Articles in The 'increase-traffic' Tag

What’s better: Traffic or Conversions?

by Mike Siers

The idea of gaining traffic versus conversions has always been a hot topic among those seeking SEO results. The question of traffic or conversions has been debated by the best in the business. In all honesty, the best answer I have heard is… drum roll please: Both.

Ultimately the whole goal of SEO (and PPC) is to achieve both high website traffic and conversions. You need to draw as much traffic to your website as possible, and you also need those “visitors” to convert to customers. Getting those visitors to return to your website as loyal customers is the goal. This is one way to measure the success of your online marketing efforts.

Having a website that gains all kinds of traffic, yet converts little to none of its visitors is of little value. It takes a lot of time and effort to get people to visit your website, and in those few precious minutes, if not seconds, you have an opportunity to convert them into customers.

What are some of the ways you can convert “visitors” into customers, you ask? Excellent question, and a question you need to ask yourself when preparing to invest into any internet marketing (i.e. SEO, PPC, CPC, and on down the line).

Believe it or not, online marketing success comes down to having a solid goal. Start by understanding what your website offers, who your targeted traffic is, and what you want them to do. Here’s an example:

Say, you are a news site that sells white papers and case studies. Your main goal for new visitors may be to get them to sign up for your monthly newsletter. In doing so, you would have successfully drawn a visitor to your site and, in those initial moments (where anything can happen from a bounce to an exit, to action) were able to get them to sign up for your newsletter – a conversion.

While this conversion may not be a direct sale, you have engaged them enough to stay connected. In doing this, there is a strong possibility that they will likely buy a white paper or case study in the near future. Congratulations!

Now let’s talk about a few other types of conversions before we get off the topic. Other types of conversions can be getting people to:

• Fill out a form
• Subscribe to a mailing list
• Register with your website
• Like your Facebook page  or follow you on Twitter
• Simply read your content
• Comment or participate in the community area
• Share your page with people in their social network
• Subscribe to your blog or news feed, via RSS. (Hint, hint…)
• Purchase products or services  

There are a bundle of conversion types you can reach for. In fact, you can set goals in Google Analytics and actually give levels to the types of conversions you have made. This way you can start to separate your traffic and gain a better insight into who you are dealing with to improve the customer experience. Again, it makes no sense to just draw in traffic if you are not also thinking about how you are going to convert that traffic.

Steps For Increasing The Success Of Your Blog

by MoreVisibility

Within the past couple of years there has been a surge in the amount of blogs surfacing throughout the net. As I go through many of these blogs I see trends of strategies which work well and areas which must be looked into to avoid potential issues. This article will guide you in the right direction for initiating and marketing your blog successfully.

Choosing the right software
Choosing the correct blogging software can mean the success or failure of your blog. Using software such as: word press and blogger gives you the ability to customize the blog to fit your needs. This will allow you the freedom to add and remove functionally you wish and to style it to match your main website.

Hosting your blog on the domain
To maximize the effect of your blog the best case scenario would be to host it on your domain. Two major reasons come to mind for why the blog should be hosted on your domain and nowhere else.

1. Branding experience — By placing the blog within the main domain, you’re adding to the branding experience of your company. When the user sees that they have left the current domain and travels to another URL (even if the look and feel stays the same) they tend to feel as if its not a part of the main site.
2. Inbound Linking — The idea behind the blog is to write compelling content which would potentially be of use to someone. If a viewer of the post you have written decides to link back to your post because he or she felt it was credible enough, that would classify as an inbound link to your page. If the blog was hosted on another domain and not your own, the credit for the inbound link wouldn’t be given to your main domain, but the domain the blog was hosted on.

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