When Getting Traffic to Your Website, Aim for Targeted Traffic

I’ve said it before, but sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics.  When you set up your marketing campaign for getting traffic to your website, you should emphasize on targeted traffic.  This is especially true if you’re using Pay-Per-Click advertising or Google’s AdWords.

Without targeted traffic visiting your site, one of two things can happen.  If you’re not using PPC or AdWords, you’re just getting a lot of window shoppers.  This may not seem like a very big deal, but it sucks up your bandwidth and may make your site harder to load.  If you’re using PPC or AdWords, it can cost you money and even leave you in the red.

Keywords Are Your Friend in Targeting Traffic

Keywords can also be your enemy when targeting traffic.  You have to pick the right keywords.  Usually, the best way to do this is to use more long-tailed keywords.  There is a bit of a trick to doing this, though.

Let’s start with a central word that describes what your desired traffic is looking for.  As an example, let’s use “socks.”  Now, what kind of socks are you selling?  Let’s say that they’re tube socks.  Do you sell a specific brand of tube socks or are you limited to a certain area?  Put this in too.  For example, we have “Jerzees tube socks st louis.”

Now you have a basic idea to look for.  If you’re not using PPC or AdWords, your keyword research ends here.  If you are, there’s more stuff you’ll have to do.  You’ll have to go to the keyword auctions and find the closest thing to what you want that you can afford.  Depending on the niche, it can get awfully expensive, so it has to be a reasonable compromise.  The cheaper you go, the less the keyword is worth to you in terms of targeted traffic.

Keyword Placement is Essential to Your Campaign

Now that you have your keywords, you have to consider keyword placement on your site.  Where you place your keywords is important, so let’s look at the best places for it.  Here are just a few.

Your URL is the first and most important place to put your keywords.  This can put you straight to the top of the search engines if your niche isn’t very competitive.  Some other good places to put the keywords are in your meta description and title tag.  Some marketers will say that it’s not important to do this, but think of it this way: An ignored opportunity is a missed opportunity.

Lastly, your keyword has to appear fairly frequently in your web page’s content.  You don’t want to go overboard with it, or you could get de-indexed for keyword stuffing.  On the other hand, you don’t want to under-do it either.  There’s no hard and fast rule for keyword density, but it should read like a normal human talking.  If you punctuate every other word with your keyword, especially if it’s a long one, people are going to get sick of it pretty quickly.