Today I was visiting a popular Internet forum where someone had the courage to go against the grain.
They proclaimed that traffic is more important than content.
Naturally I agreed, though he had so many fierce detractors that I decided not to get involved, and would rather post my thoughts on my own domain. (That way, if I have fierce detractors, at least it will be a fair fight).
Anyway, there’s no doubt that the importance of traffic far outweighs the importance of content.
Traffic is king. Not content.
Allow me to present four cases to prove precisely that.
CASE A (A lesson from arguably the most profitable business of all time).
Look at a place like McDonalds.
Why are they one of the most successful businesses of all time?
Is it because…
A) They have superior content…
Or…
B) They have superior traffic.
I would contend that their success is the result of traffic that nobody else can match. (A keen business mind would tell you, that McDonalds is in the Real Estate market).
CASE B (A lesson of poor location IE: Poor traffic)
There was an awesome Barbeque restaraunt in my neck of the woods. It had the BEST BBQ in Massachusetts. (As evidenced by my friend from down south that proclaimed they had the BEST RIBS IN BOSTON). I verified his claim first hand, and concurred.
Their food was far superior to anyone else’s. But they went out of business due to poor location (hence poor traffic).
CASE C (A lesson from Nikola Tesla)
Also consider this…
Imagine two scientists made a water wheel to generate electricity.
Scientist A made a superior water wheel. It was designed so that it would optimally generate the highest torque possible and thus generate the highest quantity of electricity.
Scientist B’s design was really poor. It would not generate optimal torque and with the same quantity of current would generate only 10% of the electricity compared to Scientist A’s design.
Well, what happens if Scientist A’s water wheel is located in a stream with absolutely NO current?
Meanwhile, Scientist B’s water wheel is in a stream with massive current?
Which water wheel will generate more electricity?
The one with high traffic, or low traffic?
CASE D (A case derived from mobility)
Imagine if you had the best vehicle on the planet.
But the vehicle didn’t have any fuel.
How far would the vehicle take you in that instance?
Would it take you around the country? Around the planet? The answer is no. It wouldn’t take you anywhere.
Consider for another moment, that you had a totally rusted piece of junk. But this time, the car had fuel.
Which vehicle would take you further in this case?
The rusted piece of junk. It would allow you to go around the world. Because it had fuel.
:]
Food for thought.
PS: I’m not saying content isn’t important. Content comes first, but traffic is ultimately more important. As a final piece of evidence, consider the most successful affiliates on the planet. They have the same exact content that other people have, yet their superior traffic enables them to make a fortune.
PPS: I realize I’m contrarian in my viewpoints, and if you wish to challenge the cases I’ve presented, please do so respectfully, using logic, and not fervent passion.
Clearly, Mike you are correct. Although I am a supporter of great content and spend a lot of time providing it for my clients…the best content in the world does no one ANY good if no one sees it.
You need traffic to get eyes on the content. That’s all I’m saying. 🙂
I knew I could count on you Andrea 🙂
No doubt that content has to be awesome, but as you say, if nobody sees it, what good is it?
😀
Stay cool
Agree, but how do you get that traffic…maybe…because… of the content (?)
I don’t agree. Firstly, content is AS much important as traffic. If you have poor content here is what:
– Google doesn’t like you
– Nobody will link you, share, comment etc.
– Your bounce rate will be probably 90%.
So it’s nice you have even 1 milion IN your site but if your bounce rate is high that mean you spent a lot for ads and have no ROI.
Secondly, How can you compare offline businesses to ONLINE? It’s totally different. In reality even if you have good quality and bad location, I agree you will pass. But in the internet, when you have good content and at least little SEO your visitors WILL find you.
Another thing, why McDonald is so succesiful? Because they have big traffic? I know many restaurants where people walkin beside them all day long. And what? Nobody cares! Why people love McDonald? Because they have good burgers. Even when I dont have road beside Mc, I will go there even 5km because they HAVE a GOOD CONTENT (burgers).
So TRAFFIC is not a king. Content is a king, and traffic is a queen! 😉
Great thoughts. I would say: “Traffic is the currency of the www”.
Sorry, but content will always be king – and not traffic. Why? Without content you don’t have traffic. Put up a blank web page and see how much traffic you get. Traffic is dependent on content, but content is not dependent on traffic.
The issue with your analogies is that you are comparing different quality content – not “no content” to “content.” McDonald’s content is it’s food. Imagine if McDonalds stop selling fast food – how many customers would go to McDonalds – very few if any. McDonald’s also has a huge marketing machine that sells it’s food – once again without it’s food (content), what does McDonald’s have to sell?
That’s a tough one really, don’t they both go hand in hand?
I like Jakub’s post, traffic is king and content is queen, perfect.
Course on the other hand, content can bring in traffic and actually it seems to be more important each day to the search engines.
Build it and they will come?
Thanks for the comments guys. :]
But wait – let me throw on my troll hat and present the jury with one final piece of evidence.
Case A: Salesman A builds a website, with 10,000,000,000,000 high quality posts, but gets 0 unique hits and earns $0.
Case B: Salesman B builds a website with 1 mediocre post, but gets 100 unique hits and earns $50.
Which is more potent?
Your honor, the defense rests.
This discussion is NOT about either/or. Obviously, you want both factors (traffic and content) to be of good quality/quantity.
However, this discussion is about which of the 2 is ultimately most important, and which of the 2 is ultimately more worth pushing from “good” to “excellent”.
If your content and traffic were both 4 stars out of 5, you’d absolutely make more money working towards earning your last star in Traffic than in Content.
I completely agree with all of your cases but how does that traffic come about in the first place? With a new business website it’s not about placing it in the best place to get the most traffic. You have to start from scratch and the key to doing that is with good content (amongst other things).
I actually believe you are missing the point here.
Traffic and content are as important as each other in equal measure, but the one piece you are missing is longevity and time.
In Case A, you always find other outlets springing up who have superior content around the McDonalds and over time, they bleed some of the traffic into their outlets
In case B, well, there is one born every minute, but if they had the means to stay in business, it would have succeeded, but the ingredient they were missing was time.
In case C, the amazing brain will figure out a way to divert the fantastic current from the bad design over time, thus starving the bad design of current.
In case D, the content is what is driving the car anyway, so it really is a non question.
The real answer then is that if the 2 are considered, you have a considered plan for getting both and you have the “TIME”, then they are both as important as each other.
The only time either are more important than the other is if the plan is either a hit and run job with masses of traffic or a personal fulfillment excercise in the case of cotent.
So it seems that the main debate here is where did all the traffic originate, if content isn’t king? I would just like to add my own two cents into this debate jar and make a couple points. Before I do that, I would like to mention that I believe that strong/quality content is what builds strong/quality relationships with your audience, but that is all based on an individual’s perception of what strong/quality content looks like.
All relationships aside, the a couple strong points in favor of traffic taking precedence over content is the following:
1. Mainstream Media (control)
2. Marketing/Campaigning
1. Look at almost anything you see in mainstream media, especially in the entertainment industry. 9 times out of 10 You can find something/someone similar or better that will never have a fraction of the amount of influence as some of these “artists” have, just because of the amount of eyes see them on a consistent basis.
2. This leads me to my second point that the amount of influence someone has, is based on the amount of traffic they consistently bring in, which has much more to do with marketing/campaigning than it has to do with creating “quality” content, which is mostly based on perception.
Traffic is KING, hands down. In fact, you do NOT need content at all.
Case in point, I created a “blog” with a ton of unique and super high quality content. Now granted, I didn’t do as much SEO or content marketing as I had planned. The site never gained traction in the search engines, and I made very little money from it.
I also made a squeeze page, sent a bunch of paid traffic to it, got subscribers and email them with affiliate offers. I create almost no content at all, yet make money every time I email them.
Content is hugely over-rated. Not to say I don’t create content, but the content I do create is now seen because I add the URL to my mailings. But most likely no one would ever see that content unless I sent the URL to people on my list.
So for me, from my own results, traffic (paid) is KING. I wouldn’t even think twice about that answer. Just ask some of the gurus who don’t blog any more, don’t create anything new as far as products, yet still make a killing from their email lists by just sending affiliate offers.
Results speak louder than “feelings” or guesses.