How do I get more quality
traffic to my website?
Ah yes, the reason we are all here! You may have the most beautiful,
fast and effective website ever built, but if nobody knows you exist
– what's the point? If people know your company they may stumble
across your site by using your company name. But what about people
who don't know you exist? If you are only marketing to an audience
that knows you, how will you grow your market share and gain new
customers?
You need to get to those people who are looking for the products
and services that you offer, but who don't yet know you exist!
There is no 'one size fits all' solution, which is actually good
news for you. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and you
would still be having trouble differentiating yourself! You do have
the opportunity to get ahead of your competition now, but it's a
matter of seizing the opportunity and treating it the right way
to achieve the best results.
Quality traffic from search
engines
The best way of getting high quality traffic to your website is
through the search engines, Google in particular. Banner ads and
other forms of advertising are less effective than being at the top
of a search result list. If someone is searching for the products and services
that you offer and your site appears on that first page of results they
are very likely to click on your link.
Getting your site to that first page of results is key to gaining more
quality visitors to your website. Getting your site to that first page
involves a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Search Engine Optimization is a tuning process that ensures the content and design of
your site reflects the purpose of your site, and is set out in such
a way that your site stands out from the crowd as far as the search
engines are concerned. This ensures that your site rates higher
than your competition in the search engine results.
Search Engine Optimization does not guarantee results, because the algorithms used by
search engines like Google to rank results are constantly changing.
Google is always 'tweaking' to ensure they continue to provide the
most appropriate results for their users, for this reason SEO is
not a 'set and forget' proposition – regular attention is
required.
Google is such a successful search engine because of the effort
they put into returning quality results and weeding out inappropriate
sites. You cannot buy the top position, or any other position in
the search results. It is also relatively easy to do the wrong thing
in trying to get your site listed or ranked higher, resulting in
your site being penalised and never appearing in search results.
While optimization is not a guaranteed outcome, search engine marketing
(SEM) is. Quite a few search engines have a pay-per-click program
that allows you to precisely target the traffic that you wish to
attract. SEM is a very effective method for driving traffic to your
site, however it does take some thought and effort and maintenance
in order to gain the most benefit.
|