There was a great discussion about sources of traffic a few weeks ago on AVC called "The Power of Passed Links." In the post, Fred Wilson looks at four different traffic sources: Google, Email, Facebook, and Twitter, and begins to create a model comparing the relative importance of each traffic source, and conversion rates from each. The comments are worth reading as well.
The main takeaways for me were that 1) Fred is seeing traffic from "passed links" like Facebook and Twitter growing rapidly in relation to search among the sites he follows; and 2) Traffic from passed links may convert at a higher rate than traffic from Google.
I thought I would take a bit of a deeper
dive into the various sources of traffic with an emphasis on what you
might do to proactively optimize for each traffic source, and share a
few relative growth rates that we're seeing. Most of this post comes
from my experience with RateItAll - a consumer reviews site that lets you rate and review anything.
Google
The art of SEO is discussed ad nauseum on other blogs, and I won't
spend a lot of time going into it here. From our experience, Google
traffic converts very well from a monetization perspective, and not so
well from an engagement perspective. It is also typically very well
targeted.
Briefly, SEO is made up of two components: on page SEO (content, internal link structure, meta data, etc.) and off page SEO (inbound links, anchor text, etc.). On page is easier to control than off page though there are some things you can do through social media optimization, APIs, and widgets to increase the number of organic inbound links pointing in your direction.
Here is the definitive post on basic SEO. A good summary of social media optimization can be found here. Here is a brief look at using widgets for link development. This is a good example of an API as an SEO complement.
Just about every serious content business that I know of that isn't hidden behind a login has some sort of an SEO strategy in place. Large gains can be made quickly, but ongoing gains take systematic work.
We've been optimizing for Google for a while now, and our main mantra these days is don't rock the boat. Try to avoid sudden movements that might disturb a stable and dependable traffic source.
RateItAll Google Search Traffic Growth Rate February to April: 9%
Email
On
RateItAll, traffic from emailed links accounts for about 10x the
traffic today than the combined traffic of Facebook and Twitter.
In terms of proactive things you can do to try and increase your email referrals, here are a few things we've done:
- We added a prominent FriendFinder tool that hooks up to a webmail service lookup. Rather than label this tool "Invite Your Friends" we used a more passive aggressive "Find Your Friends and Invite More." This tool is also integrated into the long version of our registration.
- We've added ratings based compatibility quizzes that we ported over from our ratings Facebook App. One of the things we learned from designing for Facebook was the importance of building in a tight viral loop - engage, play, invite ... engage, play, invite. We've tried to replicate this model on our destination site by making users pass through an invite page before seeing their compatibility results - try out our Web 2.0 Compatibility Quiz to see what I'm talking about.
- We've tried to associate email sharing functionality with every share-able piece of content on the site; reviews, lists, comments, etc.
- We've included share via email prompts in our success messages associated with the posting of a review
- We've added in lots of opt in alert services that trigger automatic emails when certain actions occur
Email is still an extremely powerful medium - beware of getting so caught up in the social media hype that you overlook the sharing method of choice of users outside of Silicon Valley.
RateItAll Webmail Referral Growth Rate February to April: 37%
Facebook
Facebook
has been a rollercoaster ride for us and has been both a distraction
and huge help with some of our core business issues like reducing the
registration hurdle. Our Facebook experiment started with a Facebook
App that generated tons of engagement, lots of crap content, minimal
revenue, and minimal click throughs back to home base.
Facebook Connect + Facebook's new Twitter-esque format has been much better in terms of driving traffic back to our site, and acquiring real users.
A good and easy way to get started in optimizing for Facebook traffic is to add some "share on Facebook" buttons to your content via services like AddThis and Gigya.
You can also build an app, and if destination site traffic is your goal, make liberal use of links back to your site.
More advanced tactics include implementing Facebook Connect for new users, or even better, adding Facebook Connect merge functionality that allow existing users to sync up with Facebook. The main problem with Facebook Connect is that you trade ease of registration and viral potential for actually knowing a user's email address. In a perfect world you get the viral boost AND the email functionality. We're trying to nudge our Facebook Connect users to build out their account info, and nudge our users who didn't sign up with Facebook Connect to merge.
We have high hopes for Facebook as a surging source of referral traffic as users get more used to using their Facebook logins around the web, and as Facebook continues its torrid growth.
RateItAll Facebook Referral Growth Rate February to April: 77%
Twitter
Twitter
is still a drop in the bucket for us traffic wise, but the growth and engagement rates of traffic coming from Twitter are making us take
notice.
There are a variety of third party tools from companies like AddThis, Gigya, ShareThis, and AddToAny that can help you enable your users to push your content to Twitter. Or you can build your own tool, giving you more control over exactly what is pushed out. Companies with a short domain name might consider building shorter versions of their urls in order to preserve their brand as it gets tweeted and retweeted.
For a tighter, more permanent integration of your sites' accounts with Twitter, you might consider Twitter Connect.
RateItAll Twitter Referral Growth Rate February to April: 218%
Summary
If our community is any indication, search still carries the day as far and away the most critical traffic source. However, we are seeing shared traffic grow much faster than search traffic - in the case of Twitter, at more than 20x the rate. While absolute numbers are still just a drop in the bucket for us, we think it makes a lot of sense to try and optimized for passed link traffic sooner rather than later.
In talking with other entrepreneurs, it is both encouraging and unnerving that many of us are seeing the same trends, and putting the same strategies in place. Integrate as tightly as possible with surging Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to turn one of your users into three. Own and perfect your little stream of functionality, and guide it into the larger rivers of Facebook and Twitter to attract more users. Build things to sell to complement your free, ad supported services.
For a long time, Google has been the dominant referrer of traffic on the web. Can traffic from "passed links" from services like Twitter and Facebook continue to make up ground? Who knows. But we're not taking any chances.
