Bring Targeted Visitors to Your Web Site
by Jonathan Ginsberg
We could spend many hours (and pages of this web site) discussing on-page tools and features that will make your site more
relevant and interesting to your visitors. Hopefully you have a sense of the kinds of on-page factors that can help you convert prospects into clients - there are many more that we could talk about.
In fact, when I work with web site owners, I generally start by evaluating and testing the functioning and usability of the web site
itself. Once we have created or updated a site to make it a desirable destination, then we can focus on traffic.
Even the most robust site will not make you money if you do not have traffic. If you are in business to make money, the goal for
your web site should be a steady, increasing flow of qualified visitors ready, willing and able to spend money on your product or service.
Web site traffic, however, is not a “thing” as there are many types of traffic you can and should work to develop.
Redirect Traffic, Don’t Try to Create It
The first thing you must realize about web site traffic is that unless you have millions of dollars to spend, you
are not going to be able to “create” traffic. Instead, you will find that it is much cheaper and efficient to find the traffic that is in your business space and stand in front of it.
Oil companies do not build gas stations on out of the way dead end streets and McDonalds does not hide a
restaurant behind a water treatment facility. Instead, brick and mortar retailers look for busy streets frequently
traveled by potential customers. You should take a similar attitude on the “information superhighway.”
How, then, do you find the traffic that can be the lifeblood of your business? Would you be surprised to learn
that with reasonable certainty, you can discover the actual search terms people are typing into the search engines and the relative popularity of those search terms?
Keyword Analysis - the Starting Point for Any Traffic Campaign
When I am working with a business owner who wants to increase traffic to his website, my first task is a
process called “Keyword Analysis.” The purpose of this analysis is to identify the search phrases used by
prospective clients and customers so we can create content around those terms and so that we can customize
pages of web site to relate to those terms. In addition, if we are going to purchase visitor traffic using one of the
“pay per click” search engines, we need to know which terms people are actually using so we can purchase those terms.
Although I would be interested to hear about your thoughts and guesses about which search phrases relate to
your business, I am more interested in the actions of the marketplace. What are real, live people, sitting at home
or in the office in front of a computer screen, typing into Google or Yahoo when they are searching for information about your type of business?
Tools for Keyword Analysis
If you would like to try your hand at keyword analysis, there are several free online tools you can use to do so.
Foremost amongst these tools is the Overture search tool, which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com.
Overture (now known as Yahoo Search Marketing) will reveal to you useful information about search activity gleaned from its Pay-Per-Click programs. Another very useful tool is called Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which is a paid subscription service that pulls data from several search engines.
Unfortunately, Google does not make its search data public, so effective keyword analysis does require a
certain amount of deduction and extrapolation. Nevertheless, our experience has been that the search phrase
information that we can access is very useful in guiding us as to where to invest time and money.
Search engine expert Aaron Wall has made his keyword research tool available to you at no cost.
Let the Market Lead You to its Traffic
Here is a real life example of how I used keyword analysis to build a web site. In the fall of 2004, I was involved
in the creation of a consumer bankruptcy site that was designed to generate direct response. Recognizing the
value of a descriptive domain name, I decided to incorporate a keyword phrase into the domain name. After
performing my keyword analysis, I discovered that the term “Atlanta bankruptcy attorney” received about 25%
more traffic than the term “Atlanta bankruptcy lawyer.” Why is this the case? I don’t know nor do I care. The
marketplace was telling me that it preferred the term “Atlanta bankruptcy attorney,” which is why I named this site “Atlanta-bankruptcy-attorney.com.”
Keyword analysis goes much further than helping you name a site. Keyword analysis underlies every aspect of
“optimizing” the pages of a web site for the search engines.
“Who’s On First” - and Why
If you have ever wondered why some web sites appear on the first page of search engine results for a particular
search term, the reason has to do with the keywords used by the site developer.
Search engines do not index or display web sites, by the way, they display a page of that web site. Thus, when
you type a search phrase into the Google search box, the Google software is programmed to identify and publish
to your screen a list of web pages that are most related to that search phrase. When you optimize a page for the
search engine, therefore, you are telling the search engine that your page is “about” a particular search phrase.
Therefore, if I identify ten search phrases that are logically related to Atlanta bankruptcy lawyers, that are
actually being used by searchers in the marketplace, that currently return results pages about Atlanta
bankruptcy law, my job as a consultant is to create ten web pages, each of which is clearly about one of the relevant search phrases.
A properly optimized page will include content related to the particular search phrase and it will contain necessary computer code to speak directly to the search engine.
Suffice it to say that identifying the keywords (search phrases) already being used by your target market is a
prerequisite to success in any commercial web venture. Call us at 770-393-8963 to learn more about optimizing the pages of your web site for first page search engine placement.
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