Biggest Online Marketing Myth

There are hundreds of ways to generate traffic to a website. Search Engines, forums, Social Media, Web 2.0, Directories, Pay per Click, banner ads, etc. There are more ways to drive traffic out there than I care to learn (and I'm one of those they call "experts"). However no matter what strategy you are currently using to drive traffic to your website, one thing is certain; you understand the importance of traffic. More importantly for business owners that rely largely on their online presence and their online lead generation, traffic is vital to the success of their online objectives.

However, I think, that traffic has taken too much of a central role in the way most businesses implement their online strategy. It has become the main and only focus of most webmasters and online consultants, when they measure and analyze the success of their online campaigns.

Every time someone asks me how to get more visitors to their site, my initial response sounds a bit like this: "Why would I want to go to your website? What do you offer your visitors? How do you use your site's current traffic?"

Almost every time, the answers to those questions will tell me exactly what I need to know. The answers usually tell me if they are adequately using their traffic, if they ready for more traffic or if they should be focusing on increasing their traffic at all. And don't get me wrong, you should always try to get more traffic but, until you fix what I'm about to tell you, it shouldn't be your main focus.

Many, if not most webmasters and online consultants think that traffic equals money; and, while it's true that it takes traffic to make a business website profitable, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. It's about how targeted the traffic is and how the website's message meets the needs of those visitors.

You can dramatically increase the profits and the leads generated by your website without any change in traffic.

This can be accomplished by optimizing your website for conversions. What are conversions?

Conversions (aka conversion rate) is measured be taking the ratio or percentage of visitors that take a desired action over the total amount of visitors. What do I mean by a "desired action"? A few examples of what a desired action might be are sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, lead generation, or any other activity besides simple page browsing.

Regardless if the goal of your website is to make a sale or capture a lead the percentage of the visitors that take that intended action is your conversion rate. Focusing on increasing the traffic to a website that does not convert will NOT do any good for the business.

But by increasing the conversions on a site and optimizing the process those visitors go through once they get there, there is an immediate improvement the effectiveness of that site and a potential increase of profits.

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