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When Buying Websites Don't Believe Traffic Numbers

Read this before you buy any website! There are very good reasons not to believe the traffic numbers quoted without seeing screen shots and seeing for yourself thought third party tools. Buyer beware, as you'll see, it is very easy to inflate traffic.

Let's just go over the ways people inflate traffic before selling a site and you decide for yourself: (Including a number I haven't covered before.)

1. Add the site to a HTTP monitoring system.
2. Duplicate existing log files and refold them into measures.
3. Robotic web browsers and traffic exchanges.
4. Images being misused or linked onto third-party websites.
5. Cross linking unrelated but high traffic sites.
6. Faking referrals with stuffing and injections.
7. Automated scripts that forge headers while they spider your site.
8. Spamming software for auto comments or link back schemes.
9. Bad spiders which download or mirror your content.
10. Including images with impression counts.
11. Employees making a site their home page or site used for demonstrations.
12. Bad media coverage or short lived viral efforts.
13. Forced social book marketing scripts or hiring students to post back.
14. Purchasing unqualified traffic from exchanges or banner networks.

Several of these ways to inflate traffic happen on their own (and can be prevented), while others are deliberate attempts to deceive. All of them cost YOU money in the long run.

The bottom line is not to believe traffic as much as UVD, composition, and revenue measures. There are plenty of high traffic sites out there not worth a dollar (and I own some of them.)

Getting traffic is the easy part, creating sales is what you want to hire. You don't need tricks to get traffic, but you do need to understand and connect with your customers.

Before purchasing a website, believing a so-called SEO expert, or even believing your own log file; drill down and understand what is really happening in your logs.

The best measure of a business website success is sales, not traffic, dollars in and dollars out is more difficult to fake. Before you buy a business website look for customers created, dollars generated, and how the site fits your long term marketing plan.

© 2009 B2B Website Profits, all rights reserved.

Justin Hitt and Hitt Publishing Direct help business websites attract customers and generate more revenue for your technology services firm. For a complementary site analysis visit http://HittPublishingDirect.com/

Posted by Justin Hitt on April 8, 2009 9:57 AM | Permalink

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