Page traffic detracts from main web theme

[M & C]

Can anyone help! I added an optimised important dates calendar page to my gift box website thinking the information would be useful for website users to find Mothers Day dates, public holidays with non delivery etc and developed it further upon request from the public with a free art calendar download. I’ve been too successful at SEO. These two pages are attracting double the unique visitors every month until they’re now using so much bandwidth and have virtually taken over my gift box website. You’ve always said to add interesting affiliated pages to drive traffic but this is ridiculous! It has got to the stage where orders have dropped off for gifts and I’m wondering if Google is ‘penalising’ me in some way for thinking I’m a calendar site rather than a gift site!

We’re currently thinking to dump these two different pages but after all the work with little in the way of ongoing updates needed each year, it seems so wasteful of good traffic.

Can anyone suggest options for me? Is it possible to sell the optimised pages to another nz calendar company with a 301 redirect?

Also, if I remove the calendar dates pages and the free download pages how long will it take to be recognised as a gift website again?

[tamecrow]

Can we take a look at the site and the traffic stats? It's a little hard to say anything based on the information given so far.

[M & C]

Thanks Tamecrow for attempting to solve this dilemma!

Site is Giftboxes.co.nz


Stats for
Jan 08 Un.Vis 7060; Hits 342461; bandwidth 2.39 GB
April: UV 9692; Hits 449957, 3.34GB
June: UV 17208; Hits 709086; 6.37 GB
Aug: UV 30590; Hits 1622679; 9.31 GB
Sept to date: UV 32379; Hits 1754333; 9.77GB

This month Pages: URL
Download free etc: Viewed 33569, av sz 18.29; entry 29446; exit 16039
Slash in a box?: Viewed 27757; av sz 20.36; entry 2458; exit 15663
Important dates: Viewed 3835; av sz 20.47; entry 3157; exit 3001
Boxes: Viewed 360; av sz 13.81; entry 123; exit 146

As the website owner I've been told what the box with the slash in it is - but have forgotten!

Of the first 132 keyword phrases that were search only 15 were for any type of gift! All the others were for calendar plus a date/year or a search for a public holiday, special occasion day etc.

The other thing is that even 'boxes' is not right for gifts but we do have special arty boxes and want to feature them but Americans on the whole appear to consider gift boxes as packaging rather than a 'gift basket' and are possibly searching for packaging - so there is yet another terminology dilemma which is confirmed really by the number of people visiting who don't stay for even a minute!

What do I do? Any advice appreciated.

[claybutler]

Wow. Congratulations. This is a good problem to have. Perhaps this will become it's own business supported by adwords or affiliate links. Definitely don't destroy it.

First I'd try to convert that traffic to the other parts of the site. Coupons? Nice big calls to action? Hot Gift of The Month Feature? Just looking at the calender page it's little wonder why it doesn't convert to sales too well. it's perfect for the calender but almost has no clear calls to action to purchase anything. I'd try that first.

[netman4ttm]

I like the site.
Change the bookmark to the home page not the calender page. At least your clients will come in the front door of your shop.
Perhaps limit the calender download to one month, not a year. That way they come back at least monthly. Also, an opt in e-mail so they know when the next calender comes out with a coupon or link to a sale item.
I agree you need something to convert the just looking to buyers on the calendar page.

[RichAtVNS]

I don't think your going to convert anybody looking for calender information into a buyer. I have a few article archives that have generated huge traffic over the last few years (with calls to action of highly correlated product) and they do not generate sales at all.

The Source
From the Side of the Road
A Little Help

They are great though at raising my PR for related pages in the search engines. And I think if I would allow adsense ads they would monetize (but I have strick policy of not allowing product ads on my site that I am not in control of).....

Over the years they have generated alot of goodwill and helped with PR (even when sales are slow)

DO NOT GET RID OF THE CALENDER (if you need to just get some more and bandwidth by moving images off your server on to inexpensive highspeed web/image server on the internet using a subdomain) Thats what I do and highly recommend.

[SisterSledge]

Australia celebrates Easter on Mondays?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by M & C

Can anyone suggest options for me? Is it possible to sell the optimised pages to another nz calendar company with a 301 redirect?

Why not keep them and sell some ads on them? 301 redirecting them will cause the traffic to eventually disappear.

[malice95]

Originally Posted by claybutler

First I'd try to convert that traffic to the other parts of the site. Coupons? Nice big calls to action? Hot Gift of The Month Feature? Just looking at the calender page it's little wonder why it doesn't convert to sales too well. it's perfect for the calender but almost has no clear calls to action to purchase anything. I'd try that first.

I agree with Clay.. You need to find a way to get those calendar user to see your products.
I would add advertising into the calendar itself for your products and on the webpage
where you can download it make sure you feature some of your hotest selling products
that are related to specific events.. vaslentines day, fathers day, etc..

You website is very nice but if this is where people are entering your site.. you need to
be a bit more bold in getting them to your shopping pages. All you have is a simple link
in the menu.. Big buttons, sales, graphics, etc.. how about an email reminder service for
all the important dates on your calendar and of course each email will be riddled with advertising for
your site. Start capturing those emails by requiring them to enter in their email address to
download the calendars.

Mike

[Christiaan]

Originally Posted by SisterSledge

Australia celebrates Easter on Mondays?

No, Australia. and other countries like the Netherlands, do celebrate Easter on Sundays.
However, they also have a public holiday on the Monday following.

[ron angel]

I have just had a look at the site cant see the calender pictures just goes to another html page even if url is copied & pasted. I tried IE7 & firefox 3 either you have changed page (as customer would not have spent the time I did, just left) or something wrong.

[onlinetv]

What you are looking for is quality traffic for gift boxes and not "free" or "calendar" as key words. Google is stupid, it is a computer program and it is hungry, and greedy, for special keywords, which you found out were free and calendar over gift boxes.

Besides the excellent advice to make the pages work with optins to other parts of your site and cutting the availabilty to a month on the calendar you might remember that free is a big keyword and so is calendar, but gift boxes probably no one bids too much on. Google sells ads and does not really know what is on your site other than keywords it is looking for with a program.

A doctors site who talks about 'the thickness of skin on your palm' will now only get ads and traffic for palm pilot, palm software and palm seeds. Useless ads and traffic for a keyword used in context but not for googles stupid programmers.

Make sure your keywords are on everypage and get rid of others. Dont mention free more than once and dont mention calendar more than once on the page. Take the page and stick your advertising all over it. Link to many of your pages on it as it is probably getting ranked. Take the luck and learn.

[Peter]

As it is driving traffic in and not generating sales of your product, do as others suggested and get some paid for adverstising on the pages to generate an additional income stream. At least enough to get the additional bandwidth paid for.

On the specific pages try putting images of your product as well.

[M & C]

Thanks Webproworld, Clay and everyone else for the advice you’ve offered. Most of you seem to be saying keep the calendar, which was my gut feeling at the start, and to work on the page to get more info and promotions about the gift items and put more opportunities to purchase before readers. This is sensible and silly of me not to have done before but I didn’t actually see the page as one to sell from but more of a helpful page! Just shows we get too close and familiar and don’t see the wood for the trees! Daft!

One or two of you have said to increase the bandwidth again which I’ve now had to do in the interim to keep operating, and certainly won’t want to do again simply because it will only bring more visitors to the calendar pages and they’re not converting now so how will that change unless I take up all these options which is a huge amount of work for me at this time of year nearing Xmas.

When I first put the download free calendar page up it only had the current month’s calendar showing but we had so many requests for more months that it was easier to do the whole year ahead. So we’d be going backwards really but I did like Mike’s suggestion of capturing email addresses by requiring people to enter their email address to download the calendars and also of an email reminder service for all the special occasion dates. It would be easy to link the two although we do have new fairly strict anti-spam rules in New Zealand for emailing people without consent.

I’m afraid though that those of you who’ve suggested Coupons, Hot gift of the month, Calls to action don’t realise that’s not in my psyche! I reel away from things like that but if it brings conversions I’d better have a go hadn’t I?

Can Netman4ttm advise how to change the bookmark to the home page from the calendar page? What does that mean? Sorry to be so dumb.

Can Rich suggest an inexpensive highspeed web/image server for moving the images off? I’ve talked with my web guy and he’s not familiar with these.

And SisterSledge, I’m not in Australia but in New Zealand – a country in its own right of 4 million people!!! And yes, we have Hot Cross buns on Good Friday, Easter eggs on Easter Sunday and are civilised enough to have Easter Monday as a public holiday to recover from all the over indulging!!

And Ron, we have not changed the dates or calendar pages at all and I can bring them up easily enough – is the problem at your end. No-one else has notified us of problems. Try clicking on New Zealand calendar 2007, 2008, 2009 and NZ public holidays or on Download free calendar 2007, 2008, 2009 New Zealand

Onlinetv, you’ve made me laugh in all this seriousness – thanks!

Peter, I’ll certainly consider advertising but haven’t done this before because ‘gifts’ was too competitive but it appears calendars aren’t so!

Thank you all. I really do appreciate you having taken time in your day to put some thought into this for me! Thank you so much. Marilyn

PS No one has made a suggestion about Google thinking I’m a calendar site! Is that likely, do you think? I don’t do very well with Google but put it down to needing more relevant links. More work for this one man band!

[ron angel]

And Ron, we have not changed the dates or calendar pages at all and I can bring them up easily enough – is the problem at your end. No-one else has notified us of problems. Try clicking on New Zealand calendar 2007, 2008, 2009 and NZ public holidays or on Download free calendar 2007, 2008, 2009 New Zealand

Very strange I cant see any pictures on your site with IE7 and firefox 3 I see pictures ok on other sites. even clicking view picture
does not work. I look at lots of sites with pictures of all sorts(nudge wink) no problems.......?

[tmaster]

I would not pay for extra bandwidth unless the google ads would pay for it.

I would also force them to look through some of my advertising before they get the free content. Another way to take care of the bandwidth is to make the current page a loading page and move download page to a free server. That way they come to your server and see your ads but if all they want is the download they will go to the free server.

You can also find free image hosting servers if you search for them.

[RichAtVNS]

Originally Posted by M & C

Can Rich suggest an inexpensive highspeed web/image server for moving the images off? I’ve talked with my web guy and he’s not familiar with these.

I own no part of this company... the only thing I can say is I have actually not needed to contact them more then 3 times. Once when I set them up, once to increase storage space and take advantage of new cheaper pricing and only once for down time when a class 5 tornado took out their connectivitiy before they got redundant locations 3 years ago.

I have had my images, pdfs and videos hosted on Hosting4Less.com for over 5 years.

I use Developer Shared Hosting Plan (paid in advance for the year) and paid for additional bandwidth if I need it during holiday season. (only an additional small fee)

I point my image subdomains to this ip address so the webpages are addressed to the parent domain and images come off the subdomain.

For instance einstein is located at
http://images.arkahdiaarts.com/produ...00patina_a.jpg
and the website is
http://ArkahdiaArts.com

You can set that up on your DNS server.

By doing that I am able to serve all our pages off a server in our facility in house and have access to everything and not have a speed degradation on my server from people looking at lots of images!

good luck....

[M & C]

Tmaster and Rich you've given us some definite ideas to follow up and investigate. Thanks!

Is anyone else, like Ron, having problems bringing up the art pictures? I've always thought the photos and graphics loaded quickly considering there were so many.