Wait? Isn’t More Google Traffic Better?

Here’s a trick question.

A blog post gets top search positions, but it only drives about 100 visitors from Google a year. Of those, only 15-20 turn into customers.

Should you:

a. Delete the non-performing page?

b. Rewrite the content?

c. Celebrate? Are you kidding — the page has a 15-20 percent conversion rate!

Yup, the answer is C. Sure, you can always tweak and test along the way, but a 20 percent conversion rate is nothing to sneeze at.

At the same time, I would have completely understood if your first reaction was to delete or rewrite the page.

You see, metrics can be tricky.

People can get hung up on the wrong things and completely ignore the awesomeness right in front of them.

This “what would you do with this page?” scenario popped into my brain as I read this article about how traffic quantity doesn’t always mean quality traffic.

I mean, I’m all for driving scads of traffic to my site. But if my content efforts don’t convert or make me (eventual) money, I can’t justify the time and expense outlay.

And neither can you.

(I’ve talked about this before. My weekly content roundups rocked and drove lots of traffic. I never made a dime from them, and I’m still dealing with the blog post spam.)

That’s why I’d rather work smarter. Which sometimes means driving fewer folks — but those folks (like you) are deeply interested in upping their SEO writing game and what I have to say.

I’d rather find “my people” rather than try to appease the masses.

Thank you for being my people.

At the same time, I’ve worked with clients who see a page that’s “only” driving a few hundred folks, so they want to start pushing the delete button.

They’re not looking at lead rates or if a page is crucial to the path to the agreement.

They’re looking at a small piece of the metrics pie without balancing it with other data.

Don’t let this happen to you.

So, be wary of using Google traffic (or a lack of Google traffic) as the only indicator if a page is “quality” or worth keeping.

Always look deeper and investigate further.

What do you think?

Has a client wanted to delete a “low traffic” page with great conversion rates? How did you handle it? Leave a comment and let me know.