2016: A staggering 209.6 people in the United States browsed products, compared prices and bought items online. The phone book has become a nostalgic ghost of a simpler, easier marketing time in America. Ever wonder how those 209.6 million consumers found what they were looking for?
Today: Creating a smooth, steady digital traffic jam to your business’ website is the most crucial element to success and survival in the 21st century marketplace. Your website is a 24/7 salesman, promoting your company and advertising your products long after you close up shop for the day.
“Having a website to showcase your services or products is pivotal to remaining commercially competitive in the 21st century,” Small Business Trends notes. “That said, if nobody is visiting your website to browse your products or services, it might as well not exist.”
But how do people find you in the seemingly wild, wild west of the digital world? Alas, a simple logo, home page and address aren’t nearly enough to hook today’s savvy consumer.
“It’s sometimes challenging to come up with new ideas to boost your site’s traffic,” AudienceBloom’s Jayson DeMers wrote for Entrapanuer.com.
The good news: Creating a go-to website isn’t nuclear medicine. It can be easy as the right keyword. Mastering keyword searches is literally the key to driving consumers to your website. Finding the right keywords to trigger website traffic starts with keyword research.
The Theme Of A Winning Search
You need an understanding of the words and phrases consumers use to find your products. This will identify the keyword themes that real searchers use in their search queries.
The most effective keyword tools offer a quantitative demand score that helps determine the relative value of targeting each keyword theme. In English, that means these tools find the money keywords.
Finding the keywords you need to drive traffic to you also includes doing due research on your competition. Search for the essential products and services you offer and note the most prominent websites in your search results: those that share your business model as well as dissimilar sites that compete for the same searches.
Analyze what your competition is doing well, what content themes they are using that you aren’t and how they structure their site to target valuable keywords.
The Niche Keywords
These are the holy grails of web traffic. Niche keywords are the highly specific long-tail keywords that pertain to a narrow industry vertical. In simple terms, they are the passwords that send people your way. Finding these words and incorporating them into your search marketing initiative is the X-factor in spiking your site’s traffic.
How can you find the niche keywords? Simple: Again start with your own keyword search. We use Moz Keyword Explorer quite a bit for extensive keyword research, however, there are some excellent alternative tools available as well.
Also remember that in today’s digital marketplace, smart advertising and marketing is everything. Here are DeMers’ Top 10 Easy Ways To Drive People Your Way:
- Display Ads: This simple form of advertising relies on banners and other clickable assets on another high-traffic site.
- Paid Search Ads: Pay-Per-Click ads are often worth the investment. Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the kings of keyword searches.
- Social Media Ads: Three-and-a-half billion-plus users can’t be wrong. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube all provide instant deep audience bases. Show them the money and they will undoubtedly show you a strong spike in site traffic.
- Link to your Website from your Social Media Profiles: Filling out your social media profile completely can easily allow people to click directly through to your website.
- Promote Your Content On Social Media Channels: There’s no advertising like free advertising. Use your personal and company social media channels to promote your content.
- Host Contests On Social Media: Sponsoring contests draws eyeballs to your brand and gets people curious about who you are. Next thing you know, they’re wanting to get to know you through your website.
- Optimize Your Headlines: Headlines are everything. Headlines sell, headlines hook and headlines draw people to your site. Short, catchy, compelling headlines instantly make your site a must-visit digital location.
- Constantly Optimize Your Site For Search: Again, don’t stop your SEO work at locating niche keywords. Effective SEO strategies are continuous and also deploy proper coding, structuring and meta data to enhance your site’s navigability.
- Maintain A Light Speed Link Site: Ensure that your content loads properly on all devices and optimize your site’s speed as much as possible.
- Be Digital In Living Color: Using vibrant images and photos wisely are a third compelling dimension of any top-tier website.
Of course, there’s also the slam dunk easy as 1-2-3 way to developing a comprehensive, proven winning game plan guaranteed to bring your website to vibrant, high traffic life: Contacting CG Web Strategy for a consultation. For as Hubspot.com’s Darling Jiminez writes, your website “has the potential to be your most powerful asset and the centerpiece of your marketing efforts.”
And it all starts with knowing the right words that will start a smooth traffic jam to your site.
