Ask YC: Is long-tail Google search traffic a good thing?

[shafqat]

If your site has a lot of pages indexed by Google, its likely that a lot of your traffic is from organic SEO traffic. It's great because its free and usually grows as your site's pages grow. The negative is that the bounce rates are higher.

What do you guys think? Is a lot of SEO traffic a good thing or something to be concerned about?

[KLAW]

It's really important and not at all negative, it just means people are searching for something specific, and will most likely move on once they've found it.

For retailers, these are the 'gold' searches. The more detailed the search phrase, the more likely the purchase.

Think about it: 'Digital camera' is far too broad to determine the mindset of the searcher, but 'sony cybershot offer black' shows a far greater purchase intent. Add on a specific product name / number and a sale will be imminent.

For NewsCred this stuff is equally important. You can minimise bounce rates by doing more to keep these users onsite, be it related content, UGC, improved usability / navigation, etc.

Besides, traffic is traffic...

[shafqat → KLAW]

Good points all around. We definately have to focus on keeping these SEO users on the site longer. More importantly, to have a good acquisition funnel to convert them to registered/regular users.

I'm not so sure all traffic is created equal, but the marginal benefit of all traffic is certainly positive.

[KLAW → shafqat]

To encourage users to sign up you just need to encourage more interaction / personalisation. Easier said than done, I know.

The news aggregation game is a bit in-and-out... traffic we receive (as a publisher) from aggregators comes in and mainly bounces. These readers often browse multiple sources to get a view on an individual story (to get a wider spectrum of views, more detail, better pics, more user insight etc).

The way NewsCred is designed doesn't lend itself so well to this... you have promote one story at a time; I'd consider adding more links to more sources on that story, Techmeme/Google News-style, to take advantage of this sort of behaviour.

Maybe users can ultimately choose their own sources, or NewsCred can choose for them, based on where other people are going. The key is in achieving a good depth of coverage, rather than just pointing people at the big media sites.

[shafqat → KLAW]

Agree completely that its all about depth of content. What's your startup? Don't see it mentioned in your profile!

[KLAW → shafqat]

Ah thanks, schoolboy error. We talked by email a couple of weeks ago... now updated ; )

[ScottWhigham]

To me, that's like asking, "My customers that pay with $100 bills tend to spend more than the ones who pay with $20 bills. What do you guys think? Is a lot of $20-bill-paying customers a good thing or something to be concerned about?" It just doesn't make sense to me.

Traffic is money for you I would assume. You don't appear to sell directly to subscribers so you need traffic if you are going monetize your site.

[shafqat → ScottWhigham]

Our monetization strategy is not dependent on traffic, although ad revenue from the consumer site is definately a bonus. As for our biz model, I'll post about it separately once we can disclose more.

[mechanical_fish → shafqat]

It must be a pretty odd monetization strategy if people checking out the product is a bad thing. Even a visitor who will never be a customer might have friends or blog readers that will.

Do you work for the NSA? Have you considered deploying a login barrier and a splash screen to drive people away? ;)

[shafqat → mechanical_fish]

Haha... I never said having traffic is a bad thing! I'm just comparing what the merits of long tail SEO traffic is vs direct or SEM traffic.