When you run a website, one of your most crucial goals should always be to generate traffic — lot’s of them, actually.
After all, the more people you have coming into your website, the more chances you have at converting them into subscribers and customers.
However, the problem is, not everyone that comes into your website is going to buy from you — or are even remotely interested to buy what you are offering. They aren’t real leads, in fact, they have no reason to be on your website at all.
Of course, when you fail to attract new leads, you set yourself up to fail.
During his interview, one of the common business mistakes pointed out by Russell Ruffino, founder and creator of Clients on Demand, was the fact that people fail to attract new leads.
“It’s feast or famine,” he points out, if a business can’t attract the right clients.
That speaks volumes on why you should pay attention to the quality of traffic you bring into your site. If you don’t attract the “right traffic,” then you have no real chance of converting your visitors into paying customers.
In this guide, we’re going to look into the top reasons why all online traffic isn’t good traffic and ways to find your target audience so you can maximize your business’ growth.
1. Your Ads Target Everyone
When it comes to pay-per-click advertising, the quality of your clicks means everything.
After all, every time someone clicks on a PPC ad they see in search results, you have to pay for it – whether they convert or not.
During an AdWords audit performed at Kissmetrics, it was discovered that 100% of all conversions and sales were tracked back to only 6% of the keywords being used.
In other words, 94% of the keywords being used by businesses using AdWords advertising in this audit were worthless when it came to getting people to take action once they arrived on site.
But those ad clicks still had to be paid for everytime someone clicked.
Adding to that, those 94% of keywords that didn’t help land a conversion or a sale made up a whopping 72% of all clicks.
That means people were clicking away at ads that did nothing for them in the end.
It also means that those 72% of clicks that drove traffic to a website were either bounced traffic or uninterested people that didn’t want to sign up, subscribe, or buy.
If you run pay-per-click ads to drive traffic to your website, you should be doing two things:
- Creating ads that use your strongest keywords and that are relevant only to your target audience – not the masses
- ‘Tracking your ad campaigns using a tool such as Google Analytics to make sure what you’re paying for is producing real results
To check the success (or failure) of an ad campaign in Google Analytics, you’ll have to look at data metrics such as:
- Number of clicks each ad has
- Cost of each ad
- Cost-per-click of each ad
- Number of users and sessions (or impressions)
The goal is to use ad campaigns that net the highest number of clicks and the lowest cost-per-click amounts.
That means you’re getting the most revenue for the least amount of cost.
Of course, this is only the beginning. There’s a lot more to PPC advertising than checking a few metrics.
But the point is, you don’t get paid for clicks or the traffic that comes to your site. You only get paid when someone converts and makes a purchase.
So, you better make sure the right traffic is clicking your ads so when they come to your site, they generate you money.
And don’t forget that even if you’re driving the right traffic to your website using PPC ads, if your site doesn’t load quickly, many people will abandon before converting.
That’s why enabling a CDN to deliver your site’s content as quickly as possible is recommended.
Using servers spanning the globe, a CDN delivers content to site visitors based on their geographic location so there’s never a delay.
A CDN reduces latency and makes for a seamless user experience, which can also help move people through your sales funnel and get them to convert.
2. Keywords Aren’t Working
There’s no sense diving headfirst into a bunch of keyword research if the traffic that’s coming to your website doesn’t convert.
Think about this. Imagine someone typing in the phrase “What is Titanic” into their Google search bar, in the hopes of finding out what the movie Titanic is all about.
The most prominent search result you’ll get when typing in that query is about the historical ship that sunk in 1912.
It’s not until page three that there is any reference to the movie Titanic. Sadly, even the result pertaining to the actual movie might not convince the user to click the link.
In the meantime, the chances are good that the user might have click a couple more links, only to click away since they couldn’t find the information they’re looking for.
This example tells us a few things:
- Any websites with information about the movie Titanic may not be targeting the right keyword phrases and are missing out on the opportunity to drive the right kind of traffic to their website.
- Historical sites with information about the actual sinking of the Titanic ship are getting lots of wrong traffic to their sites.
Of course, this is all just an example of how targeting the wrong set of keywords can affect the type and amount of traffic you’re getting.
3. You’re on Too Many Platforms
There’s no denying that social media is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and sales.
But when you try to get involved in all of the social media platforms, you’ll end up driving too much of the wrong traffic your way while seeing poor results when it comes to conversions.
To fix this, start by understanding what kind of users each of the primary social media platforms have:
- Facebook: Ideal for industries such as fashion, eCommerce, retail, and entertainment. In addition, Facebook is a great local SEO signal, so if you own a local brick and mortar shop, this is the platform for you.
- Twitter: Ideal for news and information, health and wellness, retail, and sports. This platform is best used for highlighting products, services, and your best site content to get people to click and visit.
- Instagram: Ideal for travel; and hospitality, photography, event planning, and fashion. Anyone with visual products or content can benefit from building a presence here.
- LinkedIn: Ideal for finances, employment, technology, legal, and IT matters. If you’re B2B, having a LinkedIn profile is a must since this platform influences people’s buying decisions.
- Pinterest: Ideal for eCommerce, fashion, home and garden, arts and crafts, and beauty. Anyone that runs a website catering to hobbyist should be on Pinterest since that’s what their main users are made up of.
Because each social media platform has a strong inclination towards specific demographics, it’s crucial for you to understand your audience’s interest first, so you can figure out which online channel is ideal for your business.
For instance, if you run an online clothing shop, you probably won’t find many interested users on LinkedIn. You’d be much better off using Instagram instead.
Though using LinkedIn will eventually drive some traffic to your site, the chances of them converting as well as those coming from Instagram are low.
Don’t waste your time (or money!) marketing to an audience that doesn’t fit your marketing persona.
Instead, do some research about your target audience, learn about each social media platform, and build a strong presence on the ones that drive high-quality leads that are likely to convert to your website.
Final Thoughts
In the end, you need to realize that not all online traffic is good for your business.
Only those that are interested in what you have to offer are going to stick around long enough to read your content, subscribe to your newsletter, or buy what you’re selling.
Everyone else will just increase your site’s bounce rate, hurt your SEO efforts, and make you wonder why, with so much traffic, you’re not seeing any sales at all.
