The stats for your senior living website may be giving you a false impression of who visits you. Actually, it could be a very false impression. What’s the problem? Web traffic that is actually spam. Essentially, these are worthless visits to your website. You could be excited about high web traffic that’s nothing more than unethical spammers. That’s why spam proofing your senior living website is a smart solution to the problem.
Spam traffic is more than simply an inconvenience or annoyance. It gives you an incorrect picture of the nature of your community’s website traffic. When you’re deciding how to spend your marketing dollars, that’s a big problem. If your analytics are based on false assumptions about who is visiting your site, you will waste marketing money. When that happens, your web traffic won’t increase as expected and lower move-in rates are the inevitable result.
As a general rule, it’s safe to say that if you have web traffic that seems peculiar, you probably have spam visitors. The dead giveaway is that these visitors seem totally unrelated to someone looking for a senior living community. Sadly, this general situation affects virtually every website on the internet. For that reason, spam proofing your senior living website must become a priority.
Spam Proofing Your Senior Living Website – How It’s Done
If you’re convinced of the need for spam proofing your senior living website, consider the following aspects:
The Website Visit That Isn’t
Spam traffic is basically web visits that aren’t authentic. These are visitors who have no interest in your senior living community whatsoever. They are simply numbers that show up in your Google Analytics each month. In many cases, they aren’t easy to spot once you begin digging into your analytics. For example, these visits are often from foreign countries. In addition, the amount of time spent on your website by spammers is low, often less than a second. It goes without saying that their visits are fake.
High bounce rates are often a good indicator that your website has a lot of spam visits. If someone spends just a second on your website, chances are such hits are spam.
Make Spam Invisible
Luckily, you don’t have to put up with seeing these bogus numbers if you don’t want to. Google Analytics offers filters that can keep specific traffic sources from showing up in your reports. When these filters are activated, you won’t see spam visits showing up in your results. That’s a key tactic for spam proofing your senior living website.
Don’t be fooled. This can’t be done once and you’ll never have to worry about it again. This process is ongoing. Updating the filters should be done regularly, usually once a month. It’s necessary because spammers are crafty. If they aren’t getting through, they devise other methods like switching IPs to assume a different identity. The only way to combat these spammers is to modify your filters regularly.
Turn Off Third-Party Traffic
A sure way to discern spam traffic is that they never requested your domain name. One way to find that out is if you go to the Reporting tab in Google Analytics. Once you’ve done that:
- Look for the left-hand sidebar
- Go to Audience / Technology / Network
- Click on the Hostname tab
If you don’t see your domain name there, or some variation of it, that’s a red flag. Namely, some people aren’t really visiting your site. Some traffic that you assumed to be prospective residents weren’t. That means assumptions you’ve been making about web visitors has been incorrect. Spam proofing your senior living website is crucial if you wish to truly understand who lands on your website.
You can also do things like block traffic according to the country of origin. After all, it’s not very likely people in Russia or Southeast Asia are interested in your senior living community. In all likelihood, such traffic is spammers.
Spam Proofing Your Senior Living Website – Have You Done It?
When there are multiple spam visits to your website, it’s impossible to get an accurate picture of your average visitor. Spam visits distort any analysis you try to create to define who visits your site. That makes it hard to target your audience. By setting up filters, you can remove spam from your analytics and market more effectively. With expert help, spam proofing your senior living website can be accomplished quickly and easily.
Reputable digital marketing companies know how to spam-proof their clients’ websites. Recognized as a top five SEO agency in the US, Dreamscape Marketing is ready to serve you. As part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, we encourage spam proofing your senior living website. Call us at 888-307-7304 or through our “Contact Us” page. Why put up with spam when you don’t have to?