Capitalize on Accidental Traffic

If you run a website and look through your web traffic logs you’ll very likely find that your site is getting at least some “accidental traffic”. What is accidental traffic, you say? Accidental traffic is visitors that you didn’t seek to get who are coming to your site looking for something you don’t have. This could be because you mention something in passing that gets indexed in a search engine or you have a domain that’s similar to one used for another purpose. You can spot this traffic by looking at the keywords that drove the visitor to your site and observing their behavior once on your site. Accidental visitors come via a search term you wouldn’t expect to see and generally leave almost immediately. So what can you do with this accidental traffic?

Deter It

photo credit: JASON ANFINSENIn some cases you might want to deter the accidental visitor. If your site serves only a specific geographic region you can avoid serving people outside that region. When you notice that a prominent site links to you when they meant to link to another site with a similar name you can refuse to serve visitors who come from that site. Or you might deter visitors who come via certain terms in a search. I won’t go into how to do such things because for the most part you shouldn’t do it. Unless for some reason your hosting costs are unusually high the accidental visitor costs you very little and even if there’s only a minuscule chance of you getting something out of them it’s better to serve them in some way than to turn them away.

Ignore It

If you’ve never thought about accidental traffic before chances are you’re ignoring it. Even if you did notice some visitors via an odd referrer or search term chances are you never thought about doing much about it. Now despite what you think may be coming, I’m not going to say that ignoring this visitor is necessarily a bad thing. If you get very few accidental visitors and they come via a wide variety of off topic search terms then sometimes it’s just not worth your efforts to try to capitalize on them. Another example might be if your site serves such a wide audience that the visitor who stumbles into your site might very well convert into legitimate visitors. For this visitor you need only have good site navigation or search capabilities and they may very well find their way to something you do have that interests them.

Serve It

While the web developer who deters the accidental visitor sees them as an annoyance, a developer with a broader view might see the accidental traffic as an opportunity waiting to be served. Whether or not you take this approach largely depends on the type of accidental traffic you’re getting. If you’ve unknowingly stumbled upon a term that people are interested in and you have the ability to provide content to serve that interest. This site - because of it’s name - draws traffic from the search term “solo programmer” which is generally used in the context of the extreme programming methodology an it’s “pair programming”. If there is enough of this kind of traffic I can write a post on solo programming vs pair programming and perhaps serve those visitors. A post like that wouldn’t be (far) off-topic for the site and is something I could address. You might find that your photography site, which you simply intended to show off your work, draws visitors looking for stock photos. If there’s enough of that traffic you could install some software and sell your images - or give them away with attribution that will get you backlinks.

Redirect It

credit: SqueakyMarmotIf you determine that you don’t want to directly serve your accidental visitor, a good alternative is to redirect them. You can redirect them to another site you own that would serve their needs. This is a great way to leverage multiple sites to increase targeted traffic. If you don’t have another site to serve the visitor you can look for an affiliate program that would serve them. If visitors to your book club site want to buy the books you talk about, redirect them to Amazon and collect a small commission on their purchases. When the accidental visitor isn’t a prospective buyer you can redirect them to a site that will meet their needs without an affiliate program. Giving away your traffic might seem like a poor choice but depending on your niche and the size/stature of the site you link to, you might get a return link in exchange that will send some of their accidental traffic your way. If your accidental traffic is people looking for Google, you’re unlikely to get a home page link from Google in return for sending them your accidental traffic but maybe that small gesture of goodwill can encourage the accidental visitor to check out what you have or just make the world a better place in some tiny way.

Deal With Your Accidental Traffic

Take a moment to look at your web traffic reports and see what kind of accidental traffic you’re receiving. And then decide what’s the most appropriate thing to do about it. If ignoring it is best then ignore it but make the decision to do so. And whatever your decision is no revisit it periodically to see if your accidental traffic has changed and if your response is still appropriate.