Links for Direct Traffic + SEO

This started out as a reply to a PM, I figured I would post here since I started rambling on.

This works for finding click counts on bitly.com links.

Bitly creates a statistics page for each shortened URL that's created. A lot of people use bitly links on twitter, which makes it easy to see the traffic volume that's being redirected to the real webpage.

The way you view the bitly statistics page for the shortend URL is by simply adding a + symbol at the end of the bitly URL, copy the bitly URL from twitter, paste in a new browser tab, then add the + symbol.

I did a random search on twitter for the keyword government grant, I found this bitly link (screenshot below) & added a + symbol to the end of the URL (I didn't click the link, I copy/pasted): bit.ly/T7AfZk




As you can see the bitly link I found has 672 clicks (traffic) since Nov. 19 2012 (screenshot below), which is decent laser targeted traffic for a government grant niche from a single link. The keyword here is single link, twitter is endless on most niches & full of bitly links that can be researched for traffic.


What you do with that info. is up to you, you could buy a link on the page that the known bitly traffic is flowing into. You could check the persons entire twitter account for more bitly links & check each link for traffic (buy a sitewide link?). Most people will never figure out that you already know the traffic volume they're getting (bitly link traffic), I wouldn't tell them about it, use the info. to your advantage to try & keep link cost down (play dumb).

Another thing to look at on the bitly statistics page is the actual traffic source. Sometimes these people send the same bitly link to twitter & their email list, you could work on building an email list If you see a large number of email subscribers clicking the bitly link in the referrer statistics. I've seen bitly statistic pages with thousands of email clicks, they do exist. In this case (screenshot below) there's only 58 email clicks on the bitly link.

My point about the email list is, instead of buying a link on this guys gov. grant site & directing traffic to a sales page, you could direct traffic to an email optin page (If they had a lot of email subscribers) & create your own laser targeted email list.




This is mainly for direct targeted niche traffic, you could also use the info. for buying SEO links (check PR) so you get the benefit of direct traffic & SEO. The live web page that this bitly link example is pointing to in this OP just happens to be a PR3 page. So, I kinda got lucky If this would have been my niche & the site owner was willing to sell me a link.

How awesome is that, a PR3 with at least 672 direct laser targeted traffic, I'm sure that pages traffic is probably at least double the bitly traffic volume, from other traffic sources (SEO, etc...).

Twitter is full of these bitly links, the highest traffic volume I've seen for a single bitly statistics page was over +20,000 traffic hits.

Anyways, this is one of many ways to try & find traffic sources, my advice is make friends with these webmasters & get on their good side, offer them free premium content in exchange for a link, schmooze them or whatever, because some of these bitly/twitter people have no idea what they can do with the traffic they get, everyone isn't into IM.