If you own a website, you want traffic. After all, websites are made to attract traffic, but the problem people don’t often think about is the harm some web traffic does to your site. Harm, you say? Well, yeah…harm. When website traffic is not suited to your content or your industry, it can actually do harm to your search engine rankings.
Google analyzes your website traffic. It’s not just how much traffic you get that matters to the search engine giant. It’s also what they do when they visit your site. It’s how often they return to your site. It’s how long they visit your site. There’s a ton of data gleaned from the web traffic that visits your brand online.
When that traffic is qualified traffic, traffic that is targeted and shows affinity with your business online, your products and/or services, that traffic behaves quite differently than traffic that is not qualified. Non-qualified traffic “bounces” quite rapidly when visiting your site. A bounce is a site visit that is ended abruptly without visiting other pages on the site. It indicates that the content on the page of entry is not suitable for the visitor’s needs. Bounce rates for unqualified traffic hurt your SEO rankings. It suggests that the site is being ranked improperly, that it doesn’t serve its traffic in terms of the content it presents for its industry.
Qualified traffic, on the other hand, typically visits several pages on the website, showing affinity with the content on the page. It lingers on the site for longer periods of time. It returns to the site sometimes. It clicks on the contact buttons and it completes an email contact form before leaving the site.
Qualified traffic shows Google, Yahoo and Bing that your site is relevant for the search that lead to the site visit. And that builds site authority and SEO ranking. Google rewards more qualified visits with improved rankings, putting the website in the position of receiving even more qualified traffic.
(Learn How to Employ SEO Stategies that Draw Qualified Traffic)
How does one attract such traffic? Well, through solid, whitehat SEO practices that focus on good, relevant content that is suitable to the needs of your core visitors. Ways you can achieve more qualified traffic include:
F.A.Q. Pages: F.A.Q. pages, by definition, are a boon to attracting qualified traffic for your website. It’s literally your customers’ or clients’ frequently asked questions, after all. The answers you provide serve the user’s needs. It prevents the user from having to search the site endlessly to find the answers they want, and all in one place. (Read: Four Reasons Answering Typical Customers’ Questions in Your Content Powers Online Visibility)
Using Relevant Keywords: Placing keywords in your site’s metadata that are relevant to the content on the page is a great way of attracting qualified traffic. So long as the keywords apply to your business and the content on the page, and that the content serves as a good, quality resource for the reader, it’s going to provide an attractant for the kind of traffic that will keep your site rankings high. (Read: The Keyword Mistake Your SEO Campaign Should Always Avoid.)
Email Marketing: One of the best way to track qualified traffic back to your website is effective email marketing campaigns. Email marketing traffic is traffic that has been introduced to your brand and wants to know more. That’s the definition of qualified traffic. Google sees all of the traffic your site receives, even traffic from email marketing campaigns. When Google sees that that traffic is engaging with your brand online the way qualified traffic does, it takes notice and your rankings improve.
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to help develop a powerful SEO strategy to build targeted website traffic for your site and grow your brand, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!