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intro.
Mastering the arts of SEO, social media promotion, and their ilk is essential to successful 21st century marketing, but there is one big mistake many businesses make when they try their hand at them: they focus solely on driving traffic. This is of the utmost importance, it’s true, but it’s not enough to have a lot of people viewing your website – they have to be the right sort of people.
This is what we mean when we say you need to generate ‘relevant’ traffic. In order to turn viewers into purchasers, you have to be drawing in the sort of individual who will actually invest in your product or service. This likely means developing a more in-depth and focused online strategy than you currently have, which is why we’ve written this article to provide some value and hopefully assist you.
Let’s start at the beginning…
#1: CREATE VALUABLE CONTENT
We’ll begin with something simple: the creation of valuable content. It might seem obvious that this will be key to generating relevant traffic, but too many fall into the trap of focusing on the inclusion of keywords at the exclusion of quality. Write something that is worth reading, and the right sort of people are far more likely to be lured by it.
#2: POST OFTEN ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is an essential tool for the successful business, which is why you must make the effort to post often. The more you do, the more chance there is of an interested party spotting you on their feed, finding your company, and converting as a result.
It’s not enough just to post on your own page: try starting a niche group where members can ask questions and receive support, become a contributing member of industry-specific Facebook and LinkedIn groups, add as much value to the conversation as you can and if the opportunity comes up share your own posts to boost their visibility.
#3: SELECT THE RIGHT SOCIAL NETWORK FOR YOUR AUDIENCE
The trick to generating relevant site traffic is to understand who you’re actually appealing to, and this is especially important when choosing a social media platform. Try to think about who frequents these platforms – for example, Pinterest tends to be female-led, whilst professionals will likely be found on LinkedIn. Identify where to find those you’re targeting, and focus your energies there.
Once you have selected the best platform for who your target audience is, be native. What we mean by that is produce content specific to the platform, dont post the same thing on Twitter as you would on Instagram, build creative that lends itself to the platform – this will take you more time, but it will pay off long term!
#4: OPTIMISE YOUR BLOG POSTS FOR LONG-TAIL SEO
Even those with the most basic grasp of SEO will understand the importance of keywords, but it’s not enough to include generic terms and hope for the best. Overstuff your content with phrases picked from thin air, and Google will pick up on it and penalise you as a result. Focus instead on including one or two targeted long-tail keywords per post, and you’ll attract visitors who are actually interested in what you’re selling, rather than unwanted attention from search engines.
#5: ENGAGE WITH RELEVANT PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
We’ve already mentioned the power of social media, and this is something you must take full advantage of. An ideal platform for enabling proactive engagement with relevant people, there are plenty of ways that you can utilise the opportunities it presents. Wherever possible, join and contribute to industry specific groups, using them as a platform not only to prove your authority, but also to present a friendly and approachable business persona – one that people will be all too eager to transact with, remember to provide as much value as you can whilst asking for nothing in return.
#6: ANALYSE YOUR CONTENT’S TRAFFIC DATA
In order to generate relevant site traffic, it’s not enough to rely on guesswork to help you formulate a strategy; you need to be looking at the actual statistics. Find a platform that will allow you to easily and simply analyse these, and use this data to inform every decision that you make moving forwards in order to improve your online offerings and bolster your business. Google Analytics is a great starting point and is absolutley free so if you don’t already have it in place go get it set up!
#7: USE RELEVANT IMAGERY TO ILLUSTRATE POINTS
Imagery is important too. We’ve all heard that old adage – ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ – and it turns out there’s some truth to it. The more visually appealing you can make your content, the longer visitors are likely to remain on your site, and the more shareable your content will be for social media. If you’re looking to generate traffic and promote engagement, high quality, relevant images really are well worth including.
#8: CREATE MULTIPLE MEDIA FORMATS
Don’t rely solely on one type of media format either. Text and pictures alone are not enough: you’ll want to include everything from videos to podcasts as part of your content production. Case in point? A video posted to YouTube and embedded in your site would likely drive more engaged traffic than content shared to any other social media platform (around 2.99 pages per visit). The more you connect, the more you convert. Now you have to be sensible here, we are not suggesting you are present on every social network with every possible type of media. You still have to be considerate to your audience and focus in on what kind of content they consume, does your ideal buyer persona have a long commute? – maybe a podcast might be relevant here….
#9: ENGAGE WITH INFLUENCERS
Influencers can also be utilised to your advantage, as many big businesses have proven. There are plenty of ways you can engage with them, from mentioning them in your tweets in order to help increase visibility, to contacting them when you’ve written a particularly interesting post connected to their specialism to see if they’ll link back to it. You might even want to request an interview with them that you can feature on your site, in the hopes that their name will act as a sufficient draw to lure visitors.
#10: BE CONSISTENT AND KEEP PUTTING OUT CONTENT
Most importantly of all, don’t stop. The key to digital marketing success is consistency: continually putting out high quality, authoritative content to increase your visibility and get your name out there. Create content that speaks to your audience and they will undoubtedly find their way to your site.
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