You’ve created a website to share your knowledge and experience. You’ve developed great content for it. Traffic trickles in but you expected a lot more.
Where are all the people and why aren’t more of them visiting your website?
Because without targeted visitors, you aren’t communicating your information or gaining subscribers. No subscribers equals no revenue from all your brilliant marketing efforts. No revenue leads to a cycle of income stress, sleepless nights, and constant worry.
In other words, attracting a constant flow of new and returning traffic to your website should be among your highest priorities.
Don’t be discouraged, though. You’ve just entered a new stage of business development. It’s time to drive traffic to your website. However, you don’t want just any traffic. You want to direct targeted traffic.
What is targeted traffic?
Targeted traffic matches your buyer personas. This portion of your audience seeks out your site due to marketing strategies and offers that you’ve crafted specifically to grab their attention.
They are pre-qualified visitors that can turn into leads, which can turn into buyers, then become repeat buyers, and ultimately turn into loyal customers.
It isn’t difficult to direct targeted traffic to your site. Search engines can do a lot of the work for you. However, the key to directing targeted traffic is to make effective use of search engines as well as other options available to you.
Here are 5 ideas for directing targeted traffic to your site that can help you reach your ideal market and your goals.
Employ search engine optimization
Consider beginning with search engine optimization (SEO). It’s not as scary as it sounds.
SEO is simply the art of raising your position on search engine results pages (SERPs) by using specific strategies, techniques, and tactics. The higher you are on the results page, the higher your ranking is and the more targeted leads you’ll get.
In fact, it’s one of the easiest technology/marketing strategies to learn and implement. With a little knowledge of how to use keywords and a good keyword research tool, you can get started right away.
According to search marketing experts, three of the top 10 keyword research tools are SEMrush ($99.95 or more monthly); Google’s Keyword Planner (free; create an Adwords account to use); and Ahrefs ($7 for 7-day free trial; $99 or more monthly thereafter).
Try out several to decide what features you want and which tool works best for your bottom line.
Be sure to place keywords in prominent places such as in your headlines, links, categories, descriptions, etc. This will encourage your viewers to click, read more, and take action.
Use content strategically
Once you have keywords in place throughout your site, make certain you create engaging content. This includes all your pages, posts, images, and other items. Providing fresh, optimized subject matter is consistently among the best techniques for moving up in the search results.
Please don’t just throw together a few blog posts or articles and stop. Your readers and search engines are hungry for information. Add new content on a regular basis to keep them both happy and returning to your website.
Have other experts write guest posts for your site. They will link back to their post on your site so that their readers become your readers as well – instant traffic.
Ask pertinent questions in the title or in the first paragraph to keep your audience engaged. Learn the difference between writing for your audience and writing at them.
Encourage your readers to share their thoughts and opinions. When you actively listen to your audience and people feel that they matter, not only will they come back but they will also bring their friends with them.
Diversify your content
Remember: Blog posts, articles, infographics, pictures, audios, videos and more are all types of content. Publish a variety of content types to attract several buyer personas at different stages of their journey.
Include multiple content formats in each website post. Use your own videos when possible. You may also want to use YouTube or social media videos that have gone viral. Using assorted types of content encourages a greater range of search engine results and greater traffic.
People love visuals and a picture really is worth a thousand words. Using infographics is a great way to explain complex or confusing concepts to your readers. Readers also tend to share these helpful infographics, which directs targeted traffic to your site.
Add graphs and pie charts to guides. More technical web users want information in the form of a comprehensive guide. Including graphs and pie charts helps them digest the information more easily.
Develop an irresistible lead magnet
A free special report about the most common problems your readers face will likely direct targeted traffic. In exchange for signing up and giving you their email addresses, they receive the free report. Once they are on your list, market to them via email to provide more info and related offers.
Create a guide. Guides are important marketing tools because they offer valuable information in one place. This makes readers happy and can gain their trust, which makes them want to come back for more.
After explaining an advanced or confusing concept, offer visitors a printable worksheet or checklist related to the concept. The visitor gets a worksheet that helps them solve a problem, while search engines index the download page. With very little effort, your free checklist can attract a lot of traffic.
Promote using social media
Social media platforms can help drive targeted traffic. Different audiences respond to different sites, so do your due diligence to discover the platforms that your readers prefer.
Since each social media platform caters and appeals to a slightly different group of people, some sites will be a better fit for your business and its goals than others.
Sharing post teasers, quote cards, and various info on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and others helps direct targeted traffic to you.
Take note of the social media platforms that bring you the most traffic. And don’t be afraid to try out new social sites to help you stay ahead of your competition.
If you want free, targeted traffic, be sure to keep the content on your site interesting. An updated website full of relevant, quality information for your targeted audience is sure to direct traffic to you.
Before you incorporate any of these tactics, though, ensure that your website is ready for the new volume of traffic. Double check your hosting package to make sure your bandwidth is not limited to a small amount. You may need to go with a larger package if this is the case.
Do you need more traffic? These ideas can help you drive targeted traffic straight to your website. Use them one at a time to test the results, or combine several to meet your specific goals.
Give it some time and be patient. Find what works best for you and, most importantly, for your customer; the results will follow.
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