600+ Visitors a day after 6 months, can you do it?
-
So since the Penguin update the clients of the company I work for have gradually been losing traffic and money. Noone (except for me) has noticed this yet and connected the dots.
Yesterday we all get called in to have a bollocking and the manager asks the head of our department if he would be confident of being able to get 600+ visitors a day to an 'average website' that has just started up, to which he replied 'yes'.
Since I started here back in February there has not been a single new client that has been able to gain that many visitors (many have not gained even 25% of that figure), which in the post-panda and post-pegnuin world, I find completely understandable.
When I first started here they were using SEO 'tactics' which people used to employ 5+ years ago and didn't even use exact match keyword data.I have had a few talks with them about how SEO has changed over the last few years and they still don't seem to understand that it is now significantly more difficult to gain traffic using SEO than it once was.
If you were asked about the same question, thinking about the 'average' client you might get, would you be confident enough to guarantee that at the 6 month mark they would be getting 600+ visitors a day?
-
Egol is correct. This doesn't sound like a company i'd want to be working for yet alone paying money to look after my online interests. One good point of this company is you, in that you are wise enough to instantly spot the flaws in what was asked by the manager and in what was promised by your head of dept - no doubt in a panic.
This not only puts unrealistic pressure on him/herself but also on the employees reporting to the manager. All in all i'd take Egols advice and bail.
It sounds like its all too desperate based on lack of knowledge. Things arn't going right, so they pluck a figure out of the air and promise to hit it - they should be asking the guys for a brainstorming session to pool ideas and generate some realistic goals to acheive.
Hitting 600+ could be possible, as mentioned if the search volume is there then why not? But how will it be achieved, where will the visits be from and will they add value to the business(s)?
This could be an opportunity for you within the company to demonstrate your understanding of the situation and current landscape and prove your worth. Or seriously consider moving on.
-
Visitors is an SEO stat that your company can show to the client as proof of effort, but doesn't necessarily mean much in terms of the customer's business. Fewer highly targeted visitors can provide a better return than a large number of poorly targeted visitors. I'm working with a company now that had fairly high site traffic as a result of a PPC campaign, but almost none of these converted into customers. Their traffic is now about half of what it was, but consistently generates leads for them.
-
The simple answer to this question is yes you can get 600+ visitors to your site. The real issue is the type of traffic and the method you employ getting that traffic. You need to look at your industry, level of competition, your current etc, more like a SWOT analysis.
If you fly blind then you might attract traffic that is not related to your product of service, get high bounce rate and zero benefit to the business.
Its all about having a plan and executing it very well.
-
You really can't commit to raw numbers like that. (Even if "visitors" was a good way to measure success on its own!)
People forget that the pool of real prospects out there is not "the entire internet!" Not everyone is looking for your offerings and things like geography, seasonality etc get in the way...
Even once you've narrowed down your range of realistic prospects, you need to factor in the competition!
But - does the client really need 600+ visits a day? I've worked with some who will tell you that a few extra relevant visitors a month is all it takes to drive through another sale - and that more than justifies the creation of a new piece of content or outreach activity.
Without understanding the cost of acquisition, the conversion rates and the conversion/goal value how can the customer know that they're getting value for money...
Does your head of department have 600+ friends he can call on?
-
If you were asked about the same question, thinking about the 'average' client you might get, would you be confident enough to guarantee that at the 6 month mark they would be getting 600+ visitors a day?
If I was allowed to "pick" the topic of the site and worked on that site full time, I am pretty confident I could do it.
However, if the client was a plumber or dentist in Bugtussle, WV then I don't think that there are 600 relevant queries in a month so the answer to your question in that case is "it's impossible". Now, we could slap up content to deliver lots of irrelevant, low-quality traffic, but for genuine traffic that is relevant to the business owner, it just isn't there.
If I was working at this place I would be looking for another job. They don't understand the core of their business. They are going to crash and burn. They don't know what they don't know. Bail out!
-
Doesn't this totally depend on the industry the client is in? 600+ visitors a day is a lot of visitors and some areas may not even get 600 'Relevant' searches a day.
-
_I can understand your pain. It seems most of the online marketers are oblivious of the fact that the traditional link building things do not work anymore. Now, as they do not know anything other than spammy link building, they are adamant on following those cliché techniques even at the expense of losing visitors and courting penalty.
Yes, it is almost next to impossible for a website to get as many as +600 visitors per day unless the website is producing share worthy content or have some great tools under its sleeves. Now, this will take really long time and the client needs to spend money to build a great website._
You need to talk to the clients. Make him see how things have changed and why it is impossible for you reach that target. Tough call indeed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Please who can help me rank my website www.shopdocuments.com ?
Hi , i bought my website this month , i built it myself now i want it to grow seo on google pages and stuff tried google ads but they always block my account don't know why so somebody help me please any company? individual willing to work it for me ? even if paid company no problem
Technical SEO | | planetdocs1 -
Can I set a canonical tag to an anchor link?
I have a client who is moving to a one page website design. So, content from the inner pages is being condensed in to sections on the 'home' page. There will be a navigation that anchor links to each relevant section. I am wondering if I should leave the old pages and use rel=canonical to point them to their relevant sections on the new 'home' page rather than 301 them. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
Can an AJAX framework (using HTML5 + pushstate) on your site impact your ranking?
Hello everybody, I am currently investigating a website which is rendered by an AJAX Framework (Angularjs) using the HTML5 +API history - Pushstate methods.
Technical SEO | | Netsociety
Recently Google announced that they are able to execute Javascript and can therefore see the content and links to discover all pages in the structure. However it seems that it doesn't run the Javascript at ALL times. (after some internal testing) So technically it is possible it arrives on a page without seeing any content and links, while another time he can arrive, run Javascript and read/discover the content and links generated by AJAX.
The fact that Google can't always interpret or read the website correctly can therefore have negative SEO impact? (not the indexation process but ranking) We are aware that is better to create a snapshot of the page but in the announcement of Google they state that the method that is currently used, should be sufficient. Does anybody have any experience with this AND what is the impact on the ranking process? Thanks!0 -
Can someone that had (or seen) a Manual Action in WMTs tell me.....
This is a repost of this question http://moz.com/community/q/manual-action-found-in-wmts-no-email-no-message-in-wmts But I'm sure there is someone in the moz fourms that have had/seen manual action 🙂 Someone I know said that they were looking though their WMTs and under Manual Actions they found they had a partial penalty. There is no date against it and they never got an email and there are no messages WMTs for it. I haven't personally dealt with a Manual penalty before, but I would have expected there to be a message in WMTs for it ( an email might have been missed because of a spam filter etc). Could it be a very old penalty?
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays0 -
Can backlinks from advertising cause a traffic drop?
Hi, I recently noticed that our organic traffic has started to drop and maybe coincidently our adwords traffic has increased. I was asked to investigate the drop. I know that from the google update that unnatural backlinks would be penalized so I thought it might be the backlinks from a site that we advertise on because of the sheer number we have required from them in the last month. Would you think that would be the cause? if not, what could it be? and if it is, how do I go about correcting it as fast as possible? Any Help with this would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks, Colin
Technical SEO | | digital.moretogether.com0 -
Can anyone explain why and how these odd URLs could be working?
In our GWT and Google Analytics traffic reports, I often see some very oddly formed URLs. Here's an example http://www.ccisolutions.com/storefront/www.ccisolutions.com and here's another
Technical SEO | | danatanseo
http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category//www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/CEW.cat What strikes me about this particular URL is two things: It renders this page http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/on-disc-printing, but not with that URL, the URL stays http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category//www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/CEW.cat When I break this URL into pieces http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/CEW.cat
and www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/CEW.cat,
both redirect to: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/on-disc-printing This makes me wonder, is there something (a rule?) in the
backend (maybe the .htaccess file?)that was set up that says http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/CEW.cat
= www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/CEW.cat
(or maybe vice versa?), and as a result an odd URL for the page is being
written automatically? This scenario worked on every category page I checked. All had the same results. For example, I tried: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category//www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/AAA.cat
and it rendered the Live Sound category page, but without redirecting to the
user friendly URL. This URL stayed unchanged in the address bar When I broke it into pieces, like http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/AAA.cat
and www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/AAA.cat, both of these redirected to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/sound-video-lighting-equipment-experts Have any of you ever encountered a problem like this? Any sugeestions as to what might be causing it and how to remedy the problem? It is definitely causing us a duplicate content headache. Thanks! Dana0 -
Can anyone recommend a good hosting company in the UK
Hi can anyone recommend some good hosting companies in the UK as my hosting company are now considering charging for technical advice. I use some standard packages as well as a dedicated server and would be grateful if you could give me some examples on prices as well as service which includes technical service.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How Can I Block Archive Pages in Blogger when I am not using classic/default template
Hi, I am trying to block all the archive pages of my blog as Google is indexing them. This could lead to duplicate content issue. I am not using default blogger theme or classic theme and therefore, I cannot use this code therein: Please suggest me how I can instruct Google not to index archive pages of my blog? Looking for quick response.
Technical SEO | | SoftzSolutions0