Need marketing? Click to see how you can save $30,000 next year.

A Step-by-Step Guide For Increasing Quality Traffic to Your Website

Once you have a website, getting traffic is usually seen as the next step.

But not all traffic is created equal. In fact, traffic that doesn’t convert is useless.

Conversion describes the actions people take as they go from prospect to lead to customer. For your website to deliver value, it needs to be set up to foster these conversions. Each stage of the buyer journey has different ones, and they can take many forms.

First-time visitors who don’t convert to social media followers or email subscribers aren’t likely to come back, although they might if they find your website’s content useful and informative. Still, you can’t tell when someone bookmarks your website and plans to return. You can always measure conversions.

Poor quality traffic increases the technical resources your website needs to consume without giving you anything in return. In effect, that traffic is pure overhead. If you have lots of bad traffic, your website is slower and you’re probably paying more for it, but it’s not helping you reach your goals.

Luckily, bad traffic doesn’t usually happen by itself.

Most Central Florida businesses have zero traffic to their website.

That’s right, nada.

If that describes you, you don’t need to worry. You can always change what you’re doing and get on the right track. And that category of “most” Central Florida businesses also includes your competitors. They are probably not getting the value they expected from their websites, either.

If you start doing the right things in the right way, you can pull ahead of the pack.

When you type in a search term that’s relevant to your business, the brands you see near the top of the list are usually the handful that are doing something right. You aren’t really competing with all of the thousands you’ll find in the distant back pages of Google’s results – only with this select, small group.

And even they are not usually doing everything right.

There’s always a way to capture high quality traffic for yourself, even if you have a lot of entrenched rivals in the area. And though the goal is to get more of that traffic month after month, even the first trickle can completely change your business.

Traffic doesn’t happen by accident. There are reliable, repeatable methods to get it.

But before you start using any of them, you need to build a strong foundation. That means a fast, highly responsive custom website that’s a snap for visitors to use. Without a modern, secure, well-designed website, it will be next to impossible to get traffic to convert – even when your message resonates.

For now, let’s assume you have a website. It’s stable, sleek, and ready to go.

(Many Central Florida businesses don’t have this part in the bag yet.)

From there, what exactly do you do to get that high quality traffic you want?

Traffic growth comes from implementing a digital marketing strategy correctly and consistently. With the right strategy in place, you can expect to see traffic numbers increase every month – reflecting the positive change in your visibility when people search for terms related to your business.

The best way to develop and implement that strategy is in partnership with a Central Florida marketing agency that understands your business. But it never hurts to understand the outlines of where you’re going, especially if you want to take a hands-on approach to your marketing campaigns.

Let’s zoom in on the parts of an efficient and powerful traffic generation strategy.

1. Start by Knowing Who You’re Talking To

Every piece of marketing is written for someone. It not only needs to make sense to them but speak to their deep motivations – the things that keep them up at night. One of the top reasons to use a digital marketing agency is for a soundboard to help you document what you know about your customers.

That usually comes in the form of a buyer persona. This written record describes a character, your ideal buyer, and everything you know about that person: Their background, hopes, dreams, fears, buying process, and exactly what they’re trying to achieve when they come in contact with your brand.

Computer programmers keep a rubber duckie near the keyboard – if they can’t explain what they’re doing to the rubber duck, they try another approach. Your buyer persona is like your rubber duckie: Simply by keeping it in mind, you’ll always know whether your marketing makes sense.

Buyer personas evolve over time, and brands can have several different ones; for example, a product might have several different uses that attract different buyers. Whatever the case, it helps you check your assumptions and incorporate new customer feedback as you receive it.

2. Research and Select Your Search Keywords

Keywords, also known as search terms, represent the exact words and phrases someone types in when they search online. When someone is searching, it means they’re looking to solve a problem or get more information – and you want to be there in the earliest stages of their research process.

You might have heard of buyer intent keywords, the kind of searches that suggest someone is ready to make a purchase. Near me searches are a subset of them. In cases like this, the searcher is still looking for information, but the question has shifted to “What’s the best place to buy this product from?”

Most keywords are not buyer intent keywords, which only come into play when someone is almost done with research. Instead, the majority of searches are done early, when someone just became aware of a problem or opportunity they need to respond to. This is where you want to be.

Specialized keyword research tools will help you analyze search traffic so you can:

  • Pinpoint the exact searches that are coming from your would-be customers
  • Understand how much traffic you stand to gain by appearing in those searches
  • Know which keywords are highly competitive versus those easy to get ranked for

Once you’ve identified the right keywords, it’s important to save them in a spreadsheet your marketing team can consult later on. A handful of carefully selected keywords can result in hundreds or thousands of quality website visits every month, but identifying them is only the start of reaping that traffic.

3. Build a Base of Useful, Keyword-Rich Content

What practical good will all those keywords do you? The answer is content.

In fact, that’s the reason for the entire modern internet: Helpful, informative content.

Content is anything you publish on your website or other digital properties that helps your audience to solve a problem or answer a question. That might seem pretty broad, but all content is content. Funny YouTube videos solve the problem of boredom. Your products and services solve problems, too.

Part of your content will be dedicated to describing those problems since many first-time visitors will need a lot of information about just what they’re up against. That’s your evergreen content, the kind that’s broadly useful to most first-time visitors and rarely needs to be updated.

Users who graduate from the evergreen content will move on to pieces that discuss exactly how your products and services work better. After all, an informed consumer needs buying criteria. The earlier you connect, the easier it is to position yourself as a trusted advisor.

In the long run, users who stick with you will become leads. Using the right buying criteria (hopefully your own) they’ll narrow down all their potential options to just a few. Then it’s up to them to decide not just which one is “best,” but which is best for them. Finally, they’ll reach out.

All along, the keywords they use to seek out information will change.

The process starts with basic, vague questions that don’t use jargon. Over time, the person becomes more aware of terminology that relates to the problem, using it more often and asking more detailed questions. When they’re nearly ready to talk to you, their queries will be very precise.

Whether it’s a blog, a video, or anything else, each piece of content you create needs to utilize the right keywords for the kind of buyer you want to connect with. Keywords give you a solid indication of where a person is in the overall buyer journey, but they don’t give you everything you need to know.

A keyword is often too bland to tell you exactly what your content’s topic should be – that’s where a keen marketing eye serves you well. Your entire website needs to reflect keywords to some degree.

Then, with search engine optimization, you fill in the blanks and build the bridges to tell search engines exactly what your content is about and who it’s for. SEO consists of design and technology best practices that make your website simple for humans to use, too, and it’s crucial to getting the most from content.

All along, your website will be appearing more prominently in a wider variety of relevant searches. Your keyword-rich content will magnetize more high quality traffic to your digital doorstep one day at a time.

This might sound like the end of the story, but it’s not. While you’ll always be somewhere in the cycle of selecting keywords, crafting content, and using search engine optimization, traffic isn’t quality unless it’s converting. Conversions provide the revenue that’s the lifeblood of your business.

At this stage, you’re only about halfway there. But it’s time to get excited.

The next part has the potential to be really fun.

4. Define Your Conversions and Establish Email Marketing

You know what you want visitors to do. Now, you need to communicate that to them.

There’s a funny thing about the psychology of buying marketers have known for more than a hundred years now: Unless you tell them precisely what you want them to do, people usually won’t do it, even when they are well aware of what the next step is.

You need to spell it out for them in something we refer to as a call to action.

A call to action (or CTA) can be simple: “Add to cart” is probably the most common one.

CTAs need to be understood at a glance, but the way they interact with your marketing strategy can be quite sophisticated. Every piece of content needs to have a CTA, and in some cases (like a longer blog), that CTA may repeat multiple times. That’s to catch attention as visitors scan the text.

(Because “reader” is a misnomer on the internet – almost everyone scans.)

Since most blogs are evergreen content targeted at that early research phase, the CTA will usually point to what’s called a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a deep-dive piece of content that entices visitors to join your email marketing list in exchange for access. Your list, by contrast, equips you to stay in contact for as long as it takes for the subscriber to make a buy.

That could be weeks or months away, but you‘ll be there.

5. Uplevel Your Flagship Content by Adding Video

Once your website is ready to convert, you can take the next step to expand the flow of quality traffic.

As a rule, quality traffic requires quality content. Consumer preferences speak loud and clear: The most popular content on the internet is video, by far. Video is convenient, enjoyable, is more likely to inspire action, does wonders for search engine optimization, and it’s much more memorable than text content.

At this stage in your traffic journey, you should already have strong ideas about which content is pulling visitors in. Now’s the time to upgrade that content with video, which signals to Google and other search engines that it’s one of the more important pages on your website.

Good video storytelling is incredibly engrossing – but don’t worry if not everyone watches your videos. Research suggests that videos still have a positive impact on buyer behavior just by being on the page.

They’re a mark of trust you shouldn’t do without if you want awesome traffic. And once you have them up and running, you can bring in even more targeted visitors by sharing your videos on whatever social media platform is favored by your audience.

6. Build Links Back to Your Website

The greatest search engine optimization in the world is useless without one thing: Backlinks.

Backlinks are links back to your website from another website. The more popular, authoritative, and relevant that other website is, the more likely it is to help the link page rank higher in search. Google looks at backlinks like “editorial votes,” and they continue to be one of the biggest ranking factors.

Despite being a huge part of quality traffic, most Central Florida businesses don’t have a plan to build backlinks. Not only does it require excellent content, but you need an outreach strategy to get positive attention from websites in your industry. That can take hundreds of hours a month.

If you want time left in the day to do anything else, leave this part to a marketing agency.

With New York Ave, You Get the Traffic, Get the Conversions, and Get Life-Long Customers

Traffic is only the beginning. It’s what you do with it that counts.

And if you’re missing any part of the six steps above … you might never get off the ground.

Traffic generation can be challenging, but it’s essential. Once you’ve landed that traffic, heed the old business wisdom: It’s always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one. Traffic acquisition should blend seamlessly into a great customer experience, then a long-term retention plan.

If you wait until you have traffic to start building the other parts of your customer funnel, then your bucket will always be leaking. Get all the plates spinning at once and you can start turning your new website visitors into raving fans from the very beginning.

That’s the most efficient (and satisfying) use of any traffic.

It might look like a tall order, but you can do it with help from an experienced marketing agency.

Turn up the quality of your website traffic. Contact New York Ave today.

Need marketing? Get 5x the work at 10x the quality, for 1/2 the cost with an agency.

press R to restart | press X to quit
Game Over
0

Questions?
386-490-8900

Offices DeLand, Orlando, and Tampa

Monday thru Friday
9am – 5pm EST

Click here to schedule a digital or in-person consultation.

DeLand

126 N Woodland Blvd

Suite A
DeLand, FL 32720

By Appointment Only

Top Digital Marketing Agency in Deltona

Orlando

300 S Orange Ave

Suite 1000
Orlando, FL 32801

By Appointment Only

Top Digital Marketing Agency in Orlando

Tampa

615 Channelside Dr

Suite 207
Tampa, FL 33602

By Appointment Only

Top Digital Marketing Agency in Tampa

1 Average median salary in Florida for ‘Marketing Director’, based on research by Glassdoor. 2 Retirement calculated at 3% contribution, based on research by nirsonline.org. 3 Health premium average calculated by ranges provided from a 2016 Health Benefits survey. 4 Total employee average calculated at first year and includes the following considerations: $4k onboarding and training, $1k software and subscriptions, and $3.75k outsourcing help. Total agency average based on Florida-located, full-service agency.