Is There Such a Thing as Freeloader Site Traffic? Do you have a commercial site that has a few pages with content that attracts traffic, but doesn't generate any business? Perhaps purely informational content relevant to browsers and researchers, but not customers or clients?

It is easy to fall into the trap of considering this "freeloader" traffic. You can try to dress it up to be more sales-y, by pushing your pitch harder, and doing more call to actions to squeeze commercial value out. Or you could put up more advertising on the page to generate some revenue. Or just ignore it entirely.

But the best option might be to stop fighting it and embrace the nature and quality of the traffic you are generating. It's not easy to become an authoritative source for information, but it can be ultimately very valuable.

Try to determine what those who find your site are after, and make that landing page the authoritative answer to those questions.

The benefits of doing this include:

• Credibility. You are building yourself into a subject matter authority, both in the eyes of the general information seekers who are finding this page, and real potential customers who are looking at other parts of your site and may click on this page.
• Press & PR. You may get calls based on your subject matter expertise and authority that pay dividends down the road, and further enhance your credibility.
• Links! Authoritative helpful information is killer link bait, which can be incredibly valuable for increasing search engine rankings on your entire site.
  

All these elements have a snowball effect to them as well. More credibility brings more press, more links, more search engine respect, higher rankings, more traffic, and more business.

Example: This site generates lots of informational browser traffic on Melanie's Law, the name of a Massachusetts drunk driving law.

Labels: seo

 

posted by Dave Matson at 10:07 AM