optimization service provider do this for you. As shown in the example above it can have a dramatic effect on your rankings and with higher rankings in Google you are bound to get more traffic. Google accounts for over 88.8% of all searches in the world, 86.3% of searches in the United States and 88.0% of searches in Canada. If you can figure out a way to rank high in Google you will drive significantly more traffic to your website.

4. Include Search Engine Optimization In Your Marketing Plan & Budget

Since who wins online often dictates who will win offline, it is critical that you include search engine optimization in your marketing plan and your budget. I would recommend at least 25% of your resources and marketing budget should go towards search engine optimization and other initiatives (like heat map tracking) that will improve the effectiveness of your website. Almost all other promotional methods for your business have a one time impact but with your website you can reap the benefits of investments you make in it until the end of time.

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