More traffic, better targeted, for free

Is more traffic the be-all and end-all of search engine optimization?

In simple terms, no. Many people think that traffic is king. However, having lots of visitors to your site is only advantageous if they are the people you are trying to target. If you are selling a product, you want your visitors to be the kinds of people who would buy the products you sell. If you are advertising your company, you want your visitors to be people who would want to know about what you do. When designing your site, you need to think about who you are targeting.

Why is targeted traffic important?

Your target visitors might be a particular age range, a particular gender, based in a particular country. If you only sell products in the UK and do not ship worldwide then there is no point targetting visitors from the US. You should consider this in the look and feel of the website, in the language used on the site and in other factors like the domain name (.co.uk, .com or something else) and spelling variations between US and British English.

So more traffic on its own is not necessarily helpful, but more traffic, better targeted, is what you should be aiming for. If you achieve that through organic search results for free, then all the better. If not then you're looking at pay-per-click search, such as Google Adwords. This takes you into the realm of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is optimizing for paid search results. This can give you targeted traffic but you have to keep track of your campaign to ensure that it earns you money rather than costs you money.

SEO Made Simple is about getting you More Traffic, Better Targeted, For Free.