This week in class we learned some of the basic terms related to how website traffic is generated and some of the ways businesses can boost this number. There are a few different ways for traffic to be generated. Individuals can go directly to the website’s URL. This is called direct traffic. Referral traffic comes from links to your website from other sites and pages on the internet. This can either be paid (advertisements, endorsements) or unpaid (forum posts, reviews, etc.). Finally, traffic can also come from search results. This can either be an organic listing, meaning the website is ranked based off its actual relevance to the topic, or a paid listing advertised at the top of the page.

Using the traffic tools shown in class I tried to search my client’s website: www.londonmotorworks.com. Unfortunately, it has so little traffic that the tools had no listings for it or data on it. The problem is evident with a few google searches. Searching, “KC Mechanic,” “Independent Mechanic KC,” or even “Waldo mechanic” yield no results for London Motorworks on the first page. Searching for “Wornall mechanic” (the name of the road the shop is located on) shows the website towards the bottom of the page. However, the only way to find the website towards the top of search results is simply by searching for the shop’s name.

Right off the bat, I think it might be useful for my client to do a small amount of paid advertisement related to the keywords “Kansas City independent mechanic.” I imagine this is such a specific set of terms that the cost would not be very high for advertising, but it could lead more customers to his website. His website also needs to be updated to include actual information rather than just contact info, and it needs to be modified to rank higher in organic search results. This blog post itself is actually helping his website. The outgoing link will be seen by search engines and increase page rank.