I was pulling my visitor stats for the last 6 months at SEOmoz (Aug 2005 - Present) and found this remarkable bit of data worthy of interest:
Top 10 Referring Domains:
direct access or bookmark - 44.08%
https://slashdot.org - 9.75%
https://moz.com - 6.49%
https://www.google.com - 4.84%
https://del.icio.us - 2.27%
https://www.bloglines.com - 2.02%
https://www.seocompany.ca - 1.55%
https://blog.searchenginewatch.com - 0.75%
https://www.lifehacker.com - 0.73%
https://search.yahoo.com - 0.63%
Pretty interesting that a site which has ranked well for a large number of long tail terms and (more recently) top 10 for several competitive terms has less than 10% of its total traffic delivered via search...
It makes for a good case study on how natural link building is far more valuable than just SE value - those links serve up some very lovely visitor numbers, especially when taken in concert. Anyone else have a site that gets less than 10% of traffic from search? It seems ironic for an SEO firm...
Dont forget email signatures.
I thought your Google visitors were on the low side, percentage wise. Whats going on there ? Maybe its just a newish site. Our large traffic customers average between 14-20% Google.
Your Yahoo numbers are spot on. That looks more like Australian conditions for Yahoo. I thought they were big in the States. Someone said the other day they were big in Japan.
If someone from Yahoo rings up asking for money, you will know what to say.
It's not that search engines should ever be ignored, but building a strategy that doesn't rely on them is possible and highly valuable, IMO.
I agree with this... There is no "one size fits all" source for good and targeted traffic. It's highly business and industry dependant.
I have to disagree, sluz. I think that regarding the example of SEOmoz, those are visitors who found links to great content and never would have searched for it actively.
It's very similiar to the push vs. pull marketing debate that's been talked about recently - you can pull folks in who are seeking you, and/or help them get to you by pushing the value of your site/content/services.
It's not that search engines should ever be ignored, but building a strategy that doesn't rely on them is possible and highly valuable, IMO.
Yes, brand name recognition is huge (https://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=17178),but you gotta start somewhere. If you never show up on search, you never get anyone linking to you, and word of mouth never starts. Once you've got momentum, SEO becomes less of an impact percentage-wise on your traffic. But should anyone give it the boot? Of course not. 1% of ten thousand is more than 80% of one hundred.
Travis - The Yahoo! numbers are low because of the sector. Imagine folks in webdev and SEO/M and where they'd be likely to do their searches... Yahoo! is more consumer focused and more suburban, rural and low-tech and Google is more urban, coastal and high-tech in terms of demographics.
Depending on the industry, I think that these rules can apply.
Good point. In fact, I came to this site via a link to this site by the company "Dex." Which works with Yellow Pages. They had a link to this site in an online article about SEM...
I agree… Generating traffic to your website through links especially is extremely important for any long term internet marketing strategy.
I also think it’s wonderful that the majority of your visitors come in from links. You have a great website. It’s defiantly worth linking to.
However… if only a small percentage of your traffic is coming in through natural search… this is usually a very strong indicator that you have a lot of room for improvement in that area. (IMO)
I copied and pasted the statistics below from the Google section “About your industry” https://www.google.com/ads/metrics.html
Besides navigating through your personal bookmarks in the favorites menu… I have never seen research on how any other navigational method is preferred to search. At least none that would reflect the numbers in proportion to what you show.
Thanks, Sluz.
P.S. I became a regular visitor after you handed me your business card at SES San Jose. Who needs a search engine when you have a great personality? :^)
-------------- 3 out of 4 online consumers looking for an automobile dealer use a search engine to find that dealer.
81% of online healthcare consumers use a search engine to find the information they need.
Google.com is the #1 site for referrals to shopping sites referring 54% of all traffic to those sites in February 2005.
Nearly 8 out of 10 tech BtoB users type keywords into a search engine to find manufacturer, content, and distributor sites.
63.9 percent of BtoB users make search their first stop over manufacturer sites, industry portals, consumer review sites, and e-commerce sites selling product.
55% of users start with a search engine first when researching Telecom services, i.e. phone, Internet, or wireless plans.
Nearly three out of four (74%) consumers use a search engine when researching and/or purchasing travel products or services online.
In 14 of 18 countries surveyed, Internet searches have surpassed “referrals from friends/ family” and “visits to a travel agent’s office” as the #1 source for determining where to go on vacation.
Media influences on travelers are also changing – search engines are by far the most popular media source prompting users to visit travel sites – more than TV, radio, magazine and newspaper ads combined.
It is entirely possible to work on both ends of the sprectrum; SE visibility and advertising visibility through other sources including links on the web and other means.
During the first dotcom craze there were endless dotcoms advertising on TV. They are out there again. They are directly advertising there domains. TV may be extremely expensive but it has huge visability for the largest of enterprizes that can afford it.
My business site couldn't be more different than SEOMOZ. It is a localized brick and mortar business. Primary visitors to the site are not web oriented or SEO oriented.
Yet we both have some dramatic examples of non SE traffic. I've focused on the engines and focused on the most relevant links. They aren't always obvious. Some are industry oriented some are local. They add considerably to traffic. They are similarly productive with regards to conversions.
Like the SE's the bls tend to change. The SE's change algo's and all of a sudden a site once ranked high is virtually invisable. Similarly, bls that might once have been productive lose their productivity. It could be that the webmasters aren't maintaining the sites. Could be that my own rankings surpassed the sites for competitive keyword phrases. Could be other reasons.
It's productive to work on both sides of the fence. It also requires consistent effort to stay above the norm, with the norm, or just slightly behind the norm.
I agree. Some of my job leads come from my listing in a high ranking directory. If my website outranked the directory, I’m sure the link referrals from there would drop and SE referrals would jump.
I would prefer to eliminate the middle man.
If a website is getting a significant mount of traffic from links, it can be assumed the site that linked to you was likely found in a search engine.
Sluz.
For my brick and mortar business/site which is local the same holds true.
Less than great log analyser showing 50% of traffic as no-referror. 25% of traffic is direct Then the three major engines w/google representing about 10% of the total and so on.
I love the highly relevant links.
Some of them are keys to boosting serps so they help in 2 ways.
They drive a lot of traffic. Aggregate link traffic, primarily off the highly relevant links> greater than total MSN traffic.
I'm slowly going through a manual month by month study of the conversions: First 2 months of the year...more conversions from the links than MSN.
Not to denigrate search engines and serps...but there are more ways to skin the cat.
On the other hand over time the character and nature of the link traffic has changed. When the site was low ranked some of those links drove lots more traffic. With higher rankings some of them have significantly diminished.
In fact, at least in that case I'm positive many of the relevant links were found by searches...so don't totally discount the SE's. In fact, the higher my rankings went the lower the link traffic from sources for the same keyword searches.
Dave
Yep. Dosent suprise me in the least.
ITO Internet Traffic Optimizer (here and the future) WTO Website Traffic Optimizer (Here and now) SEO Search Engine Optimizer (dying a death)
Over time a lot of sectors on the web will rely much less on search and although search will still be an important factor, if you are doing the ITO right on your site the old fashioned SEO will just be an nice addition to the traffic you already get from the reliable and real places.
Google especially is now too unreliable and unpredicatiable to concentrate on with the amount of effort we did in the past.
It's the COMMUNITY surrounded seoMoz... I never used any SE to visit here, it's there in my cache. And I bet somany more are there similar...
Some of my sites are totally depend on SEs.. both in organic and ppc.. and some are not - but getting some decent traffic from other referrals..
Depends on the niche and community, i think.
As you posted yesterday Rand, people have all different reasons for wanting that #1 spot, and traffic is suprisingly not always the first thing on people's mind. The authority it gives you can be priceless.
But yes, very common observation, the SEs are often a small % of traffic. The proportions seem to remain remarkably constant, because as you're in position to get SE traffic, you're already getting links up the wazu.
I just started working on a site where the goal is not to gain business but to get people interested in an idea. Right now most of our traffic is from people building link collections in a similar "idea range". Our site (https://breakingranks.net)focuses on rankism, but we get our inbound links from sites that focus on workplace abuse, relational aggression, etc.
I started trying to optimize for Google, but I'm starting to think that this doesn't matter so much if our goal is to start a conversation about an idea. It's probably better to gradually expand the borders of our niche and build relationships with people who show similar interests.
pansophia,
I would still optomize for Google. The onpage stuff will only ensure you have a clean site and that the other SEs (especially MSN) will be receptive to it. As for the rest - Google Sitemaps, etc. there really isn't much of a time investment and the amout it helps outweighs the time spent.
And offpage factors, like link collecting, should be done either way.
I don't think anyone is saying "ignore Google" as it does still drive traffic. At SEO Refugee we have a thread running on this topic and one thing that was pointed out is some sites get a lot more traffic from SEs than links. It depends on your customer base and what the right marketing mix is for you. Another thing pointed out is search traffic seems to convert better which makes sense as SE traffic is people clearly looking for "product X".
Sure, less than 5% of Rand's traffic for last year came from Google, but how many thousands of visits does that translate to? It would be tough to justify saying that seomoz would have been better off without it (especially to the advertisers!).
As Pleb said, "Google especially is now too unreliable and unpredicatiable to concentrate on with the amount of effort we did in the past." But that doesn't mean ignore it either, IMHO.
I’m not sure where you are going with this.
It’s a bit like saying 95% of all my phone calls do not originate from my yellow pages listing. So, who needs it?
If only 5% of my calls are potential new customers and not just my returning customers, friends and family, etc… The yellow pages listing might actually be what is driving the growth of my business.
I am in the majority of your visitors. I don’t use a search engine when I visit. This is because I subscribe to your RSS feed. But then again… I am not a potential customer either. (Just a fan)
Here's something else to think about...nearly half of your visitors are from direct access or bookmark. How many of those direct access visitors originally found you via a search engine?
I (re)discovered seomoz from the Slashdot post a little over a month ago. Since then I've visited just about every day. So, that's one point to Slashdot and 50 or so points to direct access. Nearly half of your referrals are 'hidden' in your direct access percentage.
Yup, I noticed the same thing at the end of the year. Google was #3 or 4. MSN & Y! weren't worth mentioning. Forums, bookmark sites and blogs send me the most traffic.
In 3 months 14thC pulled over 6k visits with 70% growth per month. That trend is continueing without the aid of the SEs.
Of course I don't have any of those fancy highly competitive KWs in Google yet...