I need visitors, NOT spiders! (part 1)

What is the difference between search engine traffic and true visitors?
How do I get more Visitors to my website?
That's visitors, NOT spiders!

The answer to the first question is simple, the difference between spiders and visitors is dollars. Good old fashion sales, cha ching! ring the cash register. Without quality visitors all of your SEO, website analysis, and keyword ranking nightmares, not to mention the 1000's of hours you spent changing and tweaking the look of you website, everything, was a waste of your precious time.

Don't get me wrong, you do want the spiders to visit your website and without all the work mentioned above they wouldn't stay very long or come back. But remember search spiders are very, very small and hopped up on caffeine go pills. They are faster than an F-16 and make more stops in one hour than Santa does on Christmas Eve. They have no time to stop and shop. Even if they did where would they carry the plastic? They don't have any pockets or purses to carry a wallet. Their only job is to take a quick look at your site and split to the next URL in the queue. They are mindless robots with one mission.

Secondly, Even if you do your SEO job as good or better than 95% of the webmasters out there you still aren't going to make the first page! Figure it out, do the math. Between Google, MSN & Yahoo there are only 30 first page spots per given keyword or phrase. That's out of what? 6 quad trillion pages! The shear size of the web spun by these spiders is staggering! MSN alone reported today it has 6 billion pages of data in there "two month old" beta search index. Add to that Google, Yahoo and AOL and, well you get the picture. For you or me to get to the first page is almost impossible. Can I change the way things are? No Way baby, it isn't a reflection on your optimization work it's just the way it is.

To quote a true expert in the field, Dean Philips

". . . Because when you stop to consider that Google, DMOZ and Yahoo! have millions and millions of pages in their directories, you'd really have a better chance of winning the lottery, than getting high enough in the results pages where it's going to make a significant difference in your traffic."

The answer to the second question, "How do I get more visitors to my website?" is a little harder to give a definitive answer to. There are as many opinions available as there are SEO websites and so called "Experts". But the bottom line is there are ways.

If you are a website owner and/or you have a good webmaster you have the tools at your disposal already. Most people would think that link exchanging is one way but it's as old and worn out as that pair tennis shoes you have stuffed under your bed that your wife has been telling you to throw away. Paying for banner ads on other "same type content" websites will work to some extent but the best website choices are usually your direct competitors and giving them your hard earned money makes no sense at all. Google AdSense blocks seem to be on everyone website maybe that will work to bring in some income. Maybe, but it doesn't move your stock off the shelves and it won't pay your employees or truck payment. Lastly, you could try Google AdWords advertising, I know first hand that it works to bring in traffic. But watch out, if you don't manage it right it will get expensive quick.

Heard enough? All of those ideas at one time or another were very good and a couple still work if used sparingly in conjunction with a good overall marketing plan. The spiders have spun this web so big and so tight that if you don't have a good marketing plan you will get stuck and lost. You simply just have to have a plan and find alternative ways to attract real traffic to your website. More traffic will turn into more sales and that is what we all need.

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Michael Klasno is an Assisted SEO Marketing Specialist for Net Performance Group. For more articles by this author please visit: http://www.netperformancegroup.com/Articles/articles.htm