• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

nSiteful Web Builders

Building a Better Web - One Site at a Time.

  • Home
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Resources
  • Web Sites
  • Online Marketing
  • WordPress Support
    • Customized WordPress Training
    • 60-for-60 Sessions
  • Web Applications
  • Blog
    • Archive Listing Minimalistic
    • Blog Articles Grouped by Category
    • Case Studies
    • General
    • Portfolio
    • Reviews
    • Snippets
    • Techniques
  • Contact Jeff
    • Purchase Retainer Consulting Hours
    • About Retainer Consulting Hours

By Jeff Cohan, July 9, 2015

Traffic Does Not Equal Audience

I haven’t yet read Michael Wolff‘s latest book (“Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age”).

But a point he raised in a recent interview on one of the network morning news shows (I’m guessing he’s making the rounds as part of a promotional tour) made an impression on me.

Apparently, his book focuses on the advertizing failures of digital media. Despite grand expectations, he argues, both the costs and value of ads on digital properties are continually plummeting. His publishers introduce the book with this:

This is a book about what happens when the smartest people in the room decide something is inevitable, and yet it doesn’t come to pass. What happens when omens have been misread, tea leaves misinterpreted, gurus embarrassed?

The point that piqued my interest (and I’m paraphrasing here) is that while digital properties like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and Politico can boast of ever increasing traffic (even “truly phenomenal traffic”), traffic does not equal audience.

As a Web developer whose customers — almost without exceptions — are understandably concerned about search engine traffic, I find the distinction quite important.

There’s no question: We need traffic to our Web properties. But we need the right traffic, and we need to convert traffic to audience.

Traffic is a wave of people moving through our Web sites and social media properties.

Audience is people who stop to check us out.

Appreciating this distinction can make a world of difference when it comes to designing an effective online strategy.

picture of Pamela Anderson, a metaphor for the fact that traffic does not equal audience

Technical/Popular Culture Aside

In the early days of the Web, AltaVista reigned as the search engine king; the keywords attribute of the meta tag was the surest way to get your Web site indexed in AltaVista; and C.J. Parker was one of the main attractions for viewers of Baywatch. It was absolutely crazy how many Web pages exploited the system by using “Pamela Anderson”, the name of the model/actress who portrayed C.J., as a keyword phrase, hoping to get traffic.

Related Posts

  1. Unfollow-A-Huckster Wednesday
  2. 7 Lessons I’ve Learned from Live Chat
  3. Underlining for Emphasis: How to un-underline text on a Web page with CSS
  4. Don’t delete old content.
  5. Side Effects of Rebuilding Web Sites to be Responsive and Mobile-Friendly
  • Choose the best match.

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: General · Tagged: online strategy, SEO

  • Choose the best match.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Steve Levinson says

    July 10, 2015 at 11:35 am

    A distinction well worth remembering! Getting more Traffic without getting more Audience is like getting more Sht-t without getting more Pony.

    Reply
  2. Jay Maurice says

    August 22, 2015 at 9:49 am

    Agree completely Jeff. Working on a long running campaign recently, we made some changes that greatly effected traffic, we were worried at first because you know, x amount of traffic equals x amount of contacts equals yada yada yada.

    We were happy to learn that our changes were successful in bringing more “customers” (hate that word) to our site with far less traffic then ever before.

    Thanks for sharing

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

mailchimp signup

Subscribe to get notified when new articles are published. Unsubscribe any time. No spam. I promise. Check out my newsletter archives.

social

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn

Recent Articles

  • Use Case for Custom Post Type: “In The News” March 10, 2023
  • Create a Custom Shortcode to Display a MemberPress Membership Price ANYWHERE on Your Website February 5, 2023
  • Avoid Direct Styling; Use CSS Instead September 21, 2022
  • Blog Tags: What They Are (and What They’re Not) August 5, 2022
  • How to Create a Simple Custom Events Plugin May 24, 2022

Filter By Category/Tag

Categories

  • Case Studies (7)
  • General (61)
  • Portfolio (5)
  • Reviews (12)
  • Snippets (16)
  • Techniques (38)

Popular Tags

Advanced Custom Fields Blogging Child Themes Content Marketing CSS CSS Grid Customer Service Custom Fields Custom Post Types Diagnostics Facebook FooGallery Genesis Gutenberg HTML Images iPhone Libra Live Chat Marketing Media MemberPress MemberPress Courses mu-plugins MySQL Photo Gallery php Pinterest Plugins Post Formats Pricing Project Management Security SEO Seth Godin Shortcodes Social Networking Surveys Taxonomies Trello Twitter Video Web design Web forms WordPress

siteground wp hosting

Web Hosting

wp101

EasyWordPresstutorialvideosforbeginners.
MemberPress CTA

Footer

Background

Web Sites | WordPress Support | Web Applications.

Formally trained in liberal arts and education (I have a B.A. in Government from Harvard and studied Secondary Education at Rutgers Graduate School), I have honed my skills in the communication arts and sciences as a teacher, trainer, instructional designer, writer, photographer, calligrapher, helpdesk manager, database programmer, and multimedia developer.

(I've also been a group counselor, waiter, bartender, bicycle messenger boy, computer salesman, carpenter's helper, financial analyst, and school board president.)

Tech

Systems since 1983.
Web sites since 1994.
PHP since 2001.
WordPress since 2007.

Contact

770-772-5134
Email Jeff
Send Money
All Ways

Copyright 2023, nSiteful Web Builders, Inc.

 

Subscribe

Pardon the interruption. I know popups can be annoying. But I’d love to have you as a subscriber.

Sign up to be notified when new articles are published. Unsubscribe any time.

* indicates required

Powered by MailChimp

×