Bank some visitors for a rainy day

If you’re into Context Sensitive Advertising, you might make a big mistake that I see made all the time. That is, websites are selling ALL of their traffic back to search engines. This is wrong on a number of levels. Firstly, you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket, which you know will leave you with a basket of smashed eggs in the long run. Secondly and even worse, you’re selling yourself short because you’re looking for pennies when there’s big money at stake.

I’d rather have a visitor that clicks 100 times than someone who clicks once. Driving people further into the interior of your website gives you a chance to convert them on some level. Perhaps you’ll sell them something, or maybe you’ll just convert them into satisfied readers who visit your site everday and occasionally click on links.

As you can imagine, someone who visits often can make you a lot more money in the end than a one time visitor. Plus, if you ever lose your search engine rankings (even a bit), you can always count on the repeat visitors to carry the day.

How can you start banking some visitors? Reserve an ad spot for YOU on your website. Make sure at least one block on your pages drives someone deeper into your website or network. Firstly, this means the visitors is warming up, and after clicking several pages, she’s more likely to become actively involved. If you can bank even 10% of your search engine visits in this way, you end up making your job very easy.

If you’re in the second or third year, or even beyond, of running your website, you need to have some repeat business to show for your efforts. If you’re a “MFA”, chances are you haven’t built the requisite number of repeat visitors necessary for your life to get easier. Start banking today to build a better future.

What do you do to bank visitors? Do you try to convert some of your traffic or do you leave it all up to the big companies?