The Online Media Challenges of Traffic Acquisition

It used to be easy to get traffic. Well, easy-ish, anyway. Back when all we had were static web pages and a generic email address (webmaster@somewhere, usually) traffic acquisition was just a case of making sure that the page was indexed by the search engines, was relatively unique in terms of keywords, and was useful to the visitor.


This was back when we all edited our sites in a text editor, mobile (cell) phones were still almost a novelty, and certainly very, very few people had heard of social media.


These days, anyone can have a web site, and throw up any old traffic-catcher garbage, and it tends to clutter the search engine indexes. Of course, the boffins over at Google are making incredible headway in weeding out the rubbish, but it has still forced the rest of us to spend slightly more time (and hence money) making certain that we get seen.


Were it not for social media, it'd still be a case of throwing money at the issue.


Solving Online Media Challenges


See, these days, the challenge is not getting indexed. It's getting people to be aware of the site/brand at a number of different levels. Sure, people still use Google as a search engine, and they still type in words that they hope will return information, but they're a lot more savvy about choosing the results.


For all those people who continue to say "you gotta be on the first page of Google SERPs, otherwise it's a waste of time", I say : you're at least half wrong. I say this because people are using Google search engine results in a more canny way. They can spot if the top 5 places are going to be selling them things while offering them nothing.


On top of which, Google is going to be using (and has started using) social media techiques such as +1, and G+ Circles, to inform search users as to the perceived value of the page behind the result. 

 I have no proof of this, beyond what you can see on every search page, if you're logged in to Google, but it's a logical extension.


It also means that we have to be similarly more canny about the way we approach traffic acquisition. We need to leverage social media and rise to the online media challenges in making sure that if we are the best, then the online world knows we are the best, and, more importantly, Google recognises that we are the best.


How do we do that? Twitter. Blogs. Forums. In a buzzphrase, Social Media. We've come full circle, and we're back to word of mouth advertising, the best kind. Only, these days, they're digital mouths and ears.