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4 Easy Ways to Boost Targeted Traffic to Your Small Business Website

targeted traffic

Often times, sales is a game of sheer numbers – you need a ton of people to see your product in hopes that a few of them will want to buy. But what if most of your audience is already interested in what you’re selling? That’s called targeted traffic, and it’s a much more efficient use of your marketing resources.

These high-quality visitors not only maximize the time and money you spend getting them in the door, but they also improve your site’s search engine optimization. A targeted audience will spend more time on your pages, click on more links and share more of your content!

There are many ways to drive targeted traffic to your site — but as with any new undertaking, it’s best to start with the basics. Here are four things to check off your list.

Do Keyword Research

This type of information-gathering is one of the foundations of SEO. It doesn’t just help you narrow down exactly what your potential customers are looking for — it also helps you catch them at the latter part of the buying cycle.

Let’s say you sell shoes. You go to Google Keyword Planner and see there’s a monthly average of 50,000 searches for “shoes.” That’s good, right?

Not exactly. People who type “shoes” in the search bar are either at the browsing stage of the buying cycle, or worse, don’t even want to buy shoes at all. For all you know, they could just be looking up the history of shoes for homework.

You want “long-tail” search terms, or those that contain more words. For example: “Manolo Blahnik lowest price.” People searching for that are much more likely to be interested in buying shoes!

Look into hyperlocal marketing, as well. If you’re a boutique bakery or sell used cars, it makes sense to target potential customers who live close to you.

Once you’ve decided on keywords you want to target, sprinkle them into your title, subtitles and alt tags, as well as throughout the text of the blog.

Be Social

When you create great content, you want to get the word out, and social media still is the easiest way to do this. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are the predominant players, but depending on what you sell and how much time you have, you might want to prioritize just one or two.

If you sell visual-friendly products such as clothes or jewelry, put Instagram at the top of your list. Quality graphics are helpful – if you’re not a designer, Canva provides tons of templates, and it’s free. Invest in good photography if you can.

If you provide things like internet security or sell self-improvement courses for professionals, consider getting busy on a social outlet like LinkedIn instead.

Use hashtags when relevant, and tag people if it’s appropriate – but exercise restraint with both so you don’t come across as obnoxious.

Don’t post something just for the sake of posting something. Always make sure whatever you post is the best effort you can put forward. A consistently well-executed social campaign, even if somewhat infrequent, is much better than half-baked posts that clog people’s feeds.

Advertise

You have to spend money to make money, so the saying goes, but you don’t have to spend a lot to get results.

Start advertising on Facebook for $5-$10 a day. It might not immediately generate sales, but you’ll be able to test different ads and audiences to see what works best.

Here’s a simple experiment to begin: Create two or three ads with different images and text, and serve them all to the same audience. Run the test for a week and record results on a spreadsheet. The next week, do the same thing, but for a different audience profile. Repeat this for a few more weeks. And if at some point an ad isn’t working at all, ditch it, create a new one and test that out with the other ads instead.

Guest Blog

Guest blogging might be the most taxing of all the basics, but it’s also the most effective way of driving targeted traffic to your site. Creating a presence on a relevant site, especially one that’s popular and has loads of traffic, is one of the best things you can possibly do.

You’re getting introduced to an audience that someone else built!

The same thing goes with regard to SEO: A website linking to you is the equivalent of an endorsement. Google will pick this up, and that will boost your credibility and authority on whatever subject your website is about.

Find websites that complement your own. For example, if you sell insurance, post on health and travel blogs. People want information on obtaining peace of mind when they go out of the country, and people who suffer during allergy season want to know if shots are covered by insurance.

Just don’t be overly promotional. Make an earnest effort to provide valuable knowledge to your readers. Teach them how to file claims, how to interpret technical terms or how to find the right balance between premiums and copay.

Need help with driving targeted traffic to your site so you can make more sales? Get in touch with Mischa Communications! We have tons of ideas that can help you small business grow.