Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of every profitable website.
A profitable website depends on two numbers: the number of visitors to the site and the proportion that actually become customers. These metrics are known as “traffic” and “conversion rate”. Increasing either one means better results.
The first three ingredients of a profitable website – simple and effective strategy, high-quality design and customer-focussed content – all relate to raising conversion rates. So it’s no surprise the fourth ingredient is targeted traffic.
That’s because your website is like a billboard in the desert. It doesn’t matter how good it is, if no one sees it, it’s absolutely worthless. So you need a strategy to attract targeted traffic your website.
The most popular way people find websites is through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and msn. You can expect a large proportion of your website traffic to come from these search engines.
But people can also find out about your site in other online and off-line media. For example, they might visit your website after you give them a business card with the URL on it. Or they might see a print advertisement encouraging them to visit your site.
Here are three powerful strategies to ensure a steady flow of targeted traffic to your website:
1. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Just in case you didn’t know this already, high rankings in search engine listings don’t usually happen by accident. They are often a result of a concerted effort by the website owner to get their website to rank highly.
The higher your rankings the more traffic you’ll received from search engines. This is because most people don’t look beyond the first two pages of listings.
An eye-tracking study by iProspect in 2004 found most attention is paid to the first three listings. Forty-one per cent of searchers don’t go beyond the first page of results, and 67 per cent of searchers will stop looking by page two.
Make it relevant
People generally search on two- or three-word key phrases such as “laptop computer”. Search engines deliver search results based on what they consider are “relevant” web pages. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a process of developing a web page so it’s considered relevant to a particular key phrase by the search engines.
There are three important elements of SEO:
- “On page” factors are directly related to the content and structure of the website. Placing relevant key phrases in strategic positions on the web page – such as the title tag, meta description, headlines, and sprinkled throughout the text – helps the search engines know what your web page is about.
- “Link popularity” refers to the number of links to your web pages. If lots of sites link to a web page then it’s considered more relevant – especially if they use the key phrase in the link text. Search engines also give more weight to links from better quality sites.
- Having a search engine-friendly site. Search engines catalogue the web using programs called spiders (or bots) which automatically index content. You must ensure the coding of your site allows the spiders access to all your content.
2. Pay-per-click advertising
There is an alternative to SEO for getting your site listed on the first page of search engine results: pay-per-click advertising.
The three major search engines – Google, Yahoo! and msn – show small text ads on the top and right hand side of their search results. The ads shown are determined by the key phrase the searcher enters.
For example, if a person searched for “pool cleaners in Sydney”, ads for pool cleaners servicing Sydney would most appear alongside the free listings. The ads are labelled “sponsored links”, “sponsor results” or “sponsored sites”.
When a searcher clicks on an ad they are taken to the advertiser’s website. Advertisers pay only for “click-throughs” i.e. when a searcher clicks on their ad to visit their website. Hence the name “pay-per-click”.
Geographical targeting technology means your ad only appears in the regions you select. So it’s easy to target customers within, say, 20 kilometres of your business.
The fee for each click-through is determined by a bidding system. Generally speaking, to get your ad higher up the listings you must bid more. Also, the more people bidding on a particular key phrase, the higher the bids will be. Advertisers control their costs by setting a maximum budget.
3. Drive to web
People can also find out about your site in off-line media. For example most people know that you should put your site’s URL on your business cards, letterhead and all the ads and brochures you create.
But if your site is designed to capture visitors’ email addresses (and it should be!) you can use off-line media, such as direct mail, print ads and even radio and TV advertising, to build a house email list.
It works like this: you include a compelling offer on your site to entice visitors to register their contact details. Offering a free report, guide or white paper is a tried and tested method of obtaining prospects’ email addresses.
You then use direct mail or ads to drive traffic to your website using your free offer as bait. For example, you send a post card to a targeted list of prospects telling them they can get a valuable free report when they visit your website.
Once you have a prospect’s contact details you can deliver stay-in-touch marketing – online and/or off-line. Over time you will convert prospects into customers.
One more thing: once you’ve got your free offer/email address capture system set up on your website you can also promote it online e.g. from your email signature line, in your e-newsletters, from articles you get published online, in ads in other people’s e-newsletters, or even using pay-per-click ads.
About the author: Charles Cuninghame is an expert copywriter and marketing trouble shooter who helps business owners and marketing managers attract more clients.
Related posts:
