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Successful Online Marketing Aint All About Building Back Links And Traffic

What on earth is he talking about??? That’s contrary to every article on SEO and traffic building I’ve read till date!

The problem is many people who are charged with the task of turning their website into a successful marketing channel take these two metrics and set them as their primary objectives losing sight of the big picture. Back links, increasing your page rank, maximizing page-views, reducing bounce rates although considered metrics for successful websites should actually be secondary outcomes which result from going after a primary goal which is far more important “creating a high quality engagement with your online audience“. If you do this, the rest will follow and you’ll end up having more than just a website with impressive traffic figures but doesn’t do wonders as far as your key objectives go. You’ll have a long term online asset which works for you.

Here is what we’re talking about:

Super Holiday Hotels sets up a brand new website for their new property in Male, Maldives. They decide they want some aggressive traffic building activity for their new site with tonnes of unique visitors and back links from the top travel websites with high page ranks to increase their own page rank. They set out to hire a few freelance article writers who can deliver bulk posts 500 words in length at a steal, hire more freelance guys who do link submissions to directories and promise 250 plus back links to your website in a month and another set of guys who will comment on other blogs (some of whom will use bots) and pay them for every 100 comments posted. In 8 months the Super Holiday Hotels has 35,000 unique visitors a month! A success! Oh… and they also get an average of 3 visitors who fill in their online reservation form and book rooms with them each month.

The Beachfront Hotel sets up a brand new website for their new property in Male, Maldives. They decide they want to turn their website into a source of inbound reservations and bookings for the long term so that most of their sales will come through the website. They know the way to do this is build a reputation online, reflect their own hospitable personality and love for their island nation online through their social media channels and create relationships with online travelers so that some day they may arrive at the property as guests. They engage BuzzFactory.net! (…just kidding) They create an resource for people traveling to the Maldives irrespective of where they plan to stay. They deliver great content which carries their personality as a business while also ensuring what they publish is information that readers can rely on and help them on their travels there. They work steadily at building a publication which is invaluable to anyone who plans to visit Male, creates a community of those interested in the island around their site, creating communities on Facebook, Twitter while answering questions for those communities keeping them updates on what happens on the island and the property. In 8 months The Beachfront Hotel has reached 10,000 visitors a month. Disappointment? Not really… they will eventually get to 35,000 in a few months time and keep climbing. More importantly, with just 10,000 visitors a month, they have averaged 20 bookings and reservations a month through their website which accounts for 50% of their occupancy each month. It’s working!

Quality! Quality! Quality!

Quality of your objectives and plan + Quality of your execution = Quality of your results

The Beachfront Hotel was not blinded by the numbers of back links and unique visitors. The visitors to their website were not a flow of traffic from some irrelevant high traffic website as a result of clever traffic building schemes, they were people searching for travel information in Male and found a reliable online personality by the name of The Beachfront Hotel which offered it. They interacted with them on Facebook, decided to explore the website a bit further and made a decision to stay there during their visit. In the long run…chances are…other high ranking travel websites will see The Beachfront Hotels online publication as a great resource for that destination and link them anyway.

Traffic and back links are a by-product of having a really great website which others consider a “great resource” or “important website” with your domain. With the right direction, right objectives and metrics to measure your online marketing success by, you’ll be on your way to building a really great web asset.

7 Comments to Successful Online Marketing Aint All About Building Back Links And Traffic

  1. August 24, 2010 at 11:25 am

    Nice one Neil!

  2. August 26, 2010 at 3:24 am

    I have read this blog it has full information and fully hotel seo online Strategy about search engine optimization.

  3. September 12, 2010 at 6:41 am

    I apologize I will have to disagree with you on this. Successful marketing does comprise of Traffic and links, becuase thatis waht will get you the visibility.

  4. August 18, 2011 at 3:00 am

    I agree… “high quality traffic.” That only comes when your marketing efforts are people-focused, not link-focused. Sure, you need links but you can’t do it without people.

  5. August 18, 2011 at 10:21 am

    Exactly Charleen ! If people find value in your content, site etc..they will share it and links will develop organically. I think it’s deceptive when people offer link building tools that automate random comments on irrelevant sites and count them as links. The links need to be a result of quality engagement and good content….not the other way round.

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