>The Internet’s Top Sources of Referral Traffic are Social Networks

>Social Networking is about MORE than just connecting with others online.  As Internet Builder Consulting has said for years (NAHB IBS 2006, 2007 and Bob Schultz Training 2007, 2008 & 2009) an important key to online marketing is link weight and referral traffic.  A recent study we found posted on ReadWriteWeb.com showed the importance of Social Media Marketing with Facebook listed as the # 1 source of referral traffic online.

Recently the wife of a client who is now in charge of his marketing demanded all of the Social Networking accounts and Social Media Marketing be turned off and because she believed it was “worthless” even after the value of referral links was explained.  Just because someone does not understand or appreciate something does not mean it is worthless – read the article below and decide for yourself on Social Media Marketing!

Top Referrers of Traffic

For the purposes of this analysis, referrers have been segmented into different categories in order to more easily compare traffic. For example, there is no use in comparing Google to Flickr since they are not categorically related. If we’re making a determination which search engine to focus on, Flickr would not be in the mix – and if we’re looking for a photo hosting site, Google would not be in the mix. The four main referral categories that drive virtually all traffic are: Search Engines, Media, Social Bookmarks and Social Networks.

Social Network Referrers

Perhaps the one result that was the most surprising is the Social Networking category. Although Twitter seem to be the talk of the town, Facebook is the 900 pound gorilla when it comes to actually driving website traffic, sending nearly 7 in 10 visitors from the Social Network category. LinkedIn comes in a distant yet still respectable third place.

There is one giant unknown in this area, however. Many Twitter users access the service through applications instead of via Twitter’s website. These applications do not report http-referrer data to Web servers, which makes it impossible to tell where the clicks originate. The same can be said about traffic driven by mobile apps (including Facebook).

All of the other players in the Social Networking category cumulatively amount to less than 3% of inbound website traffic.

Social Bookmark Referrers

Social bookmarking sites are also extremely sought after sources of traffic, with the highest profile member of the group being Digg. Interestingly, this is another case where a smaller source seems to receive a disproportionate amount of attention, since StumbleUpon drives nearly double the traffic to websites.

Another surprising standout in the Social Bookmark category is YCombinator’s Hacker News site, which drives 12% of the traffic in this category. Reddit and Del.icio.us drive 5% and 2%, respectively. Interestingly, SlashDot (the grandaddy of them all) drives close to 0% of traffic to the sites Woopra measures – although webmasters still call the rush of traffic that can take down a website a “Slashdotting”.

Search Referrers

In the Search Engine space, perhaps the only surprise is the absolute dominance of Google when it comes to actually driving traffic to websites. For example, Experian’s Hitwise published a press release setting Google’s share of the search market at 72% in May 2010. However, Woopra is seeing 92% of search visitors originating from Google.

This begs the question: Where does the discrepancy lie?

• Is the Hitwise data set more representative of the whole?
• Are there more searches taking place on other search engines that don’t result in click-throughs to websites?
• StatCounter’s Global Stats seem to closely mirror Woopra’s data.

Regardless of the reason, what we do know is that focusing attention on optimizing for Google search is absolutely the right thing to do. (Here’s the official Google SEO starter guide.)

Media Referrers

The media referrer category is reserved for sites that focus on various forms of multimedia, including images, video and audio. These sites are often overlooked as a source of traffic because they are destination sites; however, media sites can also drive large volumes of traffic.
As an example, world-famous HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff posts travel photos on Flickr, and includes a simple link back to his site in the description of each image he posts.

This technique generated nearly 13,000 pageviews on StuckInCustoms.com in April alone.

What’s more notable is that Flickr is not the dominant referrer in the Media category. YouTube drives 900% more traffic to websites than Flickr. This is accomplished the same way, via links in the description of the video.

Amazingly, 99% of referrer traffic in the Media category comes from only four providers: YouTube, Flickr, Last.FM and Vimeo.

Lessons Learned

The only question we are trying to answer with this analysis is where it makes sense to focus resources and attention in order to drive traffic. So here’s what we know:

• Search engine optimization specifically targeting Google’s index is key. Working hard to satisfy other search providers probably won’t pay off as much as spending the time elsewhere – like Facebook and Twitter promotion.
• If multimedia isn’t part of a site’s strategy to drive traffic, it should be. Adding photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube will not only pay off in terms of adding content for your brand, but will also drive eyeballs to your site.
• Sites that are not seeing traffic from Facebook, Twitter, or both, are missing out on a major traffic-generation source. Additionally, if the balance is not in Facebook’s favor, you are likely under-utilizing this channel.
• Don’t waste time promoting your site on any Social Media network other than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Your time is better spent elsewhere (like YouTube or Flickr for example).
• By all means, submit articles to Digg in the hopes of making it to the homepage, but more importantly make sure articles work their way into StumbleUpon, which can bring a larger, more sustained and less server-crash-creating stream of traffic.
• For those looking to more accurately track Twitter click-throughs, some service providers such as Bit.ly enable tracking of short links. The bad news is that the tracking is not aggregated into existing Web analytics provider data.
• This analysis doesn’t take into consideration back-links (which Web authors should pursue whenever possible) because on the aggregate they do not drive global traffic. However, links from related or high-traffic sites can not only dramatically increase site traffic, they can positively impact search result listings.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
Internet Builder Consulting – Building BETTER websites and Online Marketing since 1995
Social Marketing Experts and Social Networking Builders for business
816-842-7774 Office

Google Keyword & Search Engine Optimization Tools

When trying to optimize a website for higher Search Engine Rankings or working with a Pay Per Click campaign there are several invaluable tools every business needs.  The Google Search Based Keyword Tool is an online application developed by Google providing worldwide or regional reporting on specific search terms, week-to-week numeric values of search volumes, Pay Per Click (PPC) competition and budgeting which integrates with existing Google AdWords PPC accounts and much more…and it’s free!

The official Google explanation of the service ‘What is the Search-based keyword tool’ is:

The Search-based Keyword Tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren’t currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns. The tool goes one step further by tailoring the keywords and other data (such as the amount of competition for the keyword, the suggested bid, and more) based on your language or country/territory settings.

Based on your URLs, the Search-based Keyword Tool displays a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com (and on other Google search properties, such as google.co.uk) with some frequency over the past year; these suggestions can be found under the Keywords tab, in the New keywords related to (site) section. In the Keywords related to your search section, you can see a broad list of keyword ideas that are also relevant, but aren’t necessarily based on your site.
The keywords are also organized by category. Click any category to expand and view its subcategories. If applicable, you’ll also see the keywords organized by brand names.
Important note: We can’t guarantee that these keyword suggestions will improve your campaign performance. Additionally, we reserve the right to disapprove any keywords you add to your campaigns. You’re responsible for the keywords you select and for ensuring that your use of the keywords doesn’t violate any applicable laws or our Terms of Service.

Try it out or ask your Internet Marketing Provider if they are using this invaluable tool

http://www.google.com/sktool

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
Internet & Technology Expert
www.InternetBuilderConsulting.com – Building Better Websites and Online Solutions since 1995
Office 816-842-7774

It’s Hard to Go Back on Poor Online Marketing Decisions

In traditional marketing a bad decision about an ad layout lasts only as long as the current issue. When it comes to the Internet a poor decision or uneducated choice can have lasting implications on success of a business. Something placed on the Internet is easily found years later, even if it was deleted or only online for a short time. Conversely something found online today may not be easily found tomorrow if the wrong decisions are made or a disreputable online marketing company is used.

Any true online marketing expert understands the value and importance of ‘link weight’ pertaining to website visits from potential buyers and how a search engine ranks a website The higher the ranking by a search engine the more times a website will be seen and visited by potential customers and conversely if a website is not ranked well it will never be viewed or visited by potential buyers. Google has published the fact that a primary website ranking algorithm for ranking websites is how many other websites link to a website and what the value of those websites is. This was best illustrated in the 2004 Presidential Election where Democrats placed links to the George Bush profile on thousands of websites with the term ‘miserable failure’ resulting in George Bush being the 1st item shown on Google when users searched for ‘miserable failure’. If a website has dozens of other highly valued websites linking TO it then Google considers that website of higher value and ranks the website higher in search results.

The same works in reverse meaning that a website with several highly ranked websites linking TO it will be perceived as lower value if those other websites no longer link to the website. Search Engines often consider this in terms of companies going out of business or offering less valued or less important services. When a Search Engine tracks links moving from one website to others the link weight is lowered for the negative links being moved away thus lowering the ranking and reach of the website. The result of this is much lower traffic often resulting in less leads and lower sales instantly without a simple solution to repair. An unfortunate example of this was a website Builder Consulting built for a Tulsa home builder that went from less than 400 users per month to over 4,000 monthly user visits (potential buyers visiting the website).

When the company hired a new marketing manager she decided to cancel all online marketing and move the website to a new website company she liked with disastrous results. Builder Consulting had steadily increased the website traffic to an average of 2,200 unique users (buyrs) visiting per month. After the new marketing director changed the website to a new website company the website had a 92.08% decrease in unque buyer visits in less than one month to a low of 161 visitors to the website; less than it had ever been in more than a decade. The significant changes made to the online marketing led to a catastrophic result for the customer in less than one month that will not easily be resolved with several months effort.

There may be another change in marketing ahead when the owner of the company finds out his website is down 92.08% simply because of a poor choice made that caused the company to lose 92% of potential client visits to the website in less than 30 days. Little things have a large affect online, watch out for anyone promising unrealistic results or unquantifiable actions since there are far more bad online marketers than there are good ones.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Corporate Offices

Researching Google PageRank and Link Weight (geeking out tonight)

PageRank is basically a website popularity rating, and a websites PageRank is determined by the inbound links from other websiteson the internet. A PageRank can be as low zero (0) to as high as ten (10). Google’s algorithms determine a website’s PageRank by dividing the PageRank for each of the inbound linking webpage by the number of outbound links on each of those webpages, factoring in each page’s PageRank, and then summing the results for all inbound links.

PageRank is Similar to Voting

PageRank considers each link a ‘vote’ for the webpage linked to. But unlike the normal voting process of “one person equals one vote”, the Google algorithm considers the votes of webpages with “more” (PageRank or shares) to have a greater influence or value. a link from a webpage with a PageRank of 7 is more valuable than a link from a page of PageRank 3; exponentially more valuable as I will outline below

The 80/20 Rule Online

Because of the nature of the Internet, a small number of webpages have a tremendous number of inbound links, and a large number of webpages have few links. Those with more links get higher PageRank

The value of PageRank is on a logarithmic scale increasing exponentially. Assuming that the base PageRank of 1 has a value of five (5), the value of a webpage link would be this:

Example:

Hypothetically a website obtains a continuous link from Builder Consulting’s home page (http://www.builderconsulting.com/) while the Builder Consulting home page contains about 70 outbound links and has a PageRank of seven (7).

There are a total of 50 other inbound links with the average PageRank for the webpages linking in is three (3) and those webpages have an average outbound link count of 10. From this, let’s calculate PageRank:

Builder Consulting’s Available PageRank per outbound link:
78,125 / 70 => 1,116

PageRank value contributed by 50 other sites:
125 * 50 / 10 => 625

Total PageRank value:
1,116 + 625 => 1,741

Looking it up in the table, the resulting PageRank for the home page is four (4)

The Three ‘P’s of Inbound Links for higher PageRank

As with the three ‘L’s of real estate, the three ‘P’s of inbound links are: PageRank, PageRank, PageRank! Note how in the above example the 50 inbound links of PageRank 3 offered less PageRank than the one (1) inbound link from BuilderConsulting.com with PageRank of 7.

Below is an example of what it would look like with base two (2) through ten (10)

Depending on the logarithmic base, PageRank fluctuates between four (4) and five (5) for this hypothetical example. However, starting with a logarithmic base of five (5) the one Builder Consulting link overpowers the 50 others! And because pages with a PageRank closer to 10 are listed higher in Google’s search engine results.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices