Traffic is the fuel that keeps every digital business and website going. Everything is and should be secondary to it. It doesn’t really make a difference in which niche or market a particular business operates online – generating quality traffic should always be on the top of their to-do list.
But what actually qualifies as “quality traffic”?
Every smart online business is interested in receiving something more than just random clicks from random Internet users. They’re all looking for visits from people who pose a high potential for becoming their paying customers, users, or shoppers. They want to keep bringing audiences to the site that are actually interested in what their brand has to offer.
In a sense, that is what qualifies as “quality traffic.”  Regardless of the fact that this is a pretty vague concept for online brands that haven’t defined their buyer/user personas in detail yet, it’s still something that keeps companies afloat.

The Complexity of Generating Quality Traffic and Common Mistakes that Brands Make in this Department

In order to stimulate the right type of audience to visit their site, businesses invest in different strategies and do basically everything in their power to master only one big traffic source that will bring them the visits they want.
Even though in theory this feels like the right strategy for getting the desired type of people to discover your brand and business online, in practice this plan is actually full of holes. Most businesses make the same mistake here: they focus all their time and energy on only one traffic source. As we have recently seen from all the backlash when Facebook started testing its Explore Feed, most online businesses are far too dependent on that traffic source.
Every little tilt or change could crush their entire operation.
Unfortunately, change is an unavoidable part of the equation. With each algorithm update, Google creates panic online because digital business owners don’t really know if they’re going to lose their hard-earned rankings or not. Every time an algorithm update happens, web admins, marketers, and entrepreneurs are forced to reshape their SEO strategy to comply with Google’s new set of rules. The same goes for content.
That is why it’s a huge problem to put the entire fate of your business into only one, main source of traffic. It’s a horrible idea for any type of brand online to rely on Google or Facebook alone, because both of these channels are ever-changing and ever-evolving.  
Imagine your flow of traffic that you receive from, let’s say – Google, as a train. After the latest Penguin algorithm update was released, the train stops passing through your town. Your train tracks are old, they are not a great fit for the new locomotive and wagons, and so you’re being left out of the route.
From a business point of view this is nothing short of a complete nightmare. No traffic means no money. There is nothing wrong with Google being your main source of traffic, but you should never allow it to be your only source of traffic. It is important to diversify traffic sources so you have time to recuperate from Google updates.
Increasing the diversity of sources is a great strategy for white label sites because there isn’t a single source of traffic online that is wholly “safe.”

How to Diversify Traffic Sources

The great thing about the Internet today is that there are many powerful sources from which you can get quality traffic. People now shop using literally dozens of channels at the same time, and they are interested in brands that actually focus on finding them and presenting their product and services in a way that works best for the user. Here are just some of the more common ways on how you can diversify your traffic:

1. Play the Social Media Game

First of all, you should look for easy wins. Try working on your social media reputation across multiple channels at the same time by designing a strategy that will help you get some engagement on different platforms.
Statistics show that a lot of people use social media today to find relevant information about brands with which they’re thinking of doing business. And not just that; they also base their decisions on the way their selected brands behave on their favorite network. If, for example, a user is looking for a particular product/service, and he is trying to decide between two companies, practice has shown that he or she will always pick the one that has better social media presence; especially on his or her favorite channel.

2. Invest in PPC, Build an Email list

Believe it or not, email is the third most influential source of information for B2B shoppers and decision makers. According to WordStream’s findings, more than 85 percent of business professionals prefer email, especially when it comes to business communication. The same article claims that email is still one of the most effective channels in terms of revenue generation.
Having all these statistics in mind, I think it’s pretty fair to say that building a big and nicely profiled email list is certainly worth considering as a safety net for brands and businesses.
The same goes for PPC. According to Google, businesses make 2 dollars for every 1 dollar they spend on AdWords. Even though this seems a bit far-fetched to those who invest in pay-per-click, running effective PPC campaigns can still help you get a lot of value for your money. According to WordStream, for high commercial-intent searches (someone looking to buy a product), paid ads get 65 percent of all clicks.

3. Referrals

Referrals are great for diversifying traffic. They can get your content and links in front of audiences, creating new opportunities for audience engagements and conversions. There are numerous ways you can get your hands on some sweet referral traffic. First and foremost, you should try building some relevant links for your website pages. The more relevant channels you have pointing back at your site, the better the chances you’ll have of receiving hot, new traffic.
You can write guest posts for relevant niche publications, monitor your brand mentions and look for opportunities on how to grab that traffic, claim your local links, chase industry-related linkable assets, interview influencers, or even write reviews of products and services that you’re using.
If you work in an industry such as marketing, you can also submit your links to news aggregators like Reddit, Inbound.org, GrowthHackers, HackerNews, etc. Be active on forums and get your brand mentioned in all relevant listings.

4. Create Customized Landers for Each Type of Traffic

Customized landing pages are the perfect tools for getting a segmented audience that focuses on a single action to visit your site. A sales-focused e-commerce page with customized components that are unique and relevant to a particular individual can provide brands with a lot of high-quality traffic every day. These can easily be converted into leads, fans, and followers.
The solution for your traffic diversification troubles lies in creating dedicated landing pages for every type of traffic you want to generate. If you invest some serious thought into their design, these landing pages will talk directly to each kind of visitor you get, regardless of which traffic source they’re coming from. Social media, Google’s organic search, a product page, a blog post – these are just some of the channels from which you can generate users.
It all depends on how you choose to personalize your landers. You can do it by user’s gender, age, organization (name, size, nature, or industry), geo location, device, search method, on-site history or search history. The opportunities are endless.
Numerous examples can be found online on how different brands use different landers to attract a specific audience from specific channels. For example, HubSpot builds landers to generate visits from two separate groups. On one side, we have people learning what small business marketing is, and on the other are those who use larger business models. Obama ran landers that were solely built for Redditors. The list goes on and on.
Personalized landing pages are great because they are relevant to users, and thus they reduce bounce rates. They also match visitor’s current intent and provide high levels of engagement/better conversion rates to anyone who invests more than a couple of bucks into their design.

Over to You

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. I hope it helped you understand why it is so important to diversify your traffic and think beyond Google’s organic search and Facebook. I also hope that this article provided you with enough ideas on how to make the most of your presence online and start generating quality visits from different sources. Be sure to follow all the tips closely and do your best to be present on as many traffic channels as possible.