Listen to your web traffic
Every click on your site, every email captured, every website page read and survey completed are clues your prospects whisper to you on how to improve your website content and refine your selling messages.
Keywords
How do you find the crucial pieces of the keyword puzzle—the keywords you use versus the key words prospects actually use to find the kind of products or services you offer? If your analytics application shows the keywords site visitors actually used to get to your site, pay attention. These are important. The difference between “eye doctors in Manhattan” or “Manhattan eye doctors” can be significant to your organic results. Do web users prefer “lawyer” or “attorney,” plural or singular? Between your analytics data and keyword software tools, you can create web content that improves your organic rankings and drives more traffic to your site.
Frequently asked questions
An FAQ page not only allows maximum, yet natural, keyword usage, but offers the opportunity to ask your visitors to submit their own questions. The responses you get inform you of what’s on your prospect’s mind, what you may have failed to communicate clearly in your content and tells you the exact words prospects use when trying to find sites like yours.
Surveys
Electronic surveys are inexpensive and easy to implement. Send a survey to your email list to find out what motivates them to buy the types of things you have to sell, what they like and dislike about your products, the prices they’re willing to pay, when they expect to make such a purchase, additional products, services or information they’re interested in, and how the service or product could be improved. Ask them the keywords they would use to search for your products. Ask them how they research on the Internet before they buy and what types of promotions appeal to them the most.
Why guess? Just ask.
Make your surveys quick to complete, use some open-ended questions to find out the words prospects and customers actually use and act on the information you receive. If you can, offer an incentive for survey completion.
Newsletters and email promotions
Are you tracking the results of your newsletters and emails? Do you know who opens your emails and whether they open them immediately or days later? Do you know what links they click on? Can you tell how many people opted off your list? Do you try variations of the message and format to see which one does best? These methods of communicating to your audience also give the opportunity to ask for questions to see what’s on their mind or to offer feedback. People love to express their opinions when given the chance. Like the other methods described, the information you track gives you a granular view of your audience, which you’ll use for web content refinements, thereby improving your organic rankings and driving more traffic to your site.
Find out everything you need to develop a more targeted and powerful strategy for improving your web content, creating more effective email campaigns to sell specific products and drive website traffic.
Prospects and customers are talking to you all the time. Are you listening?
Tune in next Tuesday for an overview on optimizing email marketing by testing different variables.
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About: Deb: Deb Kirby is a freelance writer and consultant who uses web strategies and techniques for search engine optimization (SEO) copywriting. She works with clients to create strong online strategies, develop optimized web content, and she conduct audits for existing sites to put an improvement plan in place. Deb also develops Internet marketing campaigns to boost website traffic, lead generation, list building and online revenue. Have questions? She can be reached on her website (www.strategywriter.com) or via email at deb@strategywriter.com. |
