How to Win Ecommerce Traffic in 2026 — Claus Lauter | How To Drive Traffic That Converts, Why Lazy Traffic Fails, How AI Ruined SEO, Why Diversifying Ads Matters, What Owning Data Changes, Why Conversion Beats Traffic (#465)

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00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;23
Claus Lauter
Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money? If you have more time and focus on content, on community, on earned media, if you have more money, then paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell. Time is a cost and money is a cost.

00;00;19;26 - 00;00;25;07
Claus Lauter
So you have to choose which way you want to go.

00;00;25;09 - 00;00;51;08
Claus Lauter
Hey Claus here. Welcome back to the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today's episode is a solo one, and we're talking about something that almost every online store owner struggles with right now. It's traffic. More specifically, how to drive qualified high content traffic to your store in 2026. So let's be honest, SEO isn't what it was in the past. AI is changing a lot, and search paid ads are costing more and more, and relying on one channel only is very risky.

00;00;51;11 - 00;01;12;12
Claus Lauter
So I try to break down what's actually working right now, and how to build traffic that converts, how to spread your risk and how

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;23
Claus Lauter
Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money? If you have more time and focus on content, on community, on earned media, if you have more money, then paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell. Time is a cost and money is a cost.

00;00;19;26 - 00;00;25;07
Claus Lauter
So you have to choose which way you want to go.

00;00;25;09 - 00;00;51;08
Claus Lauter
Hey Claus here. Welcome back to the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today's episode is a solo one, and we're talking about something that almost every online store owner struggles with right now. It's traffic. More specifically, how to drive qualified high content traffic to your store in 2026. So let's be honest, SEO isn't what it was in the past. AI is changing a lot, and search paid ads are costing more and more, and relying on one channel only is very risky.

00;00;51;11 - 00;01;12;12
Claus Lauter
So I try to break down what's actually working right now, and how to build traffic that converts, how to spread your risk and how to create traffic you control. If traffic is harder than ever, then this episode is for you. So let's get right into it. So first of all, traffic is the biggest pain point I hear from most founders, online sellers, e-commerce merchants, DTC brands.

00;01;12;12 - 00;01;31;04
Claus Lauter
And I totally get it. I'm struggling with traffic every day as well. I'm online marketer for 20 something years, and traffic obviously is the one thing you want to have to your store or to your website, to whatever you have to offer on the interwebs so it feels really hot. And yes, to choose traffic is not that there's tons of traffic out there.

00;01;31;04 - 00;01;57;20
Claus Lauter
Lazy traffic is dead, so it's not easy anymore. Ship clicks are debt, so it's a paid game out there. And if you only rely on one channel, then you're playing a very dangerous game out there. So in 2026, obviously we're looking into AI and how that has changed so much. And obviously one thing that's very bad, the inflating your numbers in your reports is bots.

00;01;57;20 - 00;02;21;09
Claus Lauter
And then obviously platforms can shut you down like ads for instance, overnight. So we have a lot of risks out there and what we want basically as everyone we want qualified traffic, high intense traffic, resilient traffic. Now this is not easy. And I don't want to destroy your dream there. If you want to play the online game, if you want to run a online store, you need to attack the traffic.

00;02;21;09 - 00;02;40;16
Claus Lauter
And the marketing that comes with it was a very professional perspective. Let's talk about a couple of numbers to give you just an impression of how the traffic in 2026 looks like. So there is a lot of money to traffic, and that means there is 30 to 40% of your visits on your website are bots. So these are not real people.

00;02;40;18 - 00;03;01;16
Claus Lauter
These are just bots and crawlers scanning your website. They create fake clicks, they create spam sessions. And obviously that's nothing you want to have in your store. And I definitely will not buy from you. So if you're only looking at sessions, then you're lying to yourself. So that's where the reports are not working for you. What you should focus on is revenue per visitor.

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;19;29
Claus Lauter
You should focus on your conversion rate and you should focus on your email capture rate. These are real numbers, and these are numbers that help you to sell more, and also to optimize for more source out there have very low conversion rates, but 1% sometimes lower. What I see and was that you don't have a business, you just have a glorified hobby.

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;42;18
Claus Lauter
If you want to make money, then you need to have at least 2 or 3 better 5% conversion rates. And this will give you also a profit margin that will help you to grow. If you're below that, then you have to fix your conversion before you can scale in traffic. So a lot of people just throwing in a very average store and basically completely leave conversion rate optimization out of the picture.

00;03;42;18 - 00;04;06;06
Claus Lauter
And then they're wondering that they don't make money. And the excuse is if I would have more traffic, I would sell more. No you won't. When we talk about Search Everywhere topic on my list, I SEO search engine optimization, something that's around for a very long time and people still try. If I optimize my page for a keyword for my product name, then they will come and it's not like the old movie goes.

00;04;06;06 - 00;04;34;16
Claus Lauter
If you build it, they will come. That's not happening. And also the ranking is not really working anymore with keywords. So SEO was pronounced dead. Many, many times, but I think in 2026 and started 2025, we saw a big shift in search engine optimization and it's shifting towards AI keyboard stuffing obviously over for a long time. And Google ranks by not keyword anymore, but by authority, by entities, by brands, by real expertise.

00;04;34;16 - 00;04;51;18
Claus Lauter
And even more, Google has jumped on the train of AI. You will see that is the no click searches. And most people, if you like me, you will basically just type in Google whatever you're looking for and you'll get a results or an overview of what you're looking for right on top of the page. And no one clicks down.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;27;10
Claus Lauter
No would see your listing anymore. So that's where SEO the old way is not working anymore. Where you want to optimize for is obviously a AI overview. Large language models work slightly different than Google did in the past, so you have zero click search and you need to optimize your content and get your content listed, for instance, in Reddit and look for platforms where large language models like ChatGPT like Germany, Cloud and Tropics, all of them go and get their data from.

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;50;00
Claus Lauter
And also you should optimize not only for one platform. So you need to optimize your content, your product landing page for Google, for YouTube, for TikTok, search for Amazon, search for LinkedIn, for Instagram, for podcasts, for reviews. So it's not one and for all. It's really diving deep into content marketing and optimizing there because people are searching on all of these platforms.

00;05;50;00 - 00;06;21;15
Claus Lauter
So you never know where your traffic will come from, what works now, when you create content, try to answer real questions, use structured content, use FAQ so that you have an expertise, use original data, and create strong opinions. All of these will help you getting listed in chat to ChatGPT and the other large language models. And with a bit of luck, you will get traffic in the future from these long language models and less from Google itself.

00;06;21;23 - 00;06;40;27
Claus Lauter
Unless it's Gemini. Also, reach out to sites that are already ranking for your niche for your industry and try to get featured, mentioned, and reviewed there. So that's modern SEO, and I will come to some of these bits a little bit later in this episode. Now, before you drive traffic, you want to make sure that you get qualified traffic.

00;06;40;27 - 00;07;03;03
Claus Lauter
As I mentioned in the beginning, and most brands, specifically new brand sources, completely skip the ideal customer. So you need to define who is your perfect customer, who's your ideal customer? What pain points are you solving? You need to find out where your customers are hanging out, and you need to find out what content they are trusting to get there.

00;07;03;07 - 00;07;25;19
Claus Lauter
You will use analytics. You will use post-purchase surveys. You will use platform insights. You will use heatmaps. Because if you don't know your ICP so your ideal customer profile, then you waste ad spend. You create generic content and you attract the wrong people. So you end up having traffic and you still wondering is now I have all the traffic, but why is no one buying from me?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;52;24
Claus Lauter
And that's because you are basically targeting the wrong audience there. Now we come to the 300 pound gorilla and that's paid to traffic. Paid traffic is the fastest way to get you traffic to your store, to your website, and as it is fast and it will only last as long as you pay money, that's the big downside. So if you're starting, you don't have any budget, you will have to put in the time and to create content to do social media, all the other channels.

00;07;52;24 - 00;08;11;25
Claus Lauter
I will highlight a few more and a little bit later, but if you want to make quick money, then you better do your conversion rate and then you better do your customer profile. And then you put some money aside and you start was paid traffic right away. This will not only bring you hopefully the right customer, that will also bring you the traffic the fastest.

00;08;12;03 - 00;08;34;20
Claus Lauter
Now obviously you know, meta, Facebook, Instagram, etc. you know Google, you know, TikTok, YouTube. So make sure. And that's very important that you diversify on all of these. Because if 90% of your revenue, for instance, is coming from meta, from Facebook, from Instagram, and your account gets banned, that happens all the time. Your business basically is that overnight.

00;08;34;23 - 00;08;54;05
Claus Lauter
So you want to diversify and you want to put your money on all of these platforms. So Google ads, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, which also Google meta, etc. and you want to test all of them and you want to then put the most money, obviously, on the platform that works the best. And you want to find out that you put like 80% on high intent.

00;08;54;09 - 00;09;16;01
Claus Lauter
It might be Google Shopping, Reddit search, and 20% on discovery channels, which basically is TikTok Instagram shorts like this was that you test small, you're killing to do this fast and you scale the winners and spread the risk. So multiple platforms is one thing to do this, but also you want to have multiple ad accounts. So if you're running Facebook ads set up more than one ad account.

00;09;16;04 - 00;09;38;15
Claus Lauter
If meta closes one of them, you can continue on the other ones and you want to also with that, have backup megapixels and APIs and so on, so forth has happened to me. You don't want to wake up in the morning with a message that your meta account, your Facebook account, has been closed and you can't run any ads anymore, and your costs to run your business will be still there, but you don't make any revenue anymore.

00;09;38;15 - 00;10;12;05
Claus Lauter
So lesson learned to make back up accounts. Diversify to verify your ad spend and start spending and you will see traffic. Now the next one here to talk about is earned and social traffic. So that's the human aspect. From there, I obviously can write copy, but I can't replace human trust, at least not now. So with earned traffic we talk about reviews, awards, press releases, influencer mentions, podcast appearances, anything that is a third party and mention you is ten times stronger than any that you can run.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;38;28
Claus Lauter
So earned traffic. Definitely more valuable than paid traffic. And then for social marketing, you're basically putting your money on someone else's land. So they want to create native content or a platform, and you don't want to just post the same junk in the same format on every platform, because every channel out there Instagram, meta, blue Sky X, they speak a different language and they attract different people.

00;10;38;29 - 00;11;02;11
Claus Lauter
So you want to make sure that your content speaks to them. High intent traffic then often comes from very niche channels, so that can be niche podcasts. Now I'm a podcaster myself. I'm biased, but if you want to get to the right people and look, if there are any podcasts out there that talk about the topic that you're in the industry that you're in.

00;11;02;11 - 00;11;26;22
Claus Lauter
So, for instance, if you're selling gardening tools, gardening equipment, see if there's any podcasts there that talk to gardeners and try to become a guest on the on the show. And then obviously not only promote your product, but also talk and contribute and help and give some insights that help the listeners. And this will help you and more often than not, you might get even for free on a show.

00;11;26;24 - 00;11;52;28
Claus Lauter
And then you will have a call to action to see where people can find you, where they can buy your products, etcetera, get you exactly where you want to be to your perfect customer. The same talking to Micro-influencers. So back to my example for gardening. If there are influencers out there that are in the garden industry, your garden niche niche, whatever you want to call it, reach out to them, try to find a way to cooperate with them and then make it work.

00;11;53;06 - 00;12;15;09
Claus Lauter
And then also you want to look into communities and being helpful. They're not just post, bland marketing messages in there because that will get you banned from a community like in a second. Now, owned marketing is the most important one. Owned marketing is basically where you own the list or where you own the data. It's also the one that takes the longest to built, but it's the most valuable.

00;12;15;09 - 00;12;41;08
Claus Lauter
So if you don't own the data, then you don't own the business. So if Facebook or any other platform shuts you down, you won't get access to the data. And then it's nothing much you can do. Was owned marketing. We're talking about email, we're talking about SMS. You're talking about your own community. And specifically if you're on Shopify with email, obviously you want to use tools like Klaviyo for email and SMS and build up your own list data.

00;12;41;12 - 00;13;07;12
Claus Lauter
So every visitor to your site and every outreach and every promotion you do, you should invite people to join your email list to join your SMS, or to join your ecosystem, which is a community, for instance, and not only, say, 10% off. Invite them to your world and provide helpful information for content so that they stay and not immediately unsubscribe from your list.

00;13;07;14 - 00;13;32;08
Claus Lauter
Now, once you have the list, obviously you can continue marketing to your own data as often as you want to to make it more attractive for them to join your world. Offer tools, lead magnets, calculators, guides, any kind of useful resource out there that people are looking for and that will help them. And with owned traffic, you are sort of safeguarding yourself against algorithm changes.

00;13;32;08 - 00;13;53;04
Claus Lauter
We already spoke about conversion rate optimization. Make sure that you really dial into optimization there, because doubling traffic was a lousy conversion rate doesn't really help you. If you double your conversion rate, then you basically double your business overnight. That will be very difficult. Doing the same was more traffic. Now this is a lot of work as you can imagine and as a starter.

00;13;53;04 - 00;14;12;12
Claus Lauter
You're all over the place. You have many things on the plate. I was a Shopify seller myself for seven years, so I know how difficult it is to get everything in 24 hours. But obviously if you're not marketing yourself and your product out there, no traffic will come. Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money?

00;14;12;15 - 00;14;37;00
Claus Lauter
If you have more time, then focus on content, on community, on brand media, if you have more money and paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell, time is a cost and money is a cost. So you have to choose which way you want to go. If you want to see results fast and you have money to spend for marketing, then this is probably the way to go.

00;14;37;03 - 00;15;00;29
Claus Lauter
Or if you have money, you can outsource this and have someone else doing this. If you don't have money, then probably you need to do it yourself and that is a lot of time that you need to invest. So I know both ways, both have pros and cons and you need to decide for yourself where is the most value in what you do in your business and where you where can you contribute the most to the business and do you have the money?

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;23;12
Claus Lauter
If you are a total beginner with absolutely no money, you will have a hard time. But it's doable. But you have to put in a lot of time. Then the journey to become a successful online seller will just take much, much longer. So to close this episode today, traffic in 2026 is not about hacks. It's about diversification, about authority, intent and ownership.

00;15;23;15 - 00;15;47;02
Claus Lauter
So you should build traffic like you build wealth slowly over time, spreading the risk. Invest long term and control whatever you can so that algorithms will not decide over your business success. This is a very long and in-depth episode, and obviously we are only scratching the surface here. So if you want to learn more about this, I am not the one to help you.

00;15;47;05 - 00;16;10;24
Claus Lauter
I would reckon. So I would suggest to go out there, listen to the episode twice, and then address every single point there, and then go to YouTube and find videos that are for 2026. So don't look up conversion rate optimization or SEO on a seven year old video that won't help you. Look for experts out there that are posting content all the time.

00;16;11;01 - 00;16;42;09
Claus Lauter
You will find a lot of experts on the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast talking about these topics, so listen to some more episodes of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast, see who the expert is, and then visit the channels of the experts that I have as guests on the show. A lot of them have YouTube channels, a lot of them have email newsletters that will help you addressing all these points on how to create traffic, how to optimize your traffic, how to optimize your conversion rate to make more money in 2026.

00;16;42;09 - 00;17;01;02
Claus Lauter
So that's it for my show for my site today. Next week we will have more guests on the show as always, but I just wanted to address the traffic topic because I think a lot of people have a wrong understanding about how important traffic is, or how easy or not it is to get traffic in 2026, so I hope this will help.

00;17;01;04 - 00;17;37;03
Claus Lauter
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, if you need any help, or if I need to point you to an expert, I'm always happy to help them. For now, don't forget to subscribe, like and share and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one!

 

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;23
Claus Lauter
Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money? If you have more time and focus on content, on community, on earned media, if you have more money, then paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell. Time is a cost and money is a cost.

00;00;19;26 - 00;00;25;07
Claus Lauter
So you have to choose which way you want to go.

00;00;25;09 - 00;00;51;08
Claus Lauter
Hey Claus here. Welcome back to the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today's episode is a solo one, and we're talking about something that almost every online store owner struggles with right now. It's traffic. More specifically, how to drive qualified high content traffic to your store in 2026. So let's be honest, SEO isn't what it was in the past. AI is changing a lot, and search paid ads are costing more and more, and relying on one channel only is very risky.

00;00;51;11 - 00;01;12;12
Claus Lauter
So I try to break down what's actually working right now, and how to build traffic that converts, how to spread your risk and how to create traffic you control. If traffic is harder than ever, then this episode is for you. So let's get right into it. So first of all, traffic is the biggest pain point I hear from most founders, online sellers, e-commerce merchants, DTC brands.

00;01;12;12 - 00;01;31;04
Claus Lauter
And I totally get it. I'm struggling with traffic every day as well. I'm online marketer for 20 something years, and traffic obviously is the one thing you want to have to your store or to your website, to whatever you have to offer on the interwebs so it feels really hot. And yes, to choose traffic is not that there's tons of traffic out there.

00;01;31;04 - 00;01;57;20
Claus Lauter
Lazy traffic is dead, so it's not easy anymore. Ship clicks are debt, so it's a paid game out there. And if you only rely on one channel, then you're playing a very dangerous game out there. So in 2026, obviously we're looking into AI and how that has changed so much. And obviously one thing that's very bad, the inflating your numbers in your reports is bots.

00;01;57;20 - 00;02;21;09
Claus Lauter
And then obviously platforms can shut you down like ads for instance, overnight. So we have a lot of risks out there and what we want basically as everyone we want qualified traffic, high intense traffic, resilient traffic. Now this is not easy. And I don't want to destroy your dream there. If you want to play the online game, if you want to run a online store, you need to attack the traffic.

00;02;21;09 - 00;02;40;16
Claus Lauter
And the marketing that comes with it was a very professional perspective. Let's talk about a couple of numbers to give you just an impression of how the traffic in 2026 looks like. So there is a lot of money to traffic, and that means there is 30 to 40% of your visits on your website are bots. So these are not real people.

00;02;40;18 - 00;03;01;16
Claus Lauter
These are just bots and crawlers scanning your website. They create fake clicks, they create spam sessions. And obviously that's nothing you want to have in your store. And I definitely will not buy from you. So if you're only looking at sessions, then you're lying to yourself. So that's where the reports are not working for you. What you should focus on is revenue per visitor.

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;19;29
Claus Lauter
You should focus on your conversion rate and you should focus on your email capture rate. These are real numbers, and these are numbers that help you to sell more, and also to optimize for more source out there have very low conversion rates, but 1% sometimes lower. What I see and was that you don't have a business, you just have a glorified hobby.

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;42;18
Claus Lauter
If you want to make money, then you need to have at least 2 or 3 better 5% conversion rates. And this will give you also a profit margin that will help you to grow. If you're below that, then you have to fix your conversion before you can scale in traffic. So a lot of people just throwing in a very average store and basically completely leave conversion rate optimization out of the picture.

00;03;42;18 - 00;04;06;06
Claus Lauter
And then they're wondering that they don't make money. And the excuse is if I would have more traffic, I would sell more. No you won't. When we talk about Search Everywhere topic on my list, I SEO search engine optimization, something that's around for a very long time and people still try. If I optimize my page for a keyword for my product name, then they will come and it's not like the old movie goes.

00;04;06;06 - 00;04;34;16
Claus Lauter
If you build it, they will come. That's not happening. And also the ranking is not really working anymore with keywords. So SEO was pronounced dead. Many, many times, but I think in 2026 and started 2025, we saw a big shift in search engine optimization and it's shifting towards AI keyboard stuffing obviously over for a long time. And Google ranks by not keyword anymore, but by authority, by entities, by brands, by real expertise.

00;04;34;16 - 00;04;51;18
Claus Lauter
And even more, Google has jumped on the train of AI. You will see that is the no click searches. And most people, if you like me, you will basically just type in Google whatever you're looking for and you'll get a results or an overview of what you're looking for right on top of the page. And no one clicks down.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;27;10
Claus Lauter
No would see your listing anymore. So that's where SEO the old way is not working anymore. Where you want to optimize for is obviously a AI overview. Large language models work slightly different than Google did in the past, so you have zero click search and you need to optimize your content and get your content listed, for instance, in Reddit and look for platforms where large language models like ChatGPT like Germany, Cloud and Tropics, all of them go and get their data from.

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;50;00
Claus Lauter
And also you should optimize not only for one platform. So you need to optimize your content, your product landing page for Google, for YouTube, for TikTok, search for Amazon, search for LinkedIn, for Instagram, for podcasts, for reviews. So it's not one and for all. It's really diving deep into content marketing and optimizing there because people are searching on all of these platforms.

00;05;50;00 - 00;06;21;15
Claus Lauter
So you never know where your traffic will come from, what works now, when you create content, try to answer real questions, use structured content, use FAQ so that you have an expertise, use original data, and create strong opinions. All of these will help you getting listed in chat to ChatGPT and the other large language models. And with a bit of luck, you will get traffic in the future from these long language models and less from Google itself.

00;06;21;23 - 00;06;40;27
Claus Lauter
Unless it's Gemini. Also, reach out to sites that are already ranking for your niche for your industry and try to get featured, mentioned, and reviewed there. So that's modern SEO, and I will come to some of these bits a little bit later in this episode. Now, before you drive traffic, you want to make sure that you get qualified traffic.

00;06;40;27 - 00;07;03;03
Claus Lauter
As I mentioned in the beginning, and most brands, specifically new brand sources, completely skip the ideal customer. So you need to define who is your perfect customer, who's your ideal customer? What pain points are you solving? You need to find out where your customers are hanging out, and you need to find out what content they are trusting to get there.

00;07;03;07 - 00;07;25;19
Claus Lauter
You will use analytics. You will use post-purchase surveys. You will use platform insights. You will use heatmaps. Because if you don't know your ICP so your ideal customer profile, then you waste ad spend. You create generic content and you attract the wrong people. So you end up having traffic and you still wondering is now I have all the traffic, but why is no one buying from me?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;52;24
Claus Lauter
And that's because you are basically targeting the wrong audience there. Now we come to the 300 pound gorilla and that's paid to traffic. Paid traffic is the fastest way to get you traffic to your store, to your website, and as it is fast and it will only last as long as you pay money, that's the big downside. So if you're starting, you don't have any budget, you will have to put in the time and to create content to do social media, all the other channels.

00;07;52;24 - 00;08;11;25
Claus Lauter
I will highlight a few more and a little bit later, but if you want to make quick money, then you better do your conversion rate and then you better do your customer profile. And then you put some money aside and you start was paid traffic right away. This will not only bring you hopefully the right customer, that will also bring you the traffic the fastest.

00;08;12;03 - 00;08;34;20
Claus Lauter
Now obviously you know, meta, Facebook, Instagram, etc. you know Google, you know, TikTok, YouTube. So make sure. And that's very important that you diversify on all of these. Because if 90% of your revenue, for instance, is coming from meta, from Facebook, from Instagram, and your account gets banned, that happens all the time. Your business basically is that overnight.

00;08;34;23 - 00;08;54;05
Claus Lauter
So you want to diversify and you want to put your money on all of these platforms. So Google ads, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, which also Google meta, etc. and you want to test all of them and you want to then put the most money, obviously, on the platform that works the best. And you want to find out that you put like 80% on high intent.

00;08;54;09 - 00;09;16;01
Claus Lauter
It might be Google Shopping, Reddit search, and 20% on discovery channels, which basically is TikTok Instagram shorts like this was that you test small, you're killing to do this fast and you scale the winners and spread the risk. So multiple platforms is one thing to do this, but also you want to have multiple ad accounts. So if you're running Facebook ads set up more than one ad account.

00;09;16;04 - 00;09;38;15
Claus Lauter
If meta closes one of them, you can continue on the other ones and you want to also with that, have backup megapixels and APIs and so on, so forth has happened to me. You don't want to wake up in the morning with a message that your meta account, your Facebook account, has been closed and you can't run any ads anymore, and your costs to run your business will be still there, but you don't make any revenue anymore.

00;09;38;15 - 00;10;12;05
Claus Lauter
So lesson learned to make back up accounts. Diversify to verify your ad spend and start spending and you will see traffic. Now the next one here to talk about is earned and social traffic. So that's the human aspect. From there, I obviously can write copy, but I can't replace human trust, at least not now. So with earned traffic we talk about reviews, awards, press releases, influencer mentions, podcast appearances, anything that is a third party and mention you is ten times stronger than any that you can run.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;38;28
Claus Lauter
So earned traffic. Definitely more valuable than paid traffic. And then for social marketing, you're basically putting your money on someone else's land. So they want to create native content or a platform, and you don't want to just post the same junk in the same format on every platform, because every channel out there Instagram, meta, blue Sky X, they speak a different language and they attract different people.

00;10;38;29 - 00;11;02;11
Claus Lauter
So you want to make sure that your content speaks to them. High intent traffic then often comes from very niche channels, so that can be niche podcasts. Now I'm a podcaster myself. I'm biased, but if you want to get to the right people and look, if there are any podcasts out there that talk about the topic that you're in the industry that you're in.

00;11;02;11 - 00;11;26;22
Claus Lauter
So, for instance, if you're selling gardening tools, gardening equipment, see if there's any podcasts there that talk to gardeners and try to become a guest on the on the show. And then obviously not only promote your product, but also talk and contribute and help and give some insights that help the listeners. And this will help you and more often than not, you might get even for free on a show.

00;11;26;24 - 00;11;52;28
Claus Lauter
And then you will have a call to action to see where people can find you, where they can buy your products, etcetera, get you exactly where you want to be to your perfect customer. The same talking to Micro-influencers. So back to my example for gardening. If there are influencers out there that are in the garden industry, your garden niche niche, whatever you want to call it, reach out to them, try to find a way to cooperate with them and then make it work.

00;11;53;06 - 00;12;15;09
Claus Lauter
And then also you want to look into communities and being helpful. They're not just post, bland marketing messages in there because that will get you banned from a community like in a second. Now, owned marketing is the most important one. Owned marketing is basically where you own the list or where you own the data. It's also the one that takes the longest to built, but it's the most valuable.

00;12;15;09 - 00;12;41;08
Claus Lauter
So if you don't own the data, then you don't own the business. So if Facebook or any other platform shuts you down, you won't get access to the data. And then it's nothing much you can do. Was owned marketing. We're talking about email, we're talking about SMS. You're talking about your own community. And specifically if you're on Shopify with email, obviously you want to use tools like Klaviyo for email and SMS and build up your own list data.

00;12;41;12 - 00;13;07;12
Claus Lauter
So every visitor to your site and every outreach and every promotion you do, you should invite people to join your email list to join your SMS, or to join your ecosystem, which is a community, for instance, and not only, say, 10% off. Invite them to your world and provide helpful information for content so that they stay and not immediately unsubscribe from your list.

00;13;07;14 - 00;13;32;08
Claus Lauter
Now, once you have the list, obviously you can continue marketing to your own data as often as you want to to make it more attractive for them to join your world. Offer tools, lead magnets, calculators, guides, any kind of useful resource out there that people are looking for and that will help them. And with owned traffic, you are sort of safeguarding yourself against algorithm changes.

00;13;32;08 - 00;13;53;04
Claus Lauter
We already spoke about conversion rate optimization. Make sure that you really dial into optimization there, because doubling traffic was a lousy conversion rate doesn't really help you. If you double your conversion rate, then you basically double your business overnight. That will be very difficult. Doing the same was more traffic. Now this is a lot of work as you can imagine and as a starter.

00;13;53;04 - 00;14;12;12
Claus Lauter
You're all over the place. You have many things on the plate. I was a Shopify seller myself for seven years, so I know how difficult it is to get everything in 24 hours. But obviously if you're not marketing yourself and your product out there, no traffic will come. Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money?

00;14;12;15 - 00;14;37;00
Claus Lauter
If you have more time, then focus on content, on community, on brand media, if you have more money and paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell, time is a cost and money is a cost. So you have to choose which way you want to go. If you want to see results fast and you have money to spend for marketing, then this is probably the way to go.

00;14;37;03 - 00;15;00;29
Claus Lauter
Or if you have money, you can outsource this and have someone else doing this. If you don't have money, then probably you need to do it yourself and that is a lot of time that you need to invest. So I know both ways, both have pros and cons and you need to decide for yourself where is the most value in what you do in your business and where you where can you contribute the most to the business and do you have the money?

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;23;12
Claus Lauter
If you are a total beginner with absolutely no money, you will have a hard time. But it's doable. But you have to put in a lot of time. Then the journey to become a successful online seller will just take much, much longer. So to close this episode today, traffic in 2026 is not about hacks. It's about diversification, about authority, intent and ownership.

00;15;23;15 - 00;15;47;02
Claus Lauter
So you should build traffic like you build wealth slowly over time, spreading the risk. Invest long term and control whatever you can so that algorithms will not decide over your business success. This is a very long and in-depth episode, and obviously we are only scratching the surface here. So if you want to learn more about this, I am not the one to help you.

00;15;47;05 - 00;16;10;24
Claus Lauter
I would reckon. So I would suggest to go out there, listen to the episode twice, and then address every single point there, and then go to YouTube and find videos that are for 2026. So don't look up conversion rate optimization or SEO on a seven year old video that won't help you. Look for experts out there that are posting content all the time.

00;16;11;01 - 00;16;42;09
Claus Lauter
You will find a lot of experts on the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast talking about these topics, so listen to some more episodes of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast, see who the expert is, and then visit the channels of the experts that I have as guests on the show. A lot of them have YouTube channels, a lot of them have email newsletters that will help you addressing all these points on how to create traffic, how to optimize your traffic, how to optimize your conversion rate to make more money in 2026.

00;16;42;09 - 00;17;01;02
Claus Lauter
So that's it for my show for my site today. Next week we will have more guests on the show as always, but I just wanted to address the traffic topic because I think a lot of people have a wrong understanding about how important traffic is, or how easy or not it is to get traffic in 2026, so I hope this will help.

00;17;01;04 - 00;17;37;03
Claus Lauter
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, if you need any help, or if I need to point you to an expert, I'm always happy to help them. For now, don't forget to subscribe, like and share and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one!

 

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;23
Claus Lauter
Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money? If you have more time and focus on content, on community, on earned media, if you have more money, then paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell. Time is a cost and money is a cost.

00;00;19;26 - 00;00;25;07
Claus Lauter
So you have to choose which way you want to go.

00;00;25;09 - 00;00;51;08
Claus Lauter
Hey Claus here. Welcome back to the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today's episode is a solo one, and we're talking about something that almost every online store owner struggles with right now. It's traffic. More specifically, how to drive qualified high content traffic to your store in 2026. So let's be honest, SEO isn't what it was in the past. AI is changing a lot, and search paid ads are costing more and more, and relying on one channel only is very risky.

00;00;51;11 - 00;01;12;12
Claus Lauter
So I try to break down what's actually working right now, and how to build traffic that converts, how to spread your risk and how to create traffic you control. If traffic is harder than ever, then this episode is for you. So let's get right into it. So first of all, traffic is the biggest pain point I hear from most founders, online sellers, e-commerce merchants, DTC brands.

00;01;12;12 - 00;01;31;04
Claus Lauter
And I totally get it. I'm struggling with traffic every day as well. I'm online marketer for 20 something years, and traffic obviously is the one thing you want to have to your store or to your website, to whatever you have to offer on the interwebs so it feels really hot. And yes, to choose traffic is not that there's tons of traffic out there.

00;01;31;04 - 00;01;57;20
Claus Lauter
Lazy traffic is dead, so it's not easy anymore. Ship clicks are debt, so it's a paid game out there. And if you only rely on one channel, then you're playing a very dangerous game out there. So in 2026, obviously we're looking into AI and how that has changed so much. And obviously one thing that's very bad, the inflating your numbers in your reports is bots.

00;01;57;20 - 00;02;21;09
Claus Lauter
And then obviously platforms can shut you down like ads for instance, overnight. So we have a lot of risks out there and what we want basically as everyone we want qualified traffic, high intense traffic, resilient traffic. Now this is not easy. And I don't want to destroy your dream there. If you want to play the online game, if you want to run a online store, you need to attack the traffic.

00;02;21;09 - 00;02;40;16
Claus Lauter
And the marketing that comes with it was a very professional perspective. Let's talk about a couple of numbers to give you just an impression of how the traffic in 2026 looks like. So there is a lot of money to traffic, and that means there is 30 to 40% of your visits on your website are bots. So these are not real people.

00;02;40;18 - 00;03;01;16
Claus Lauter
These are just bots and crawlers scanning your website. They create fake clicks, they create spam sessions. And obviously that's nothing you want to have in your store. And I definitely will not buy from you. So if you're only looking at sessions, then you're lying to yourself. So that's where the reports are not working for you. What you should focus on is revenue per visitor.

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;19;29
Claus Lauter
You should focus on your conversion rate and you should focus on your email capture rate. These are real numbers, and these are numbers that help you to sell more, and also to optimize for more source out there have very low conversion rates, but 1% sometimes lower. What I see and was that you don't have a business, you just have a glorified hobby.

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;42;18
Claus Lauter
If you want to make money, then you need to have at least 2 or 3 better 5% conversion rates. And this will give you also a profit margin that will help you to grow. If you're below that, then you have to fix your conversion before you can scale in traffic. So a lot of people just throwing in a very average store and basically completely leave conversion rate optimization out of the picture.

00;03;42;18 - 00;04;06;06
Claus Lauter
And then they're wondering that they don't make money. And the excuse is if I would have more traffic, I would sell more. No you won't. When we talk about Search Everywhere topic on my list, I SEO search engine optimization, something that's around for a very long time and people still try. If I optimize my page for a keyword for my product name, then they will come and it's not like the old movie goes.

00;04;06;06 - 00;04;34;16
Claus Lauter
If you build it, they will come. That's not happening. And also the ranking is not really working anymore with keywords. So SEO was pronounced dead. Many, many times, but I think in 2026 and started 2025, we saw a big shift in search engine optimization and it's shifting towards AI keyboard stuffing obviously over for a long time. And Google ranks by not keyword anymore, but by authority, by entities, by brands, by real expertise.

00;04;34;16 - 00;04;51;18
Claus Lauter
And even more, Google has jumped on the train of AI. You will see that is the no click searches. And most people, if you like me, you will basically just type in Google whatever you're looking for and you'll get a results or an overview of what you're looking for right on top of the page. And no one clicks down.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;27;10
Claus Lauter
No would see your listing anymore. So that's where SEO the old way is not working anymore. Where you want to optimize for is obviously a AI overview. Large language models work slightly different than Google did in the past, so you have zero click search and you need to optimize your content and get your content listed, for instance, in Reddit and look for platforms where large language models like ChatGPT like Germany, Cloud and Tropics, all of them go and get their data from.

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;50;00
Claus Lauter
And also you should optimize not only for one platform. So you need to optimize your content, your product landing page for Google, for YouTube, for TikTok, search for Amazon, search for LinkedIn, for Instagram, for podcasts, for reviews. So it's not one and for all. It's really diving deep into content marketing and optimizing there because people are searching on all of these platforms.

00;05;50;00 - 00;06;21;15
Claus Lauter
So you never know where your traffic will come from, what works now, when you create content, try to answer real questions, use structured content, use FAQ so that you have an expertise, use original data, and create strong opinions. All of these will help you getting listed in chat to ChatGPT and the other large language models. And with a bit of luck, you will get traffic in the future from these long language models and less from Google itself.

00;06;21;23 - 00;06;40;27
Claus Lauter
Unless it's Gemini. Also, reach out to sites that are already ranking for your niche for your industry and try to get featured, mentioned, and reviewed there. So that's modern SEO, and I will come to some of these bits a little bit later in this episode. Now, before you drive traffic, you want to make sure that you get qualified traffic.

00;06;40;27 - 00;07;03;03
Claus Lauter
As I mentioned in the beginning, and most brands, specifically new brand sources, completely skip the ideal customer. So you need to define who is your perfect customer, who's your ideal customer? What pain points are you solving? You need to find out where your customers are hanging out, and you need to find out what content they are trusting to get there.

00;07;03;07 - 00;07;25;19
Claus Lauter
You will use analytics. You will use post-purchase surveys. You will use platform insights. You will use heatmaps. Because if you don't know your ICP so your ideal customer profile, then you waste ad spend. You create generic content and you attract the wrong people. So you end up having traffic and you still wondering is now I have all the traffic, but why is no one buying from me?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;52;24
Claus Lauter
And that's because you are basically targeting the wrong audience there. Now we come to the 300 pound gorilla and that's paid to traffic. Paid traffic is the fastest way to get you traffic to your store, to your website, and as it is fast and it will only last as long as you pay money, that's the big downside. So if you're starting, you don't have any budget, you will have to put in the time and to create content to do social media, all the other channels.

00;07;52;24 - 00;08;11;25
Claus Lauter
I will highlight a few more and a little bit later, but if you want to make quick money, then you better do your conversion rate and then you better do your customer profile. And then you put some money aside and you start was paid traffic right away. This will not only bring you hopefully the right customer, that will also bring you the traffic the fastest.

00;08;12;03 - 00;08;34;20
Claus Lauter
Now obviously you know, meta, Facebook, Instagram, etc. you know Google, you know, TikTok, YouTube. So make sure. And that's very important that you diversify on all of these. Because if 90% of your revenue, for instance, is coming from meta, from Facebook, from Instagram, and your account gets banned, that happens all the time. Your business basically is that overnight.

00;08;34;23 - 00;08;54;05
Claus Lauter
So you want to diversify and you want to put your money on all of these platforms. So Google ads, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, which also Google meta, etc. and you want to test all of them and you want to then put the most money, obviously, on the platform that works the best. And you want to find out that you put like 80% on high intent.

00;08;54;09 - 00;09;16;01
Claus Lauter
It might be Google Shopping, Reddit search, and 20% on discovery channels, which basically is TikTok Instagram shorts like this was that you test small, you're killing to do this fast and you scale the winners and spread the risk. So multiple platforms is one thing to do this, but also you want to have multiple ad accounts. So if you're running Facebook ads set up more than one ad account.

00;09;16;04 - 00;09;38;15
Claus Lauter
If meta closes one of them, you can continue on the other ones and you want to also with that, have backup megapixels and APIs and so on, so forth has happened to me. You don't want to wake up in the morning with a message that your meta account, your Facebook account, has been closed and you can't run any ads anymore, and your costs to run your business will be still there, but you don't make any revenue anymore.

00;09;38;15 - 00;10;12;05
Claus Lauter
So lesson learned to make back up accounts. Diversify to verify your ad spend and start spending and you will see traffic. Now the next one here to talk about is earned and social traffic. So that's the human aspect. From there, I obviously can write copy, but I can't replace human trust, at least not now. So with earned traffic we talk about reviews, awards, press releases, influencer mentions, podcast appearances, anything that is a third party and mention you is ten times stronger than any that you can run.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;38;28
Claus Lauter
So earned traffic. Definitely more valuable than paid traffic. And then for social marketing, you're basically putting your money on someone else's land. So they want to create native content or a platform, and you don't want to just post the same junk in the same format on every platform, because every channel out there Instagram, meta, blue Sky X, they speak a different language and they attract different people.

00;10;38;29 - 00;11;02;11
Claus Lauter
So you want to make sure that your content speaks to them. High intent traffic then often comes from very niche channels, so that can be niche podcasts. Now I'm a podcaster myself. I'm biased, but if you want to get to the right people and look, if there are any podcasts out there that talk about the topic that you're in the industry that you're in.

00;11;02;11 - 00;11;26;22
Claus Lauter
So, for instance, if you're selling gardening tools, gardening equipment, see if there's any podcasts there that talk to gardeners and try to become a guest on the on the show. And then obviously not only promote your product, but also talk and contribute and help and give some insights that help the listeners. And this will help you and more often than not, you might get even for free on a show.

00;11;26;24 - 00;11;52;28
Claus Lauter
And then you will have a call to action to see where people can find you, where they can buy your products, etcetera, get you exactly where you want to be to your perfect customer. The same talking to Micro-influencers. So back to my example for gardening. If there are influencers out there that are in the garden industry, your garden niche niche, whatever you want to call it, reach out to them, try to find a way to cooperate with them and then make it work.

00;11;53;06 - 00;12;15;09
Claus Lauter
And then also you want to look into communities and being helpful. They're not just post, bland marketing messages in there because that will get you banned from a community like in a second. Now, owned marketing is the most important one. Owned marketing is basically where you own the list or where you own the data. It's also the one that takes the longest to built, but it's the most valuable.

00;12;15;09 - 00;12;41;08
Claus Lauter
So if you don't own the data, then you don't own the business. So if Facebook or any other platform shuts you down, you won't get access to the data. And then it's nothing much you can do. Was owned marketing. We're talking about email, we're talking about SMS. You're talking about your own community. And specifically if you're on Shopify with email, obviously you want to use tools like Klaviyo for email and SMS and build up your own list data.

00;12;41;12 - 00;13;07;12
Claus Lauter
So every visitor to your site and every outreach and every promotion you do, you should invite people to join your email list to join your SMS, or to join your ecosystem, which is a community, for instance, and not only, say, 10% off. Invite them to your world and provide helpful information for content so that they stay and not immediately unsubscribe from your list.

00;13;07;14 - 00;13;32;08
Claus Lauter
Now, once you have the list, obviously you can continue marketing to your own data as often as you want to to make it more attractive for them to join your world. Offer tools, lead magnets, calculators, guides, any kind of useful resource out there that people are looking for and that will help them. And with owned traffic, you are sort of safeguarding yourself against algorithm changes.

00;13;32;08 - 00;13;53;04
Claus Lauter
We already spoke about conversion rate optimization. Make sure that you really dial into optimization there, because doubling traffic was a lousy conversion rate doesn't really help you. If you double your conversion rate, then you basically double your business overnight. That will be very difficult. Doing the same was more traffic. Now this is a lot of work as you can imagine and as a starter.

00;13;53;04 - 00;14;12;12
Claus Lauter
You're all over the place. You have many things on the plate. I was a Shopify seller myself for seven years, so I know how difficult it is to get everything in 24 hours. But obviously if you're not marketing yourself and your product out there, no traffic will come. Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money?

00;14;12;15 - 00;14;37;00
Claus Lauter
If you have more time, then focus on content, on community, on brand media, if you have more money and paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell, time is a cost and money is a cost. So you have to choose which way you want to go. If you want to see results fast and you have money to spend for marketing, then this is probably the way to go.

00;14;37;03 - 00;15;00;29
Claus Lauter
Or if you have money, you can outsource this and have someone else doing this. If you don't have money, then probably you need to do it yourself and that is a lot of time that you need to invest. So I know both ways, both have pros and cons and you need to decide for yourself where is the most value in what you do in your business and where you where can you contribute the most to the business and do you have the money?

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;23;12
Claus Lauter
If you are a total beginner with absolutely no money, you will have a hard time. But it's doable. But you have to put in a lot of time. Then the journey to become a successful online seller will just take much, much longer. So to close this episode today, traffic in 2026 is not about hacks. It's about diversification, about authority, intent and ownership.

00;15;23;15 - 00;15;47;02
Claus Lauter
So you should build traffic like you build wealth slowly over time, spreading the risk. Invest long term and control whatever you can so that algorithms will not decide over your business success. This is a very long and in-depth episode, and obviously we are only scratching the surface here. So if you want to learn more about this, I am not the one to help you.

00;15;47;05 - 00;16;10;24
Claus Lauter
I would reckon. So I would suggest to go out there, listen to the episode twice, and then address every single point there, and then go to YouTube and find videos that are for 2026. So don't look up conversion rate optimization or SEO on a seven year old video that won't help you. Look for experts out there that are posting content all the time.

00;16;11;01 - 00;16;42;09
Claus Lauter
You will find a lot of experts on the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast talking about these topics, so listen to some more episodes of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast, see who the expert is, and then visit the channels of the experts that I have as guests on the show. A lot of them have YouTube channels, a lot of them have email newsletters that will help you addressing all these points on how to create traffic, how to optimize your traffic, how to optimize your conversion rate to make more money in 2026.

00;16;42;09 - 00;17;01;02
Claus Lauter
So that's it for my show for my site today. Next week we will have more guests on the show as always, but I just wanted to address the traffic topic because I think a lot of people have a wrong understanding about how important traffic is, or how easy or not it is to get traffic in 2026, so I hope this will help.

00;17;01;04 - 00;17;37;03
Claus Lauter
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, if you need any help, or if I need to point you to an expert, I'm always happy to help them. For now, don't forget to subscribe, like and share and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one!

 

to create traffic you control. If traffic is harder than ever, then this episode is for you. So let's get right into it. So first of all, traffic is the biggest pain point I hear from most founders, online sellers, e-commerce merchants, DTC brands.

00;01;12;12 - 00;01;31;04
Claus Lauter
And I totally get it. I'm struggling with traffic every day as well. I'm online marketer for 20 something years, and traffic obviously is the one thing you want to have to your store or to your website, to whatever you have to offer on the interwebs so it feels really hot. And yes, to choose traffic is not that there's tons of traffic out there.

00;01;31;04 - 00;01;57;20
Claus Lauter
Lazy traffic is dead, so it's not easy anymore. Ship clicks are debt, so it's a paid game out there. And if you only rely on one channel, then you're playing a very dangerous game out there. So in 2026, obviously we're looking into AI and how that has changed so much. And obviously one thing that's very bad, the inflating your numbers in your reports is bots.

00;01;57;20 - 00;02;21;09
Claus Lauter
And then obviously platforms can shut you down like ads for instance, overnight. So we have a lot of risks out there and what we want basically as everyone we want qualified traffic, high intense traffic, resilient traffic. Now this is not easy. And I don't want to destroy your dream there. If you want to play the online game, if you want to run a online store, you need to attack the traffic.

00;02;21;09 - 00;02;40;16
Claus Lauter
And the marketing that comes with it was a very professional perspective. Let's talk about a couple of numbers to give you just an impression of how the traffic in 2026 looks like. So there is a lot of money to traffic, and that means there is 30 to 40% of your visits on your website are bots. So these are not real people.

00;02;40;18 - 00;03;01;16
Claus Lauter
These are just bots and crawlers scanning your website. They create fake clicks, they create spam sessions. And obviously that's nothing you want to have in your store. And I definitely will not buy from you. So if you're only looking at sessions, then you're lying to yourself. So that's where the reports are not working for you. What you should focus on is revenue per visitor.

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;19;29
Claus Lauter
You should focus on your conversion rate and you should focus on your email capture rate. These are real numbers, and these are numbers that help you to sell more, and also to optimize for more source out there have very low conversion rates, but 1% sometimes lower. What I see and was that you don't have a business, you just have a glorified hobby.

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;42;18
Claus Lauter
If you want to make money, then you need to have at least 2 or 3 better 5% conversion rates. And this will give you also a profit margin that will help you to grow. If you're below that, then you have to fix your conversion before you can scale in traffic. So a lot of people just throwing in a very average store and basically completely leave conversion rate optimization out of the picture.

00;03;42;18 - 00;04;06;06
Claus Lauter
And then they're wondering that they don't make money. And the excuse is if I would have more traffic, I would sell more. No you won't. When we talk about Search Everywhere topic on my list, I SEO search engine optimization, something that's around for a very long time and people still try. If I optimize my page for a keyword for my product name, then they will come and it's not like the old movie goes.

00;04;06;06 - 00;04;34;16
Claus Lauter
If you build it, they will come. That's not happening. And also the ranking is not really working anymore with keywords. So SEO was pronounced dead. Many, many times, but I think in 2026 and started 2025, we saw a big shift in search engine optimization and it's shifting towards AI keyboard stuffing obviously over for a long time. And Google ranks by not keyword anymore, but by authority, by entities, by brands, by real expertise.

00;04;34;16 - 00;04;51;18
Claus Lauter
And even more, Google has jumped on the train of AI. You will see that is the no click searches. And most people, if you like me, you will basically just type in Google whatever you're looking for and you'll get a results or an overview of what you're looking for right on top of the page. And no one clicks down.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;27;10
Claus Lauter
No would see your listing anymore. So that's where SEO the old way is not working anymore. Where you want to optimize for is obviously a AI overview. Large language models work slightly different than Google did in the past, so you have zero click search and you need to optimize your content and get your content listed, for instance, in Reddit and look for platforms where large language models like ChatGPT like Germany, Cloud and Tropics, all of them go and get their data from.

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;50;00
Claus Lauter
And also you should optimize not only for one platform. So you need to optimize your content, your product landing page for Google, for YouTube, for TikTok, search for Amazon, search for LinkedIn, for Instagram, for podcasts, for reviews. So it's not one and for all. It's really diving deep into content marketing and optimizing there because people are searching on all of these platforms.

00;05;50;00 - 00;06;21;15
Claus Lauter
So you never know where your traffic will come from, what works now, when you create content, try to answer real questions, use structured content, use FAQ so that you have an expertise, use original data, and create strong opinions. All of these will help you getting listed in chat to ChatGPT and the other large language models. And with a bit of luck, you will get traffic in the future from these long language models and less from Google itself.

00;06;21;23 - 00;06;40;27
Claus Lauter
Unless it's Gemini. Also, reach out to sites that are already ranking for your niche for your industry and try to get featured, mentioned, and reviewed there. So that's modern SEO, and I will come to some of these bits a little bit later in this episode. Now, before you drive traffic, you want to make sure that you get qualified traffic.

00;06;40;27 - 00;07;03;03
Claus Lauter
As I mentioned in the beginning, and most brands, specifically new brand sources, completely skip the ideal customer. So you need to define who is your perfect customer, who's your ideal customer? What pain points are you solving? You need to find out where your customers are hanging out, and you need to find out what content they are trusting to get there.

00;07;03;07 - 00;07;25;19
Claus Lauter
You will use analytics. You will use post-purchase surveys. You will use platform insights. You will use heatmaps. Because if you don't know your ICP so your ideal customer profile, then you waste ad spend. You create generic content and you attract the wrong people. So you end up having traffic and you still wondering is now I have all the traffic, but why is no one buying from me?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;52;24
Claus Lauter
And that's because you are basically targeting the wrong audience there. Now we come to the 300 pound gorilla and that's paid to traffic. Paid traffic is the fastest way to get you traffic to your store, to your website, and as it is fast and it will only last as long as you pay money, that's the big downside. So if you're starting, you don't have any budget, you will have to put in the time and to create content to do social media, all the other channels.

00;07;52;24 - 00;08;11;25
Claus Lauter
I will highlight a few more and a little bit later, but if you want to make quick money, then you better do your conversion rate and then you better do your customer profile. And then you put some money aside and you start was paid traffic right away. This will not only bring you hopefully the right customer, that will also bring you the traffic the fastest.

00;08;12;03 - 00;08;34;20
Claus Lauter
Now obviously you know, meta, Facebook, Instagram, etc. you know Google, you know, TikTok, YouTube. So make sure. And that's very important that you diversify on all of these. Because if 90% of your revenue, for instance, is coming from meta, from Facebook, from Instagram, and your account gets banned, that happens all the time. Your business basically is that overnight.

00;08;34;23 - 00;08;54;05
Claus Lauter
So you want to diversify and you want to put your money on all of these platforms. So Google ads, TikTok ads, YouTube ads, which also Google meta, etc. and you want to test all of them and you want to then put the most money, obviously, on the platform that works the best. And you want to find out that you put like 80% on high intent.

00;08;54;09 - 00;09;16;01
Claus Lauter
It might be Google Shopping, Reddit search, and 20% on discovery channels, which basically is TikTok Instagram shorts like this was that you test small, you're killing to do this fast and you scale the winners and spread the risk. So multiple platforms is one thing to do this, but also you want to have multiple ad accounts. So if you're running Facebook ads set up more than one ad account.

00;09;16;04 - 00;09;38;15
Claus Lauter
If meta closes one of them, you can continue on the other ones and you want to also with that, have backup megapixels and APIs and so on, so forth has happened to me. You don't want to wake up in the morning with a message that your meta account, your Facebook account, has been closed and you can't run any ads anymore, and your costs to run your business will be still there, but you don't make any revenue anymore.

00;09;38;15 - 00;10;12;05
Claus Lauter
So lesson learned to make back up accounts. Diversify to verify your ad spend and start spending and you will see traffic. Now the next one here to talk about is earned and social traffic. So that's the human aspect. From there, I obviously can write copy, but I can't replace human trust, at least not now. So with earned traffic we talk about reviews, awards, press releases, influencer mentions, podcast appearances, anything that is a third party and mention you is ten times stronger than any that you can run.

00;10;12;10 - 00;10;38;28
Claus Lauter
So earned traffic. Definitely more valuable than paid traffic. And then for social marketing, you're basically putting your money on someone else's land. So they want to create native content or a platform, and you don't want to just post the same junk in the same format on every platform, because every channel out there Instagram, meta, blue Sky X, they speak a different language and they attract different people.

00;10;38;29 - 00;11;02;11
Claus Lauter
So you want to make sure that your content speaks to them. High intent traffic then often comes from very niche channels, so that can be niche podcasts. Now I'm a podcaster myself. I'm biased, but if you want to get to the right people and look, if there are any podcasts out there that talk about the topic that you're in the industry that you're in.

00;11;02;11 - 00;11;26;22
Claus Lauter
So, for instance, if you're selling gardening tools, gardening equipment, see if there's any podcasts there that talk to gardeners and try to become a guest on the on the show. And then obviously not only promote your product, but also talk and contribute and help and give some insights that help the listeners. And this will help you and more often than not, you might get even for free on a show.

00;11;26;24 - 00;11;52;28
Claus Lauter
And then you will have a call to action to see where people can find you, where they can buy your products, etcetera, get you exactly where you want to be to your perfect customer. The same talking to Micro-influencers. So back to my example for gardening. If there are influencers out there that are in the garden industry, your garden niche niche, whatever you want to call it, reach out to them, try to find a way to cooperate with them and then make it work.

00;11;53;06 - 00;12;15;09
Claus Lauter
And then also you want to look into communities and being helpful. They're not just post, bland marketing messages in there because that will get you banned from a community like in a second. Now, owned marketing is the most important one. Owned marketing is basically where you own the list or where you own the data. It's also the one that takes the longest to built, but it's the most valuable.

00;12;15;09 - 00;12;41;08
Claus Lauter
So if you don't own the data, then you don't own the business. So if Facebook or any other platform shuts you down, you won't get access to the data. And then it's nothing much you can do. Was owned marketing. We're talking about email, we're talking about SMS. You're talking about your own community. And specifically if you're on Shopify with email, obviously you want to use tools like Klaviyo for email and SMS and build up your own list data.

00;12;41;12 - 00;13;07;12
Claus Lauter
So every visitor to your site and every outreach and every promotion you do, you should invite people to join your email list to join your SMS, or to join your ecosystem, which is a community, for instance, and not only, say, 10% off. Invite them to your world and provide helpful information for content so that they stay and not immediately unsubscribe from your list.

00;13;07;14 - 00;13;32;08
Claus Lauter
Now, once you have the list, obviously you can continue marketing to your own data as often as you want to to make it more attractive for them to join your world. Offer tools, lead magnets, calculators, guides, any kind of useful resource out there that people are looking for and that will help them. And with owned traffic, you are sort of safeguarding yourself against algorithm changes.

00;13;32;08 - 00;13;53;04
Claus Lauter
We already spoke about conversion rate optimization. Make sure that you really dial into optimization there, because doubling traffic was a lousy conversion rate doesn't really help you. If you double your conversion rate, then you basically double your business overnight. That will be very difficult. Doing the same was more traffic. Now this is a lot of work as you can imagine and as a starter.

00;13;53;04 - 00;14;12;12
Claus Lauter
You're all over the place. You have many things on the plate. I was a Shopify seller myself for seven years, so I know how difficult it is to get everything in 24 hours. But obviously if you're not marketing yourself and your product out there, no traffic will come. Now you have two choices. So you have to ask yourself, do I have more time or more money?

00;14;12;15 - 00;14;37;00
Claus Lauter
If you have more time, then focus on content, on community, on brand media, if you have more money and paid ads, influencer partnerships and expert operators are the way to go. In a nutshell, time is a cost and money is a cost. So you have to choose which way you want to go. If you want to see results fast and you have money to spend for marketing, then this is probably the way to go.

00;14;37;03 - 00;15;00;29
Claus Lauter
Or if you have money, you can outsource this and have someone else doing this. If you don't have money, then probably you need to do it yourself and that is a lot of time that you need to invest. So I know both ways, both have pros and cons and you need to decide for yourself where is the most value in what you do in your business and where you where can you contribute the most to the business and do you have the money?

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;23;12
Claus Lauter
If you are a total beginner with absolutely no money, you will have a hard time. But it's doable. But you have to put in a lot of time. Then the journey to become a successful online seller will just take much, much longer. So to close this episode today, traffic in 2026 is not about hacks. It's about diversification, about authority, intent and ownership.

00;15;23;15 - 00;15;47;02
Claus Lauter
So you should build traffic like you build wealth slowly over time, spreading the risk. Invest long term and control whatever you can so that algorithms will not decide over your business success. This is a very long and in-depth episode, and obviously we are only scratching the surface here. So if you want to learn more about this, I am not the one to help you.

00;15;47;05 - 00;16;10;24
Claus Lauter
I would reckon. So I would suggest to go out there, listen to the episode twice, and then address every single point there, and then go to YouTube and find videos that are for 2026. So don't look up conversion rate optimization or SEO on a seven year old video that won't help you. Look for experts out there that are posting content all the time.

00;16;11;01 - 00;16;42;09
Claus Lauter
You will find a lot of experts on the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast talking about these topics, so listen to some more episodes of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast, see who the expert is, and then visit the channels of the experts that I have as guests on the show. A lot of them have YouTube channels, a lot of them have email newsletters that will help you addressing all these points on how to create traffic, how to optimize your traffic, how to optimize your conversion rate to make more money in 2026.

00;16;42;09 - 00;17;01;02
Claus Lauter
So that's it for my show for my site today. Next week we will have more guests on the show as always, but I just wanted to address the traffic topic because I think a lot of people have a wrong understanding about how important traffic is, or how easy or not it is to get traffic in 2026, so I hope this will help.

00;17;01;04 - 00;17;37;03
Claus Lauter
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, if you need any help, or if I need to point you to an expert, I'm always happy to help them. For now, don't forget to subscribe, like and share and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one!