For a website to be successful, it needs to be able to make sales. There are two ways you can do this: by having both traffic and backlinks. These two are what you should consider before concluding that your website is successful.
A website without traffic isn't successful because without it, your don't have any visitors and you won't be making any money online. Without backlinks, your website will not rank well among others, and it won't be visible.
Then comes the question: which one should you aim first? Getting traffic as much as possible, or acquiring more backlinks?
In a case example, you have two websites. One with a PR 9 but 0 daily traffic, another one has a PR 1 but 5000 daily visits. Which is better?
Aiming For Numbers
Both web traffic and backlinks are what drives your website to the top of search engines. Most people aim to get dofollow link because it signals search engines to increase the website's ranking.
Bloggers tend to drop comments on blogs that are dofollow due to its significance. This has led to a high rate of spam comments on many websites. This is the reason why most websites have nofollow tags for their outbound links
However, both dofollow and nofollow can give you traffic.
Whichever type of backlinks you have, it's better to appreciate them. And no matter how much traffic you own, try to make them all satisfied.
Related: Dofollow and Nofollow in Building Links
Web Traffic Advantages and Disadvantages
By having an increased web traffic, you have better reasons to create more compelling posts. Most people blog because it's their passion, but to others, they're aiming for the money. Below is some of the advantages you can have by having a website with high traffic:
- Increased reputation.
- Powering up your social media presence.
- Higher income.
- Higher chance to get more backlinks.
- The chance to go viral.
- Etc..
Disadvantages of traffic have less concern because to most people, better visibility to their site is what they're aiming. However, there are some points you should consider if you're aiming to get high traffic to your site.
- Traffic isn't permanent. So it's a continuous work.
- Higher server load and more maintenance cost.
- As more people are accessing your website, the higher the risk for security breach.
- Answering more people's expectations.
- Viral drawbacks.
- Etc..
Backlinks Advantages and Disadvantages
While traffic can give you more backlinks, more backlinks could also translate to more traffic. Whichever way you choose, both work together for a good reason. Below is some of its advantages:
- Better ranking in search engines.
- Better visibility will make you get more visitors.
- Better influence, reputation, authority and credibility.
- Etc..
While the more backlinks you have usually result a better outcome for your site, it has some drawbacks:
- Is one of the most common spam. Search engines aren't liking the number of backlinks you have like they did before.
- Backlinks coming from spammy websites may damage your website's reputation.
- More backlinks means that more people will be visiting your site. If your site is down most of the time, people will see your site as incompetent.
- Etc..
Target What You Need, Not What You Want
While most people chose to get more backlinks because it's much easier that getting traffic, you need to know that your end target is. A website with tons of backlinks won't be making any sales if it doesn't have enough traffic. And what drives people to make a purchase from you is not just from the backlinks you have.
Getting as much backlinks as you can is never wrong, as long as you're not spamming others' websites. But if you're focusing on getting backlinks, you won't have enough time to concentrate in converting the traffic you own to make revenue.
If you have enough traffic already, make sure that your call-to-action button is clearly visible. Your contents are compelling and shareable, and your contents are updated and added frequently. So if you have targeted traffic, which means that people visit your site because they wanted to not just stumbled across you, you can prove yourself that your website is worth their time.
With better targeted traffic that actually likes your website, backlinks will still come, and they'll come on their own without you trying.
Many websites are hit with Google's algorithm updates such as the Panda and the Penguin. If you're hit with those updates, you may want to get back on track by getting a higher PageRank you just lost, and acquiring the traffic that just disappeared. But piling backlinks to your website in order to increase your traffic is not the only way.
There are a lot of way you can get traffic: better web design, better article posts, faster loading website, shareable contents, and many more. Never focus on one thing if you can do much more, especially if you have a target that awaits you just around the corner.
Further reading: The Reasons Why Your Backlinks Aren't Helping Your Search Engine Rank