More Website Traffic – Producing more traffic to a website is one of the essential aspects of organic search optimization. After all, it is our job as SEO professionals to do this. Our role is to attract more eyes to a client’s website by implementing various technical optimizations, strategic content plans, off-page recommendations, etc. Every SEO report highlights organic traffic. This metric is one of the key performance indicators of the pillar.

While generating more traffic to a website is essential for a strong organic strategy, it’s also important to remember that more organic traffic doesn’t necessarily translate into a positive net result.

The following scenarios are examples of when generating more traffic is not better for a business.

1. Users can’t find what they’re looking for, and there’s an intent mismatch

This one is simple.

Let’s approximately a visitor is looking for a specific query; your site ranks highly for that query, and they click on a result that leads to a page on your website.

However, the page they land on doesn’t match the intent of what they were looking for, and they quickly leave. It is not a positive experience for the searcher. As a result, it does not match the user’s intent. We know that Google’s algorithm constantly improves to show the top matches a user’s query, but it’s not 100% perfect.

Suppose a searcher is looking for something, comes to your website, generates more traffic, but then quickly leaves because the content on your site is not what they were looking for, this can contribute to higher bounce rate metrics time on the lowest area. Etc These things can send negative signals to Google’s algorithm, indicating that your website’s result is not ideal for that query or intent.

2. Your Content Policy is Non-Existent or Poorly Executed

Would you host a dinner event if every room in your house was messy?

Or if you didn’t have the food and drinks ready to assist in time for the event?

  • Unknown your guests showed up when your house was in this state. They perhaps wouldn’t be writing home about your meeting, unfortunately.
  • Likewise, people won’t stick around if you drive traffic to a website without fundamental optimizations.
  • Users won’t stick around if you don’t have a complete content strategy or are posting poorly written content.
  • Users won’t stick around if you have a site that loads at a snail’s pace or isn’t mobile-friendly.
  • It is so important to Google that they are rolling out the Page Experience update to better measure how well each web page meets the needs of organic search visitors.
  • It has to be that essential to you too.
  • Then your SEO house should be in order, as considerable as possible, before you invite people.

3. More Traffic is not further Valuable than Conversions

The two points above enter into a classic debate about more important: more organic traffic or more organic conversions?

Many different points can be made on both sides of this question.

  • However, I’d rather get 100,000 visitors to a site, and 50% of them convert than 200,000 visitors and 25% of them correct.
  • The aim of an SEO strategy is not simply to get more traffic.
  • If we stopped there, we would be excluding one of the (if not the only) most important aspects of the role of an SEO: generating more ROI for companies.
  • If you see increases in traffic but don’t improve your conversion rate, you’re not achieving the best organic results.

4. The Site is Receiving Negative Press

  • Traffic gains can happen for reasons you’d probably rather avoid.
  • If your business is under analysis or receiving negative press, going back to your client and letting them know you saw an 80% increase in MoM organic traffic isn’t exactly positive.
  • If a recent scandal brought in a flurry of visitors, you don’t want to highlight it as a positive win for a client or try to claim it was due to a solidified organic strategy.
  • Situational awareness of what is happening from a more holistic point of view is key.

5. More Traffic on all Channels is Counterproductive

Looking outside the organic channel, we can easily identify other situations where generating more traffic is not ideal.

It can backfire if you direct website traffic through other channels, such as payments, to a not optimised site (content, technical, or user experience). Our PPC counterparts could be paying a higher cost per acquisition and directing more traffic to a page that quickly encourages users to leave.

6. Traffic is not Human or Bot Traffic Desirable

  • It is crucial to pay close attention to traffic sources and channels in Google Analytics.
  • The uncertainty of this traffic is not from humans, but spambots, an increase in traffic would not be a positive move.
  • It estimates that bots create 37% of website activity, and less than half of this bot activity is legitimate.
  • Spambot traffic is a kind of traffic that is usually illegitimate traffic sent to a site that skews and inflates traffic data.

7. You are Wasting Valuable Resources

Sometimes increased site traffic can deplete your resources. You might have some really strong informational content that drives a lot of traffic, but if it’s not relevant to your audience, you can end up with unintended consequences.

It goes beyond server issues to the very real cost of front-line staff and customer service agents who have to handle calls, emails, chats, and in-person inquiries from people who are unlikely to become customers.

  • It’s also important to make sure the leads you get from the search are relevant and high-intent.
  • Generate value, not just traffic
  • Not all traffic is the same. Not all traffic is significant.
  • While driving traffic to a site is a critical aspect of search engine optimization, that must come with a caveat.
  • Driving superior traffic to a website is a fundamental aspect of search engine optimization.

Reporting traffic increases that ultimately provided no value (no compelling piece of content that would drive more users, no optimization improvements that would lead to more conversions, etc.) is not value-added.

Your traffic quality and actions should be the most important in every optimization.

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