Vol.11 – How to Successfully Drive Web Users to Web Contents?

In the previous article "Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers", methodology of effectively developing web contents based on the buyer/customer persona was discussed. The focus of this article is generating web traffic to drive web users to web contents developed.

1. What is the meaning and importance of successfully generating web traffic to drive targeted web users to web contents/pages?

Simply developing an excellent content meeting buyer/customer needs is not sufficient to succeed in Web 2.0/Internet marketing. Web is a pull media as stated in one of the previous article "Vol.8: How to Start Web 2.0 / Internet Marketing?" This means that companies (web content owners) need to drive web users (target buyers/customers) to their web contents/pages. As is always mentioned, there are millions of web pages on the Internet and many more are uploaded everyday. In such a situation, it is quite unlikely that the “right” people discover the “right” web content/page and therefore web/Internet marketers need to be extremely strategic in generating web traffic and driving their target buyers/customers to their web content/page.

As mentioned in previous articles, it is often said that “Content is King” but Weinberg (2009, p15) says that “Cotent is king (not by itself, at least)”, based on a slogan “content is king, but marketing is queen (and the queen rules the household” by Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the popular online TV show Sine Library. The author believes that content is king but fully understands what Weinberg says and agrees. It is the quality and value of the content that really counts and with good content, everyone can be a publisher in Web 2.0 online world, but marketing/promoting of web content is also crucial.

2. How companies can successfully drive target buyers/customer to their web contents/pages?

There are a number of methods to generate web traffic, and web/Internet marketers are required to select optimum ones and effectively mix them to attract as many target buyers/customer as possible to their web contents/pages. When companies first started web building and management, many of them (and web experts) seemed to believe that it is effective to drive target buyers/customer to their website from other traditional offline media, such as encouraging people to input URL written in the printed advertising and other collaterals. However, it turned out that it is much more effective to drive online buyers/customer to their web contents/pages. Also, Internet population is continuously increasing. Thus examples of methodologies mentioned below are primarily of driving online buyers/customer to web pages.

1) Online Adverting

Online advertising is one of the primary methods to generating web traffic, in general the cost is high compared to many other methodologies, in general, it is effective and the result can be achieved immediately as long as advertising is planned and executed appropriately. In fact, recent survey results conclude that online advertising spending is increasing and it is expected to surpass advertising in other media (such as TV and printed ads such as newspaper and magazines) in a few years in major Internet advanced countries. The challenge is increasing conversion rate (and ultimately ROI), and CTR (click through rate) is one of the well-used metric for measurement.

Link banner used to be one of a major online advertising but today there are many others, linking with social media ecosystems mentioned in the previous article of "Vol.5: What Social Media Ecosystem Does Web 2.0 Relize?". Such examples include search engine advertising first started by Google and now developed and provided also by Yahoo! and Microsoft, advertising embedded in Social Network and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and advertising embedded in/linking with gaming and virtual world. With further evolution of social media leveraging Web 2.0 technologies, it is expected that more sophisticated and advanced online advertising is developed and online advertising market further grows.

2) SEM = Search Engine Marketing (including SEO = Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Advertising)

SEM is extremely effective in generating web traffic and its importance cannot be over emphasized. Scott (2009, p248) defines SEM by saying it means using search engines to reach buyers/customers directly. SEO plays an important role in SEM including search engine advertising mentioned in 1). Scott (2009, p248) defines SEO that it is the art and science of ensuring that the words and phrases on the web pages are found by search engines and that, once found, the web content/page is given the highest ranking possible in the natural search results (i.e., what the search engine algorithm deems important for the phrase entered). A book can be written about SEO and there are many experts in this issue, and therefore the author gives a general outline of SEM in this article.

Getting the web content ranked high up in the search results immediately leads to increase in web traffic, and the #5 point “Use appropriate title, tags, and key words and phrases” mentioned in the previous article "Vol.10: How to Successfully Develop Web Content to Directly Reach Buyers" is also one of the SEO measures. Other SEO measures include promoting links to the web page, keeping the web content fresh by frequent posting of web contents (which is why from SEO perspective, blog is often said to be better than statistic websites). Although many links to the web pages is good for SEO, cloaking and other inappropriate tactics to increase links such as “secret agreement” of exchanging links should be refrained as emphasized by Safko, Lon and Brake (2009) because search engine robots are clever to detect such inappropriateness to include such web pages in their blacklist.

Search engines have been going through evolutions as Solis (2009) explains in his blog article The Rapid Evolution of Search, and SEM is expected to evolve and its market further grows

3) Affiliate Programme

Affiliate programme is also very effective in generating web traffic and money. This is also another topic that needs much strategic approach from business model perspective and author would like to leave experts in this topic for detailed discussion.

4) RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed

RSS feed is another way to generate web traffic, especially driving repeaters to the web content. Web users who find the web content interesting and wants to get updated information register for RSS feeds. Thus this is usually used with other methodology and this is effective for repeaters, and this is expected to contribute to royalty and engagement.

5) E-mail (e-newsletter etc.)

With social media becoming popular, it is often said that e-mail marketing is no more effective but nevertheless it is still a good way to generating web traffic. Similarly to RSS, people driven to the web page by e-mail are those who happened to access web content and have registered for subscription, i.e. they have done opt-in to be repeaters. The challenge is how many subscribers actually open the e-mail and click the URLs in the e-mail as well as acquiring as many subscribers as possible.

6) Online Broadcast (microblogging such as Twitter, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn)

Online broadcast is effective in generating web traffic, and emergence of this methodology is the reason that social media marketing is said to be overtaking e-mail marketing. It is often said that (Twitter in particular,) it has potential to be an effective tool for achieving business goal, with increasing popularity and the fact that it can broadcast both to vast audience and targeted individuals.

7) Social Bookmarking Sites (e.g. delicious.com, StumbleUpon)

Although it still might be minor methodology, social bookmarking can also be effective in generating web traffic, as mentioned by Weinberg (2009). Stand-alone bookmarking by individuals now evolved to social sharing with social bookmarking sites, and in the future it is expected to be integrated into search results.

8) Social News Websites (e.g. Digg)

Social new websites are also effective in generating web traffic. Social news websites are, as Weinberg (2009, p230-231) states, communities that let web users submit web content in the form of articles, videos or pictures. If web contents are promoted in the front page 7typically dependant upon numerous factors), it is considered “popular” in social news jargon, leading to effective web traffic generation.

9) Links (including trackbacks and commenting on other blog articles)

Links from pages of related topic is a traditional and basic methodology of generating web traffic, and this cannot be ignored even this might be time consuming and when other new methodologies mentioned above proliferate. Links usually mean simple link buttons but there are other kinds especially in driving web users from other blog articles, such as trackbacks, and commenting on the blog article and including URL of the web page.


After all, “content” and “marketing/promoting of web content to drive web users to the page” are the two inevitable pillars for successful web/Internet marketing. Having developed driven target buyers/customer to excellent web content, the next challenge is increasing make buyers/customers take action as the web content owner expects, and this is be discussed in the next article.