Thursday, 19 January 2017

Reasons why you should Avoid Relying on Traffic Metrics of Competitors

The traffic on the website is one of the criterions which help the small business entrepreneurs to determine the feedback or effectiveness of a website or a blog in addition to handling the queries asked by the end users and the response they get from them. This means that traffic is the yardstick, which is considered as an equivalent of the success one expects to achieve in terms of providing access to the certain content to the people or internet users.

Furthermore, some of the business owners or websites prefer to use internet tools to assess the level of the traffic generated by a website and the traffic or response of the contemporaries is also measured. However, if you are new when it comes to SEO, you may feel threatened by the high traffic your peers get or if their results are better than your expectations. For example, most of the beginners in the digital marketing business get intimidated by looking at the traffic data of contemporaries and end up feeling insecure. This means that overreliance on the data or tools to compare the traffic levels of your market may lead you to miscalculation or overestimation of your contender’s capabilities. For instance, when the tools measure the traffic outcome or levels, most of the tools don’t distinguish if it is the relevant traffic or not. In addition, it is often neglected if the marketing targets are being met or not.

Various Kinds of Traffic
Even though the result of your competitors’ traffic may show unprecedented viewership or click rates, however, it does not guarantee if the related traffic is being generated or if the traffic is actually helping run the website. For example, in the past decade, people used odd keywords to find the relevant content or sometimes the keyword diverted users to completely different website. The main point is that if you don’t seem to generate the required or expected results in terms of traffic, it does not define the worth of your content. Because the viewership level of the relevant users is something that can influence the chances of success or failure rather than blindly relying on the traffic outcomes. To put simply, there are various ways of increasing the traffic and some of the mechanism are not very useful. This is why it is necessary to distinguish if the traffic is generated from the relevant or right data or not.


High Traffic and Queries
Although commonly people associate the high level of traffic with the increased queries of the users, however, the latest research has shown contradictory results. For example, researchers have shown many instances where the traffic was quite high, however, when the rate of queries was investigated, the results were disappointing. This means that if you or your contemporary’s website is generating high traffic, it does not necessarily mean the users are accessing the website to find answers to the queries. Similarly, if one delves into the details, it becomes apparent that the traffic generation increases as a result of few blog posts or related links in some cases, while in some cases content explaining the direction to browse the website is mentioned, which can increase the viewership without contributing to the main content of answers of the questions asked by the users.
Furthermore, the difference between the number of queries answered and the traffic generation is not underlined in the digital marketing by a couple of small and known websites and brand as well. This means that the flaw is persistent in the digital marketing. Some of the experts believe that in some of the cases the content level plays a big role in attracting the traffic, however, when it comes to the primary function of answering the queries or question, the purpose is not fulfilled.  In other words, the traffic may be increased by using unauthentic mechanisms or tools. Hence, one should not completely trust the finding of the websites or resources that consider the traffic generation as an indicator of success or failure.



Unclear Marketing Strategy and Goals of Contemporaries
If one surveys the result of research done on the big companies like Amazon SEO, it becomes clear that the business plan of the companies or digital marketing firms have narrowed down objectives. And the game plan to achieve the objectives, a particular strategy is chosen by the experts. For example, some of the company focuses on enhancing the quality of the products and so on and so forth. This means that the reports or surveys conducted by one’s company to estimate the level of traffic by the peer groups or company may make the task of figuring out the secret or hidden strategy meaningless, as the data obtained as a result of the research may not help to answer the main question related to the success due to the nuanced nature of the queries.



Conclusion

The bottom line is that the traffic driven metric or yardsticks should not be used to analyze the business plan of your peers and to formulate your marketing strategy, as the process of interpreting the data is complex and it cannot easily tell you if the traffic generated by you competitor was helpful or relevant for the viewers. This means that the better way to improve your business outcomes is to figure the marketing tricks and strategy you want to pursue to improve the outcomes. Moreover, it is important to know what changes are taking place in the market, because if you are able to read the main trends and changes, you would be in a better position to respond to the new dynamics. In addition, if you post the pertinent content to help the users and the quality of the content is up to a standard, the result of your websites will be increased manifolds. This is not to say that the indicators of traffic are completely useless, however, the main point is to highlight the demerits of over-relying on the metric of traffic to make judgments and to finalize the business choices.

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Turn Your Website Visitors Into Guests In 3 Easy Steps

Let’s talk about data. Data is vital when it comes to any Indianapolis SEO marketing strategy, or really any SEO strategy for that matter. When it is analyzed correctly, data can tell us the grand story of your website. How people find you, use you, and at times, abuse and refuse your website. Without data there really isn’t any way of finding out what to improve, or how to improve it.

Yet, data can also come back to bite us. How may you ask? Well, data is impersonal. It’s serious of cold hard facts that show what is happening. But, it never answers the question why. In order to find out why, you need to get personal. Instead of seeing users as numbers, we need to start seeing them as people. And not just people who visit your website, but as guests who visit your website. In order to best show you how to transform a user from a visitor to a guest, let’s first explain the difference between the two.



A visitor is someone who typically comes and goes without much preparation on our part, or given much thought afterwards. They aren’t planned for, can’t be anticipated, will come for a short time and will leave so as not to be an imposition, may or may not choose to visit again, and we will only access their visit after the fact.

A guest, however, is very much different. A guest is typically a person who is cared for and has been intentionally prepared to attend. In most cases, a guest is a participant, a person who came looking for a specific experience. They are planned for, they are prepared for ahead of time by us and we assess everything before and after the fact, they need to be anticipated by us so we can be prepared to meet them, they stay longer because they were invited and feel welcome, and they will plan to visit again.

So, now it’s time to take this information and apply it towards your website and Indianapolis SEO marketing strategy. The following 3 steps are surefire ways to give your users the guest experience.

Step #1: Prepare For Their Arrival

What is the first thing that you do when you invite a guest over? Clean the house right? Well, that’s exactly what you need to do with your web page. Make sure you run tools through your website to pinpoint problems and fix them. Also, you’ll want to fix broken links, hard-to-access ages, and forms that don’t work properly.

You also will want to prepare for their needs. When a guest comes to your house, you will normally offer them some form of refreshments. So, in digital terms, that means creating content that will be useful to your users and meet their needs. Also, make sure you build and optimize your landing pages to ensure guests find what they need quickly and can move on. This then brings us to our second step.



Step #2: Make Your Guests Feel Welcome

The biggest mistake you can make when inviting a guest over, is making them feel like you didn’t prepare for their arrival. So, do your best to make your users feel at home on your web page. This means to eliminate annoying ads that pop up immediately after entering your site. You also need to have a clear message that lets them know that the page their on fits with their needs or search.

The other thing you will normally do to make a guest feel welcome is to give them a tour of your place. Well, the same goes for the digital world. Make your web page easy to navigate and understand. Use textual links to allow visitors to find their way while staying engaged with the content. Finally, implement a call to action so guests will know what to do next.

The last thing you’ll do, is attend to your guests comfort. Virtually speaking, this means to have a clear “About Us” page, so your guest knows whom their working with. Always provide adequate contact information and easy ways to reach you. And of course showcase your expertise to let them know they are in the right place.



Step #3: Plan the Next Visit

One of the biggest difference between a visitor and a guest, is that the visitor will never likely return. Whereas a guest will, because you have engaged them enough to know they are wanted and valued. You can do this on your web page by encouraging them to sign up for a newsletter. (Just make sure you aren’t annoying them in the process) You can also give them something for free, such as an e-book. And of course, always always always, invite them back. Do this by reminding them of their visit through remarketing, or send them special deals and coupons with their order and through email marketing.

You can’t help that some people will always stay visitors. But, if you can learn how to engage your users to make them feel like welcome guest, instead of just a number on a chart, you’ll find that not only will your rankings go up. But, you’ll also see a tremendous retention in guests. And that is always a win-win.