Targeted Traffic: what is it?

Hi,

Would you share your experience about "Targeted Traffic": What does it mean? Is it just simple traffic from search engines? Like someone is searching for shoes and then comes across your site and finds ads about shoes?

Where is the difference to "Untargeted Traffic" and how do I tell if have such bad or good traffic on my site?

 

Targetted traffic is basically traffic or vistors that have some sort of interest on your site..

So yes if your site was about shoes, and they searched on google and found your website about shoes then that would be targetted traffic.
If you advertise on adwords, and you select the right keywords relevant for your site, you would be getting targetted traffic.

Untargetted traffic is traffic where they may not be interested in your website at all.
I'd use a stats program to monitor how many people actually use the site, rather than just glance at it and leave.

 

I agree with AnsonM targeted traffic is visitors who have interest in the topic of your site. You can get targeted traffic through expired domains, search engines, ppc ads and so on. these people are most likely to browse your site, buy smething from your site or click on your ads.
Autosurf program and similar sites provide untargeted traffic where people are not interested in your site. They might come to your site through autosurf, popups, by clicking on a wrong ad and so on. These people will not remain for long on your site.

 

Thank you both, that's very interesting. I have a forum and 80% of my traffic comes from Google and I'm happy with the earnings.

Who would be so insane to drive such untargeted traffic as you described it to their site? I mean it seems logical to me that sooner or later smart pricing would kill such sites wouldn't it?

 

It can also mean an advertiser has bought out all your ad inventory by being the highest bidder, as Jack likes to say. Over the weekend a major Fortune 500 corporation bought out my ad inventory. Today I will have a $60 day for the first time. Maybe even more! This occurred after I replaced the "advertise on this site" tags which I had removed as a result of bad advice. My thinking is if you remove the "advertise" tag then advertisers will think you are not interested in soliciting ads for your site.

 

Targetted to me means traffic that is interested in the content and advertisements on the page.

For instance, I have a site about programming, I have ad campaigns targetted at programming sites and keywords. While "Java Programming" is targetted "VCR Programming" is not targetted but I get the occasional visitor arriving at my site from that keyword (I may rank for a few odd related keywords).

 

Only if your advertisements are realted to the topic of your site

 

No, that was the point I was trying to make. The ads don't have to relate to the topic, but the traffic should be targetted at both the content and the ads on the page.

For instance, a female visiting a site on gardening may be interested in sites about womens health. So targetted traffic might be women aged 25-45. I happen to be male, and do a little gardening, but I am in no way interested in womens health.

AdWords does have that new demographics feature which helps target traffic even more. But your ads and/or content don't have to be related to each other, the traffic just has to be targetted at both.

 

But you cannot build a site on gardening and put ads on womens health for getting clicks from women aged 25-45. If you do so you will be losing clicks from more than half of the traffic.
If both content and ads are of same topic, you can get clicks from all kinds of targeted visitors

 

Yes, but not all ads are contextual or even site related. Many advertisers (myself included) will target a site who's visitors may be interested in my product/topic due to the targetting of visitors on that site.

Since it would be difficult for a womens health site to advertise on other womens health sites, instead one would target a site whos visitors fit a demographic.

 

I target my ads a little better. I get most of my traffic from adwords so I only allow some countries. I have received good results from this.

 

yeah you would'nt want to target a country that made that click on your ads but have no means to pay for the leather seat that your selling.

 

exactly the plan depending on what you want them to do and what kind of site you have.

 

It all comes down to money, with a general traffic site your ads are usually going to get fewer clicks, so you are typically paying pennies per thousand page impressions. I think with my recent PPC campaigns I got 40-50 million page impressions for a few thousand dollars from very general traffic sites. And yes, I turned a nice profit on it.

On the other hand, the highly targetted stuff costs a lot more and there is a lot less of it. Your costs could be $10, $20, $50 per thousand page views, but you'll get way more clicks than you would if it was general traffic.

All that is happening here is traffic filtering. Whether its paid for by the click or impression doesn't matter. At the end of the day you should be turning a profit on each visitor.

Take a look at the mortage ads running on the big mainstream news sites. I'm not buying a house and probably the next 500 viewers aren't either. But someone is, maybe one out of 500, maybe one out of 5,000. A few of them click, one converts, and they make a profit.

 

The search engines no longer value a link that isn't from a website similar to yours as much. Targeted means if you run a women's website selling beauty products you should aim to exchange links with similar beauty or women's sites, rather than with a site about automobiles.

 

Targeted Traffic also means visitors from limited countries - ages

 

If your buying traffic off of a site it is not good traffic.

 

Only search engines can give the targetted traffic....moreover its a quality one.

 

Targeted traffic doesn't always have to come from the search engines...it can come from people who read your articles on other sites or directories and find that your site may give them more information. It can come from people finding your site interesting on a forum. It can come from people who enjoy your blog if you have a related site to your blog. Or it can come from someone who finds your site interesting, and they tell their friends who are interested in your business to check your site out.

 

Targeted traffic can be explained in terms of want. If people who get to your site, want the things you offer there, then you have targeted traffic. The want factor is important because they will click or buy if they want it.