Reach People Locally
Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that the more traffic they have to their website, the better it is for their business and ultimately the bottom line. However, it is important to remember that not all website traffic consists of qualified lead that are necessarily the right audience for your business. If your website is not properly optimized for search engines, the traffic that you are generating may not turn into potential leads and increase your business sales.
At Five Star SEO we recently saw this scenario with a local New Jersey service business. The business’ website was generating lots of new traffic, but few were converting to qualified leads. Upon investigating, we discovered that their website was optimized but for the wrong audience. Instead of driving traffic to the website that consisted of potential customers, this company was optimized in such a way that they were bringing in those search engine users that were looking for information on DIY projects. This was clearly not a good lead for this business, particularly since this website traffic was also being generated from across the country instead of focused on their service area.
Does that mean that this local service business should just give up on their SEO efforts? Of course not, but it does mean that their efforts and content need to be refocused to be optimized for potential customers instead of the general approach that they were utilizing.
While it is great to have a lot of traffic to your business’ website, unless these visitors are potential customers falling in your target market this will do little to generate new business. The high traffic numbers can be deceiving, as you wonder why, with such a high volume, visitors to your website are not turning into customers. A look at the analytics for your website will show the top keywords that visitors are using to find your website. If these keywords are not the right audience for your products or services, you can be sure that a shift in how your website is optimized for the search engines is necessary. In the case of this New Jersey business, they were seeing many search terms that included do it yourself in the keywords, a strong indicator that this was not a potential customer.
Through your website analytics, you can further see where the website visitor is coming from. For service businesses and brick and mortars, most of your website traffic coming from outside of your geographic area is also indicative of a problem with your website optimization. Taking too general of an approach to your keyword focus may be part of the problem.
Not all content on your website is created equal. An important exercise when working on your website’s search engine optimization is to determine what keywords are more important to your business and your target market. What would your ideal customer be most likely to search for when seeking your product or service? In the case of the New Jersey service business, those searching for DIY solutions are unlikely to be a good potential lead and certainly when they extend well beyond the business’ geographic area this is not a potential customer.
Shifting your website’s focus to these more specific keywords can make a big difference in the quality of visitors to your website. While refining your content to focus your SEO optimization on a more specific niche, you may see a drop in website traffic but the quality of visitors to your site will be more qualified as leads and ultimately customers.
A blog is a great addition to your website, still allowing businesses to focus on a more general, informational approach to this content. This will help your website to rank positively with the search engines with dynamic content that is always being added to the website. However, when considering the site’s actual page content, it is important to shift away from this more informational approach and focus on the content that will rank highest in the search results for your target audience. This can make a big difference in driving the right type of traffic to your website. A more refined and focused approach to your website’s search engine optimization can also take some of the work from your team, fielding requests from leads that are unqualified and not necessarily appropriate for your business.
At Five Star SEO, we specialize in search engine optimization for businesses. With an understanding of how a site can be best optimized for the business’ target market, our team focuses on creating keyword-rich content that doesn’t just focus on driving traffic to your site. Instead, we employ SEO strategies to ensure that the right traffic is being driven to your website. Through well-written content that is crafted specifically for your target audience, as opposed to the masses, Five Star SEO is able to help clients bring qualified leads to their website. This can be shown through the website’s analytics, with more refined search terms specific to your products and services coming to the top of the list. The result is a website that does a great job of bringing in qualified leads and then turning these over to new customers.
In the case of the New Jersey service business, the team at Five Star SEO was able to work with them to refine their website content. Through this process, they were able to optimize the website for their target market as opposed to the general public. The company did see a decrease in their website traffic but the visitors that they saw to the site were qualified leads, many of whom the business was able to turn into new customers through their smoothly running website.