Opinion holder entrepreneur Contributors are their own.
After starting an online business and launching a website, digital entrepreneurs usually have one overarching goal.
In most cases, this motive makes perfect sense. More people visiting your website means more people are familiar with your brand and are on the road to increased visibility and reputation. Assuming your conversion rate stays the same, more traffic also means you process more transactions and ultimately make more money.
But is there such a thing as too much web traffic? Can your website traffic increase rapidly or grow to unsustainable levels?
As silly a question as “Is it possible to make a lot of money?”, it’s worth considering, as we’ll see later.
Related: Why Good SEO is Essential for Business Success
server load
First, let’s talk about server load. When a user visits her website, it makes a call to the server to request data that can eventually be displayed in the browser. A server can only handle a certain number of requests within a certain time frame, while an upgraded server can handle more traffic.
If your server is overwhelmed by the number of users accessing your website and can’t keep up, your entire website can go down. In fact, the phenomenon is responsible for creating and executing her DDoS attacks, intentionally overwhelming sites with traffic in order to deny normal user service.
However, there are some very effective measures you can use to avoid this problem. Switching to a dedicated server or upgrading your server may be enough to keep up with the increased traffic. I just don’t want to get caught up in a sudden surge that I’m unprepared for.
security issues
Website popularity is almost always a good thing, but remember that your website or property attracts attention. The more famous your brand is, the more likely it is that cybercriminals will target you.
Related: 7 ways to use Google Trends for SEO
Obviously, you shouldn’t avoid increasing web traffic just because you’re afraid of being hacked. However, it does mean that you should take better cybersecurity measures before your website traffic spikes.
red flag
In some circumstances, red flags can be triggered by an unexpected increase in web traffic or by activity designed to increase web traffic. For example, if you create hundreds of links to your website in order to boost your search engine ranking and referral traffic, Google may flag it as suspicious activity and penalize your site.
Audience targeting issues
In the world of marketing, it’s important to prioritize quality over quantity. When you’re all focused on increasing the number of users visiting your website, you can run into problems targeting your audience. A website with 10,000 relevant visitors will perform better than a website with 100,000 irrelevant visitors.
Increasing your traffic without considering your audience can result in:
- Opportunity lost. When a user visits your website and can’t find what they’re looking for, it’s a lost opportunity. A visit becomes a sale when you provide that user with content they want to read or products they want to buy. There’s no reason to bring someone to your website if you can’t offer anything.
- User behavior metrics are poor. Poor audience targeting also leads to poor user behavioral metrics. The website has significantly higher bounce and exit rates, and users spend much less time on her one page. Taken together, this can hurt your domain authority and reduce your chances of ranking higher in relevant searches.
- reputation issue. If you’re driving a large number of users to your site without offering anything important or valuable in return, you’ll eventually run into reputation issues. They will assume that the website is trying to attract new visitors at all costs and feel like you don’t care about their needs or anything related to them.
- Lower your overall conversion rate. Your number one priority is probably getting conversions. Increasing raw traffic without improving on-site interactions and audience targeting can actually decrease conversion rates.
Sustainability/service issues
Also, remember that many companies disappear simply because they grow too fast. They’ve got far more customers than they could reasonably have, but they don’t have the staff, infrastructure, or processes in place to serve them. If your website fills up with visitors before you can deliver a great experience, your entire business can collapse.
Related: Why user experience is essential for good SEO
So is there such a thing as “too much” web traffic? In a way, yes. Excessive web traffic can work against you if you grow too fast, don’t have the resources to support your audience, or blindly target the wrong audience. But with the right strategies and precautions, scalability is virtually limitless.
