Halloween Web Traffic Isn’t Scary

It’s interesting what will bring traffic to a website.  A little while ago I wrote about optimizing images for SEO.  That’s an opportunity I believe I’ve missed in the past.  Not this time around!

A few weeks ago, I noticed a strange keyword turning up in my analytics software; “surprise party.”  One disadvantage of the WordPress analytics is it doesn’t link directly to a source of search engine traffic like others do, so I have to do a bit of guessing.  I typed surprise party into Google and came up blank.  Then I tried the blog search.  Still nothing.  Then I tried images.  Bingo!

I don’t know why this turns up, because the photo is called “cocktail party” and I didn’t use the word surprise anywhere in the article about Facebook.  That image search result is good for a few clicks a week.

Saturday night I noticed search engine traffic coming from terms related to spiders…not the web robots…the real life icky, scary arachnids.

2009-10-03

Search	Views
spider web	3
spider webs	2
spiders	2
http//seobyswaby.wordpress.com/2009/08/2	1
spiders image	1
spider web pictures

I did know what that came from – my cleverly titled article on web copywriting.  I didn’t think much of it until Sunday, when the numbers increased unbelievably.  Why were all these people searching about spiders?  Oh yeah…Halloween!  It’s October!  Because of the title of my post and the title of the image, this site is turning up quite well for an image search on spiders…

and spider webs!

Those image results have catapulted my web traffic:

10-04-09

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Quantity vs. Quality Web Traffic

This is the question that perplexes web marketers and businesses the most.  Do I want more traffic even if it doesn’t convert?  Or do I want a trickle of highly targeted traffic that will buy my product or hire my service?  It certainly is a balancing act.  Starting up a website from scratch with no advertising is a challenging prospect.  Blogging is hard!  These visitors coming to see spider pictures are leaving quickly.  My page views have decreased from 2:1 to slightly above 1:1 in the past few days.  Clearly this is a result of my new source of traffic.

When I started this blog I was really surprised at how quickly it started getting traffic.  When I had my Salt Lake real estate blog, I was averaging slightly over 100 visitors a day at the peak.  In good months that would triple.  For this blog, once I started going, I figured 50 a day would be a good start and maybe by month three, I could get to 100 a day.  Ideally, I’d like to have a 1000 visitors a day.

I’m trying to get a good mix of traffic sources.  So far I’ve got Facebook and Twitter and a few directories.  Last week I published my first press release and I’m beginning to get inbound links from Utah’s top blogger nominees.  The blog carnivals are beginning to pay off with inbound links and quality traffic that is signing up for my Facebook business page.  I’m getting bits of traffic from ping backs to other blogs and news sites.  As I generate traffic from all these sources, I will be helped on popularity based sites like this.  I’ve gone from the middle of the second page to the middle of the first page in the last three days.

As long as I continue to have multiple sources of traffic I will get the quality I need and the quantity I desire.