What does quality traffic really mean?

If I had a dollar for every product claiming to offer quality traffic, I could buy enough quality traffic to last me for months…maybe even years.

Quality traffic is one of those slippery phrases that means a multitude of things to different people. How you choose to define it will determine what you can expect when you tap into “quality traffic”

So, here’s how I define quality traffic.

Engaged visitors that arrive at your website seeking more information. It doesn’t matter where they arrived from, the only consideration is why they landed on your webpage.

Here’s a tip that you can take to the bank. You will never create engagement by leading with a cookie-cutter affiliate website – not unless you’ve pre-positioned the visitor with some pretty compelling reasons first.

I know, there are dozens of websites out there advertising “premium traffic, tier 1 traffic (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and the ever-popular “buyers traffic” but that traffic to my mind is not “quality traffic” because for all intents and purposes the traffic is cold traffic. You’ve built no relationship. It’s perfect traffic to generate leads from, but not much else.

I use a lot of these websites and have bought a lot of solo ads over the years, The traffic is responsive and it can generate sales if you have a complete sales funnel set up, but it’s a great way to burn $20 notes if you don’t know what you’re doing. Test, test again and then test some more. Never go all-in unless your testing is flashing green lights everywhere.

So, what is the holy grail of traffic? Traffic that you just know is engaged and eager to find out more?

I can point to three traffic sources where I can make an argument that the traffic is engaged and seeking information.

• Search Engine Traffic
• Subscriber Traffic
• and on occasions, social media traffic

Each of these has attractions and all three should be utilised in one way or another. By far the most difficult is SEO, particularly in the highly competitive and cutthroat world of “make money online” or “work from home.” That said, it’s worth building a search engine-friendly website over the long term. There are articles that I’ve written as long as four years ago, that still draw traffic from search engines today. But to focus on it solely is not recommended in this niche.

The go-to guaranteed method of generating on-demand traffic is your very own engaged subscriber list. The key word here is engaged.

Building a list of subscribers is not worth doing unless you put the time and effort into engaging with them. That means that you need to provide that list with regular valuable content. Simply sending cut and paste emails about a myriad of products is not adding value.

The more targeted your subscriber list is, the more engaged it will be. Creating a catch-all list is not necessarily the way to go. Try to target a specific pain point and offer valuable consistent solutions. It isn’t easy, but the payoff can be huge.

I’d rather have a small engaged subscriber list with strong open and click-through rates than a massive subscriber list that pays me no attention. Create value wherever you can. Use sites like resell rights weekly and InDigitalWorks to source material that you can give away, write how-to posts, and do videos on products and tools that you use. Find ways to make people want to open your emails. Don’t mercilessly sell. Offer value and recommend where appropriate.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not a social media expert and my use of the medium has slowed as the algorithms have come to favour “approved voices” (they’re usually the ones with all the advertising dollars) and various channels have become really toxic over the past couple of years. But the principle of building your audience by offering value remains the same. Can you generate traffic using social media? Undoubtedly. But it isn’t something that will happen overnight. It takes patience, persistence and perseverance- just like SEO and List building. As with SEO, your work on social media will be subject to a wide range of rules, algorithms, and whims of the platform itself.

Aside from Hive, I limit my social media activity to recreational purposes. That’s my choice. Some people won’t have the reservations that have about social media. Each to their own.

Regardless, the point is that quality traffic can be accessed if you’re prepared to do the work on a daily basis. In my opinion, the most lucrative source of quality traffic is an engaged subscriber list.

If you haven’t started to build a list, you can start today using Leads Leap.

Photo1 by PhotoMIX Company: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-samsung-tablet-computer-106344/

Photo 2 by Maksim Goncharenok: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gold-letter-y-on-black-background-5605061/
Photo 3 by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-smartphone-icons-267350/