5 Tips for Driving Highly Targeted Traffic to Your Web Site

As a site owner, getting Internet users to visit your site is a key component in doing business online. If you are like most of them, you check your traffic numbers regularly, and consider rising numbers to be a good thing – which it is. Unfortunately, having large traffic numbers isn’t going to help you grow your business if they don’t translate into the kinds of actions you are looking for.

Conversion Rates Count

For Internet marketers, the site’s conversion rate is the ratio of the number of people who click onto a web site and those who perform the action the site owner wants them to do. For this reason, the call to action in web writing is important. The desired action may be one or more of the following:

• Signing up for a newsletter
• Subscribing to an ezine
• Downloading software
• Buying a product

You could be putting up big numbers in terms of traffic, but if you aren’t getting an acceptable conversion rate on your site, it isn’t helping you build your business. How do you improve your conversion rates? You take steps to get highly targeted traffic to your site. Here are 5 tips to help you make it happen:

1. Get listed on the major search engines

You want to make sure that your site is listed on the Big Three search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Rather than wait for the search engine crawlers to find your site, submit it directly to the search engine yourself. Then be sure to check back a few weeks later to see whether your site appears in the search engine results.

2. Use keywords effectively

Do your homework to find keywords that fit in with the niche market you are trying to target. Then make sure that your web copy includes them. Experiment with different combinations of words and even with misspelled keywords. A potential customer may make a mistake when trying to type in their search terms, and by including the mistake in your copy, you can drive traffic to your site. .

3. Include long tail keywords in your web copy

Long tail keywords are groups of words that form a phrase, as opposed to single keywords. While you should include single keywords in your web copy, you should also structure some of your web pages around longer phrases. The reason for doing so is that the more specific the search term, the more targeted the level of traffic it will drive to your site.

A person who is searching for information online and is using one or two words in their search term is going to get a large number of sites coming up in their search results. From there, they need to go through the sites and digest the information they find. This process continues as the Internet user adds more keywords to their search terms to narrow the search.

By the time the Internet user gets to the point where they are using long tail keywords to search for information online, they are either at the point where they are ready to take action. That’s the point where you, as a site owner, want them to find you. The long tail keywords help to drive traffic to your site that is focused on what you have to offer and they are prepared to sign up for your mailing list or to buy from you. That kind of traffic is better than having large numbers of site visitors who don’t help to improve your conversion rates.

4. Add a news feed to your web site

Adding a news feed containing stories that are relevant to your niche market is another effective strategy that you can use to drive targeted traffic to your web site. By offering your market resources like the news feed that give them information that they need, you can draw in exactly the kinds of people who are most interested in your products.

The news feed is updated regularly, which means search engine crawlers are kept busy indexing your site on a regular basis. The higher search engine rankings that this strategy will bring means that the people who want to find the kind of quality information that your site offers will be able to find it more easily.

5. Offer a product for free

On the face of it, this may seem counterproductive. You are looking for ways to increase sales, so why would you give something away? Giving away a short report is a way to create a feeling of goodwill with your prospective customers.

You will want to be sure that your free information product contains backlinks to your web site. Distribute it freely to site visitors and the people on your mailing list. Give them the right to share it with others, so long as they keep the content (and the backlinks) intact.

That way, people who find your site in that way are already interested in what you have to offer. You are establishing yourself as an authority in that area through the report. The person who gets to your web site likes what you have to offer and is interested in learning more. They are more likely to make a decision to buy from someone who they have developed a kind of relationship with than someone they know nothing about. Let your prospective customers find you by distributing a free report with your web site clearly marked on it.

The five tips for driving highly targeted traffic to your web site are effective strategies that will increase the amount of quality hits your site gets. What would you rather have: a lot of traffic that doesn’t translate into signups or sales, or a smaller amount of traffic with a higher conversion rate? Use them to bring in the kinds of site visitors who will help your business to grow by responding to your call to action in the way you want them to.