509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
Just woke up to find that another one of my clients sites has gone down due to them reaching their monthly bandwidth limit. This is the 2nd client this has happened to in two weeks and I am feeling pretty pleased with myself. You know you are doing your job properly when your clients are having to get better hosting packages.
The 1st time it happened it was like an instant thing, the clients article was published and within less then 45 minutes it hit the homepage of Reddit and the site was gone. The clients web hosting company has been giving him stick ever since, “You better just do a few more directory submissions for now” he said to me, a dedicated server is in the post.
This time it was more gradual, the article didn’t go to the homepage of Digg or Reddit, but it did go popular on StumbleUpon, Propeller and some other social media websites. It took from Thursday when the article first got published to this morning for the site to go down. I will give him a call in the next hour or so to let him know. I am sure he will be O.K. with it, the big picture is what matters the most.
As long as these traffic spikes are actually bringing links or quality traffic then that matters the most
Congrats on your success.
we use a clustered host that doesn’t go down when traffic spikes. we have far more bandwidth than could be used by a few hundred thousand people loading one or two pages… and if it gets close – we just add more capacity.
Rob, I should have gone into a bit more detail about why the traffic is good, the 1st article has received over 600 natural links and the 2nd about 120 so far including a link from a blog that is in the top 50 on Technorati, these links are priceless and they will give both of the sites more ability to rank high in the search engines.
David, I think that I understand what you’re getting at: The long tail of residual traffic and genuine interest (natural links) is what makes your traffic and service valuable to a client.
Thinking about it, I suppose what I’m questioning is actual value.
It is more valuable for a website to have 5 visitors purchase a product then have 500 people view the site. Qualification of the potential customer is more important then the traffic itself.
I haven’t really got too involved in the conversion side of things as yet.
You’re not concerned about the actual return that your customers receive on their purchase?
You mentioned in your article above “I am feeling pretty pleased with myself, you know you are doing your job properly when your clients are having to get better hosting packages.” Incurring additional expenses for your customers to burden should result in a proportional if not exceeded increase in income.
Again I’ll mention that the O in SEO is the most important part of the game. Thank-you for entertaining my questions David and providing some interesting articles that have certainly got me thinking.
Rob, when I said I don’t get into the conversion side of things I meant i don’t really look at the design of the site or how successful their business really is. Clients come to me because they want to rank higher in the search engines for certain phrases, they always know what phrases they want to rank higher for and generally they are already fairly successful. I rank sites and that is what most people here in the UK mean by search engine optimisation, I think you have some funny ideas about what search engine optimisation is, I am not a business consultant or a web designer. Once I have ranked a site for the clients chosen phrases my job is done.
David, through reading your articles I understand the basics of SEO and what you do. However, the question on my mind is really value.
I understand the value of being ranked higher on a search engine and the impact that distributed links have on the traffic a site receives. Those values begin to loose their luster when weighed against income and expendiatures.
I think that there is a disconnect between SEO constultants and business goals. Keeping in mind that I believe that it’s possible to throw enough crap at a wall and make some of it stick, I think that a disregard for conversion rates is a disregard for the customer.
It is normally pretty cut and dry, I mean say the client has a site selling MP4 players and I rank the site in the top of the search engines for that phrase it’s going to drive the right sort of traffic and convert well for them. I don’t disregard conversions I make sure they get the conversions by making sure they rank for the right phrases.
David, you mention that you “make sure [customers] get get the conversions by making sure they rank for the right phrases.” So the questions then really narrow down to exactly what you’re selling.
I’m not sure that a search engine ranking for any site has the capability to increase sales without being qualified. While there are certainly a lot of expert opinions and testimonial data, SEO services are expensive often to the point where for most websites simple keyword based ranking isn’t the qualification that a customer needs.
I couldn’t find a description of your services or packages. Are they online?
I would hardly call ranking sites on the search engines for competitive phrases simple, My services can be found on the homepage: http://www.seoco.co.uk most of the people who come to me are pretty successful I help them to come up with ways to get links to their sites, I mainly specialise in the link building side of things, however I do also help them with branding, making their sites more SEO friendly and I have started to get involved in creating viral marketing campaigns as well.
Thank-you again David for answering my questions. I really do appreciate it.