The entire SEO industry is predicated on the idea that traffic is good.

An SEO company will fiddle with your website to drive clicks to your site. If they are sophisticated they will target a group, say, women in their 30s.

What you will get, however, is a series of generic posts designed to appeal to women in their 30s. Clicks will go up, but will your business be any better off?

I think it is doubtful.

There are only two firms who can monetize traffic. One is called Google and the other is called Facebook. Perhaps you have heard of them. They have scale.

Everyone else needs audience.

Audience means folks who come back for more. Folks who actually like what you do and prefer it over the stuff that your competitors do.

I worked for Youtube for a short time and while there I came across a talk by the guy who makes Carpool Karaoke. (His name is Adam Abramson.) He said they only counted a viewer if they clicked on another carpool video after watching the first.

Then they were audience, not just traffic.

He knew, you can build a business on audience. But you can’t do much with traffic, as Buzzfeed are finding out.

 When I am designing brands, building websites, creating content for use online and on social for other businesses, I always think audience NOT traffic.