When you first set up your website it can be a daunting thought that you’re starting from scratch and have to build your traffic up so that you can start making an impact in your niche. You know that you want to drive targeted and relevant relevant traffic to your blog or other site that consists of your prospects. But, you’re just not sure where to go from here or how to build up the traffic to where it needs to be. This post will give you plenty of useful and inexpensive ideas to help you get started building your web traffic and hit the ground running from the very first day.
Getting Traffic: Quality vs. Quantity
Website traffic actually has more to do with whether or not you are providing your target audience with information that they can use, than with whether or not your website looks beautifully designed or not. Of course, you do not want a website that blinds the user, or isn’t designed responsively (meaning it works on all devices such as smart phones and tablets), but you really should focus on what’s inside to drive traffic.
That’s where quality traffic comes in over quantity. A website can have a million visitors due to a free give away that appeals to a wide audience, such as a free iPhone – but that isn’t going to get targeted visitors who want what you have to offer, they only want the gift. So, what was good was having a million people signing up for the chance to win the free iPhone? As you can imagine, it’s probably not worth much at all. It would be a waste of time and money to do that.
Quality traffic, on the other hand, will consist of your ideal audience members, and they will want, maybe not today, but eventually, they will want what you have to offer. You just have to find ways to build the traffic for your website that attracts the targeted, relevant, and ready to buy audience that you desire. Quality traffic will spend time on your site, sign up for your newsletters, and open them. Quality traffic will come back, again and again. Quality traffic will purchase your products and / or services. That’s the type of traffic you want.
Getting quality traffic can take a little effort. But, if you create a plan of action and work toward the right goals, in the right way you will be successful. If you’re providing your readers with the information they want, need and solves their problems, you’ll be much more successful. It’s all about targeting the right audience, at the right time, in the right place with the right methods. Before we get started on the things that you can do to get traffic to your website, let’s talk a little bit about measuring traffic effectiveness.
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Traffic
One of the most important things to learn about is measuring the effectiveness of the work you do to improve your traffic. First, each goal you make needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, and time sensitive. These are called SMART goals. You can look it up, it’s a real thing. First, you need to set up a Google Analytics Account. It’s not hard to do, if you already have an email address and a ULR for your website you’ll want to set it up.
Go to Google.com/analytics to set up the account. Follow the prompts to do so. You’ll need your URL, and a Gmail account. Once you set it up you’ll get a code to put into your site. If you use WordPress, you can get a plugin like Measure My SEO by Rapid Crush. This allows you to be able to collect and view the stats. It might take a couple of days before you start seeing analytics, so just keep doing the things mentioned in this report below and check your analytics periodically such as quarterly at first. Later, when you’re more established you can start checking more often.
When it comes to measuring online traffic effectiveness, the things you need to measure are:
Your Website’s General Audience
This is the very first thing you will see when you sign into your Google Analytics account once it’s activated and you have some visitors to track. Until you learn how to set it up completely it is counting your visits too. But, that’s okay for now.
Here you can see how many visitors you have in one day, how many are returning, and how many are unique. This is a good measure to track because you want a good amount of new people so that you can build your list, but you also want a good amount of return visitors because that signals that your content is engaging. By clicking to the left under Audience, you can get deeper into this information.
Get started with website traffic building by using the same plugin that has simplified all of this for me. It’s called Measure My SEO and I continue to have excellent results because of it.
