If you build it they will come, right? Actually, in the world of the Internet, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Simply building a website isn’t enough to ensure website success.
To ensure your website brings (and converts) enough visitors to meet your goals, your website needs to be strategized from the ground up. Just like when building a house, a good foundation is key.
In fact, you could spend thousands on pay-per-click and social media advertisements all designed to drive traffic to your website, and yet, it still might not be enough visitors to meet your goals.
Why? Traffic is one thing. Targeted traffic is another. And traffic that converts is another.
Ultimately, for the vast majority of businesses, the goal is targeted traffic that converts. Generally, visitors may not convert on the first visit so your website needs to be good enough to keep them coming back. Your website needs to build authority, legitimacy and trust. But first, you need to get them there.
But keep in mind, not all traffic is created equal. For instance, if you sell blue socks and everyone coming to your website is looking for red socks, your traffic numbers might be high, but if they aren’t going to buy, what’s the point?
In other words, traffic numbers aren’t everything. Today we’re going to look at the ways your website can get more targeted website visitors, and why many websites underperform.
1. Who Is In Charge of the Website Build?
From a web development company’s perspective, you’ll likely be assigned a project manager and there will be key team members working together to meet your goals. For some web development companies, their goal is to ensure the client is happy with the website build. So, they build what the client wants. But, while most business owners know what they want or what they think makes a nice-looking website, they don’t actually know what they need. So, if your website is being built for you and so you’re happy with it, is it really what your target visitor wants?
2. Who Is In Charge of the Website Build? Part 2.
A good web building relationship comes when the client and web developers work as a team to execute a finished product designed around a common goal.
Project managers and web developers need to listen to what the client wants. Then, they need to ask key questions so they can nail down the actual objectives. What is the target traffic? What are the goals? What constitutes success beyond how nice a website looks?
Clients then need to be able to trust their web development and SEO (search engine optimization) team to lead them in the right direction. You might not always see eye-to-eye but if you’ve hired based on experience and knowledge then it is important to listen to their recommendations.
Websites should be designed for the end-user, the target visitor rather than for the client and business owner.
3. Is The Website Easy To Find?
You need to lead your visitors to your website they simply won’t just find it. A comprehensive digital marketing strategy is essential to ensure you’re reaching your target website visitor.
Traffic from organic search engines generally brings in the majority of a website’s targeted traffic. These people have typed a query into a search engine, found your listing on the results page and visited your website to find what they’re looking for.
Pay-per-click advertising, social media advertising, display advertising and online & offline brand awareness will also help generate good traffic.
4. Is the Website Easy To Use?
When a website visitor lands on your site, you only have a few seconds to encourage them to stay and look around a little bit more. That means your website needs to be fast-loading and offer important content right away. If the content they’ve landed on matches what they’re looking for, this means they don’t have to hunt and search. They’re more likely to stay.
In addition, once you’ve captured their attention, a website visitor may begin looking around your website. Does your content and internal linking lead them down a path to conversion or purchase? It should!
Are they easily able to find what they might be looking for? Is your navigation clear and concise. Are your pages based on single topics? Do they stick to the topic they’re supposed to?
Knowing what a visitor wants from your website and then delivering this content concisely is key to success.
5. Do You Have Quality Content?
Content has been king for a long time. Your website needs to have quality content that stakes your place as an authority in the marketplace. But even more so, you can’t simply write the content once. You need to keep producing new content to keep them coming back.
Your content should be based on what the target visitor is looking for. A good ongoing SEO strategy will have a content generation component that looks at user queries and keywords to generate new content ideas.
6. How Does the Website Capture Leads?
Once you’ve got them on your website, do you make it easy for them to convert? Generally, you should have your contact information in the footer or header of a website as well as on a contact page. Throughout your content you should have clear calls to action that relate to the topic at hand. Your internal content linking strategy should lead your visitors down a path to purchase. Getting in touch with you or purchasing a product should be quick and easy.
The more complicated you make it for someone to get a hold of you or purchase a product, the greater the chance you will lose them along the way.
7. Traffic Begets Traffic.
The more traffic your website gets, the more visitors that engage in your website and the better the experience you provide, the more traffic you will get.
When utilizing many traffic generating strategies, a website that provides authority and good user-engagement will have a higher quality score and will then begin to see an increase in positioning. Higher positioning generally means more traffic.
Are your traffic goals realistic? An online marketing professional can provide you with a good idea of what the demand is for your product or service, as well as what the competition might be. This will help you set realistic traffic goals. Plus, the payoff of a good strategy that incorporates SEO is that the traffic you get is targeted to your products and services and that means you don’t just get people in the door, you get people who want to be there.
1st On The List is an award-winning Internet marketing agency located near Vancouver, Canada. They pride themselves in being about quality, not quantity, which is why their relatively small company is packed with years of experience in digital marketing and web development.
