If you are a rookie or a seasoned marketer, it is given that you are familiar with the concept of the initial step that you need to take to make your website up and running is to attract more and more new visitors. Though it sounds so simple, it is easier said than done. So, from conceptualization to materialization, driving traffic to your website is, by all means, an uphill task. The common tendency is to miss the proverbial 'wood for the tree.' As you are more concerned about pressing things to sustain the business, including achieving the bottom-line results and how to stay afloat in tandem with the existing marketing trends, in the process, you tend to give a skip to the first step of bringing in the unknown visitors!
Whatever initiatives you undertake to focus more on sustaining the business and updating your website with the latest marketing trends, one thing you can't afford to forget is the initial part of your marketing strategy to bring the much-needed traffic. So, what is the way out to have a level-playing field, where you can neither skip the strategy of attracting unknown people to your website, at the same time, you also need to lay more emphasis on other things such as achieving the bottom-line results or matching the contemporary marketing trends? Generating traffic is made easy now than ever before!
Merely thinking that generating traffic is easy will not get the desired result. Increasing the traffic to your website can be less nightmarish and achievable if you can follow certain time-tested best practices tried and succeeded by many established online players. There are around eight ways for you to work on your website if you are to get the desired results of driving more traffic:
1. Optimizing Websites for 'Searchers' than Search Engines
The moment you confront the optimization of your website, the first thought that is likely to get into your mind is SEO or Search Engine Optimization! Of course, SEO is part of improving the positioning of your content on the search engine, but the pre-conceived notion is that by doing SEO, the traffic will flow like never before. Wrong. SEO is just an add-on, but the most critical thing is revamping your website with superior and unique content! Many successful websites do not emphasize optimization for search engines at all. Rather than optimizing for search engines, we need to optimize the website for those invisible visitors to use search engines more effectively.
You will be surprised to know that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., recognize websites optimized for potential searchers to be comprehensively optimized. By optimizing your website to help your potential visitors to visit your portal, you are gaining a double bonanza with a single effort: While you optimize your website for the wannabe visitors, at the same time, this is also a kind of optimization for giving cryptic clues to the search engines as well.
So, what's of paramount importance is that when you contemplate optimizing your website to offer an excellent virtual experience to attract more visitors, you have to keep the 'searchers' in mind. For that to happen, you need to figure out what the visitors want to see on your website, what kind of assistance they look for when they visit your website, and how best you can help and serve them to satisfy their needs. The advantage of creating a website optimized from a searcher's perspective is that search engines too cannot be far behind. An optimized website will naturally be recognized by the search engine's algorithm and index your website within no time, thus helping your portal appears on the first page itself!
2. Importance of Creating Content Using Just the Right 'Keyword'
How much great content you provide with excellent features, the 'key' to driving traffic is using just the right kind of Keywords! For, a 'Keyword' is the 'Bridge' between you and the unknown searcher. So, when you provide unique and high-quality content on your website, you also need to add these keywords in the body of the content and bold it. In addition to that, those keywords also have to be inserted in the content right behind the 'search' listing.
The easy method to figure out what those wannabe searchers want is to make them know your 'Identity,' as you aim to attract those searchers to know your identity. The keywords focused on the issues that your potential clients face or the targets they aim to achieve are what you should ideally be writing content about, as visitors have a cohesive focus on looking for solutions to those issues. If you have just the right content that would eventually help sort out their issues, searchers will figure that out and visit your website for sure.
3. Cognitive Fluency
Before explaining what Cognitive Fluency is all about, you need to ensure that the same is in place for your potential visitors to get a great experience. Let me elaborate to you with an example. For instance, if you have invented some device and need to file a patent for your innovative product, you would look for a nearby patent lawyer. You will key in 'Patent Lawyer' and the place of your residence on the Google search engine bar. If you click the 'search' button, naturally, it will give you a world of information about the patent lawyers in your hometown. But before you click search, stop for a moment and try to picture what a patent lawyer's website looks like. You will never think that the said website will be a jazzy one in your wildest imagination. Imagine that the website you want to visit is a professional one with all the details you want to know in place. The chances are high that the patent lawyer website you want to hire the services will be almost the same that your initial cognitive concept of what a professional patent lawyer's website should look like!
And this concept is nothing but cognitive fluency. So, the cardinal principle behind this concept is that the domains that elicit humongous traffic tend to offer an experience akin to visitors' ideas of what the website should look like.
The easiest way to enhance the cognitive fluency of your portal is to pose a query to your existing visitors as to what they would like to see on a website like yours. Pose questions on several aspects, including style, formatting, content, and more. Once you get the feedback and if it does not match your existing visitors' aspirations, you need to get back to your board room, brainstorm, and come up with more optimization methods.
4. Post Blogs that Offer Answers to Visitors' Needs
Providing excellent content on your website pages will not attract visitors in a big way. That is only one of the many aspects that drive traffic to your portal. It is equally important to write excellent blogs and post it on your website with relevant information your visitors are likely to look for. Blogs are very powerful tools to draw visitors exponentially. Just the way you optimize the pages of your website with the right keywords with the aim of your potential visitors searching for it, you should be replicating the same strategy in your blog posts as well. Imagine as to what are the frequently asked queries of your potential visitors, what are the issues they face and are looking through the Internet search engine. So, while choosing the topics for your blogs, you should include everything a searcher is looking for. You have to post blogs that make sense to your visitors. Your blogs should dispel all their doubts and answer their queries so that when your potential visitors search these keywords or terms, naturally, your website will appear on their screens. There are twin advantages. One is that it will eventually help to keep your website and business registered in the minds of your potential clients, and with that, it will also help win the confidence and trust of your wannabe clients.
5. Separate Blog Post for Each Keyword
Keywords are the indelible footprint of your website. For, keywords will help the search engine recognize your website's identity and improve the ranking to a great extent. The more keywords you generate, the better it will be to improve the footprint of your website on the search engine's first page. When you include powerful keywords from searchers' perspective, naturally, the ranking of your website will increase phenomenally. How frequently you write relevant blog posts with just the right keywords will enormously help your website come up on search engine result pages that will attract more visitors.
6. Constituency of Blog is the Key
How much ever great blog you write and post, if your website is not active, then it will not attract traffic. So consistency is the key. The more blogs you post with the right keywords, your website can attract more traffic. A recent research report on Inbound Marketing revealed that in contrast with a website posting just a blog a month, the website that posted a blog a day, which posted blogs daily, almost 70% reported more traffic and return on investment. Blogging can accrue more tangible benefits in the form of a heavy flow of visitors, leads, and more clients. The more blogs you post on your website, the more search engines will have more reasons to regularly crawl and index your website.
7. Social Media as a Tool to Replicate Client Query Blog Content
Inquiries can come on social media platforms as well. For instance, someone may tweet to know about a particular eatery in a specific locality in your city, or someone may post the same on Facebook. Sometimes, someone posts a query in a LinkedIn group on a specific requirement, where you too belong. Perhaps, you might as well have seen the query. But have you responded to that query? No will be the answer.
So, the point to ponder is whether you would have ignored the same way someone had raised a query in the LinkedIn group if someone had asked you the same query in person? In that case, will you ignore the query and move on? You will take time to respond to that direct query and try to offer the information they had sought. Thus, you will become a resource for them by helping them solve the query. So, the question is, why can't you replicate the same on social media platforms?
Trust me, the same concept works. If an unknown person is raising a query and looking for help, rather than skimming over their query, do take the initiative of helping the person. Your in-depth knowledge about the industry can become a golden opportunity for you to share and assist the person who had raised the query and extend the help to satisfy their need. One great step for you is to respond to the social media queries or posts by posting the link of your blog so that the other person can visit your website and get to know more about the topic they are interested in, and maybe she might as well buy your service or product. If you post the links of your blogs in unsolicited spaces, it becomes spam. So long as you are not doing that, you are instead helping those in need. And it can turn out to be an excellent strategy for you to add your client base!
8. Observing Pertinent Keywords on Social Media and Involvement are Key Strategies
Did you know that you can share your content that will be quite helpful for unknown persons without actually spamming? One way of looking at this to your advantage is that you need to observe or keep track of the 'keywords' pertinent to your area of business and decide how you can help those in need using those keywords.
Also, observe for mentions of the major issues your clients face on various social media platforms. If you spot such kinds of discussion taking place, you can eye for opportunities in joining those discussions, exactly how you respond to the queries raised at your blog posts on your website. By observing the right keywords that are quintessential for your business area, you can then provide your content and solution in the right spot and at the exact time!
A combination of all the strategies, if you implement, then it is bound to attract just the right kind of unknown patrons to visit your portal. When a new visitor checks your website home page or blog section, it will be pretty much easy for you to convert those footfalls into potential leads within a short time. Once the wannabe patron lands on your page, assuming that they are a potential lead, you can handhold them to make them comprehend the USPs of your business and eventually convert them into customers! What's more, the chances are great that these types of new customers, once they are satisfied with your service, can turn out to be the brand ambassadors of your company. For, they will testify how satisfied they were with your services and how they got tangible benefit from being your customers. The key point for you to keep in mind is that all these will kick-start only when you have just the right kind of traffic.
