Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Website Traffic: Not All Visitors are Equal

By Jill Brennan


People are constantly looking for ways to get more website traffic; however, unless they're getting targeted website traffic, they're just spinning their wheels. Is your good-looking website attracting the right kind of traffic? Are you reaching the right audience?

Targeted website traffic includes people who are actually interested in what your site offers. They have been -targeted- for that very reason. For example, when you look at a book ad on Amazon.com, they show you books other people bought who also liked the one you were looking at. That's because it is reasonable to assume that if you're interested in the first one, you'll be interested in others like it. They are targeting a fantasy fan for their fantasy books, instead of trying to sell them to random people. That is what you need to do as well.

Targeted website traffic by no means guarantees traffic. Targeting only increases your chances of hitting the right audience. You don't want to randomly lure people to your site and hope for the best. That's a waste of time.

Randomly luring people is the difference between displaying magazines for people to leaf through or snagging a loyal customer who returns to buy each month.

One good way to get targeted website traffic is to use keywords. Think of the person you want on your site. When he or she is looking up something on the internet, the person uses particular words to do that, right? If they need fuzzy dice to hang from their rearview window, they will type certain things into the search engine in order to find those fuzzy dice.

Understanding your prospective visitors is very important in trying to work out exactly what words they'd enter. Would they type "furry dice", "fuzzy soft dice", "large car dice"? What if they are confused about whether to enter "dice" or "die"? Using the right keywords in your paid or free promotional campaigns is crucial to your success.

So what else are you selling along with your fuzzy hanging rearview mirror car dice? You can't get targeted website traffic if you don't know who you're targeting, so figure out just what kind of site you have. Should car dice should be sold at a car accessories site, a weird gifts site, or a kitsch site? They should be sold on a site that has other merchandise that will appeal to the fuzzy dice people-like fuzzy steering wheel covers, or even animal print clothing, if it's a retro shop. That approach will get you more website traffic.

Getting people to visit your site and buy what you're selling is similar to playing the stock market: You can make some educated guesses, but it's all a risk and a gamble. That doesn't mean you should ignore trying to improve your odds, though -- targeted website traffic will definitely help. When you tempt people who want what you have, they'll buy.

About the Author:

No comments: