7 DAYS TO ANALYZE AND INCREASE SITE TRAFFIC
DAY ONE
Do You Know Where Your Traffic Is Coming From?
To run a successful business, you need a steady stream of fresh leads. These are the people you will turn into paying customers. That’s the marketing part of the equation. To get those leads, you need traffic. You need to reach out to new people on a regular basis, and the most time and cost-effective way to do that is by generating traffic – ideally evergreen traffic from a variety of different sources.
If you want to continue to grow your business, you should be working on getting more traffic. A wise person once said that what is measured changes. Before you can start to measure, you need to know where your traffic is coming from.
This information is important for another reason. Not all sources of traffic are created equal. If you’ve run an online business – or any business, really – you want to spend as much time and resources as possible on the ones that result in paying customers. In other words, you want to increase your traffic in a way that increases your bottom line the most.
In order to do that, you need to know what sources of traffic send you the most reliable customers. You want to know who signs up for your list, thus becoming a lead. And you want to know how many of those leads convert into paying customers. You can do that by tracking your traffic, email signups, and purchases.
A great place to start is a free Google Analytics account. Make sure you have one set up, and then learn how to use the various reports. Your first stop should be Acquisition / All Traffic / Source/Medium.
Focus on one channel at a time. If you can, track each visitor as he or she moves through your autoresponder program and your shopping cart. This will tell you if it’s worth spending a lot of time interacting in a particular Facebook group, or if the person you’re hiring to create and publish multiple pins per day is worth the money you’re spending on them.
Rinse and repeat for other sources of traffic. Keep an eye on what keywords are converting well for you, and create more content around similar ones. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers how they found you. You can even make this an optional entry when someone fills out your order form. Again, the idea is to get as much data as possible, so you can analyze it and improve your top traffic sources.
Of course, this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more ideas on making the most of your website visitors.
DAY TWO
Auditing and Monetizing Your Most Popular Pages
Are you looking for a quick way to boost your income? Then keep reading. What I’m about to share with you is probably the simplest and most effective strategy for increasing your bottom line. It’s something you should do regularly. Put it on the calendar and make sure it gets done. Then sit back and reap the rewards.
Step one of this strategy is to identify your most popular pages. Don’t disregard pages like your contact page, your about page, and even your 404 error page. Most likely, though, your focus should be on content pages. These will be the articles and blog posts on your site where you share your expertise or discuss a particular problem and how what you have to offer can be part of the solution.
There are various reasons why a page becomes popular. You could be ranking highly for a keyword. Or maybe you created content that’s often shared as a resource. Maybe one of your social media posts that link back to a page on your website went viral. Or maybe you have a popular pin of one of your blog posts. It doesn’t matter why these pages attract so much attention – at least not right now. It only matters that you identify them. To do this, run a report in your website analytics program.
Got that list? Great. Start pulling up two or three of the most popular pages and take a look at them. Go over each of these pages with a critical eye. The most important thing to look at is your call to action. What do you want a visitor to do after they’re done consuming your content?
Do you want them to sign up for your list? That’s always a smart choice. How easy do you make it for them to do this? The first thing to check is to make sure the opt-in form is working. Next, consider if you’re asking for too much information. Every additional piece of info – even the first name – will reduce your conversion rate. Speaking of which, what else can you do to improve it? Are you split testing different headings, different opt-in forms, and even different lead magnets? If not, make a plan to do so.
Maybe your goal is to engage with your audience via comments. Is that working for you? If not, consider reworking the call to action, or consider if you and your business would be better served if you made your visitors an offer.
If you’re already doing that, great. How is it converting? What could you do to improve this conversion?
Step back and really look at the page.
How can you make it work harder to earn you money? Try something. See if it works. If it doesn’t, try something else. Make these most popular pages more profitable. Then move on to the next batch of pages from that report you pulled. Rinse and repeat, and then circle back in a few months and see if you can do even better.
DAY THREE
Need More Traffic Now? Do More Of What's Working Already
Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. There are a million and one different ways to get more visitors to your website. There are hundreds of courses and books that teach you about the latest and greatest traffic generation schemes. But none of that does you much good when you need more traffic sooner rather than later and don’t have the time or the funds to experiment.
Instead, I suggest you look at what’s working already and do more of that. Getting a steady stream of traffic from Pinterest? Create five new pins a day to your most popular posts. Ranking for a couple of long-tail keyword phrases? Optimize more pages, or create optimized content for your site. You get the idea.
Yes, it’s deceptively simple and not very sexy, but it works. If you put in the work to analyze what’s working, discover why it’s working, and then are able to replicate it again and again. Let’s talk about how to do that.
Start by looking at your website analytics. For the best data, you want to pull info for at least three months; more if you can, and at least a year’s worth if you have a seasonal business. Take a look at your biggest traffic sources and where that traffic leads. Can you see patterns? Make a list of everything that’s working.
With that list in hand, take a look at your best source of traffic. Where is it coming from? How are you getting this traffic? Get out a piece of paper, or open a document on your computer. Start brainstorming at least twenty-five ideas for getting more traffic from this source. Then step away for a little while.
When you come back, look through the list you’ve made. Which of the items on there get you excited? What are you looking forward to working on the most? Start with that idea and get to work implementing it. Make a short list of everything you need to do from start to finish. Maybe that means writing a new article or blog post and then creating several pins for it. Maybe it means working on evergreen social media posts that you can load into a program that shares them to your page. Maybe it means interacting in Facebook groups or finding new ones. No matter what it is, work through each step from start to finish. Then get to work on the next item on your list. Rinse and repeat until you’ve completed each of the twenty-five project ideas.
Don’t forget to look at your traffic stats again in a few weeks. Make note of what’s working. Start doing more of that. Give the rest a little more time. Sometimes even the best laid strategy doesn’t pay off right away. Keep working at it and the traffic will flow.
DAY FOUR
SEO Basics For Evergreen Traffic
One of the most important things you can do to improve your traffic sustainably is to work on your SEO or search engine optimization. While there is a lot to say about SEO and some things are always changing, the basics will be enough to get you by.
It all starts with keywords. These are the words and phrases your customers type into their favorite search engine to find what they are looking for. Your goal is to optimize various pages on your website for some of those keywords. Choosing the right ones is your first task. Don’t go for board main terms like “vegetable gardening”. You don’t know what exactly this person is looking for, and it will be hard to rank for a general term like this. Instead, your goal is to choose a few good long-tail keywords like “why are my tomato plant leaves curling” for example.
One of your best sources for these types of phrases is Google. Head on over to google.com and search for something you know your customers are looking for. Then look at the suggested searches at the bottom of that page. Keep trying and keep looking through those suggested searches until you find something that’s a good fit for you and your visitors.
Your next step will be to create a piece of content around this keyword phrase. Use it in the title, the URL, and the meta description of your post. Sprinkle the phrase and related phrases throughout your content. Do the same with the names and alt-tags for images you use. Most importantly though, write the content and the alt tag description for your future readers, not for the search engines. In other words, create quality content that earns your audience’s trust. Working in the keyword should always be a secondary concern.
Why? Because no amount of traffic will do you much good if the people who make up that traffic don’t become your customers. Once you have your draft written, it’s time to start thinking about links. You want to link from this post to one or two older articles or blog posts on your site. It’s also a good idea to link out to a trusted source or authority site. Going back to our plant example, you could link to a university article about treating tomato diseases, for example.
Take another look at everything you’ve put together. If it looks good, go ahead and hit publish. You are almost done with your basic SEO. There’s one more piece of the equation – incoming links. You want to link from a few older pages on your site to this new content. Then go out and link to it from social media posts. Create a few pins, write a couple of tweets and Facebook posts. Send some social signals to encourage the search engines to index this new content. Then sit back and wait. With a little luck, the traffic will come.
DAY FIVE
Beyond Google - Pinterest & YouTube Are Valuable Search Engines Too
When you think about search engines, Google probably comes to mind first. You may also think of Bing, MSN and maybe Yahoo. But you probably aren’t thinking about two of the biggest search engines out there. YouTube and Pinterest. You may not think of them as such, but at their core, that’s what they are – Search Engines.
What do you do when you’re looking for a tutorial for fixing something around your house or a music video? You go to YouTube and you search. What if you’re looking for inspiration for your daughter’s fifth birthday party? You search for relevant pins and create a Pinterest board based on what you find through those searches. It’s not just you. Everyone uses these sites as search engines. Isn’t it about time you started treating them as such and using them as a source of evergreen traffic?
The question then becomes what to do with that new insight. I’m going to assume that you have a basic understanding of search engine optimization. The idea is to apply the same ideas when you create pins or upload YouTube videos. Create this content with a purpose. Start with a particular key phrase in mind. Use this word or string of words to name your video file or image. Of course, you want to also make sure the content applies to the keyword.
Now that you have your content, it’s time to upload it to YouTube or Pinterest. Use the keyword (or key phrase. I will use the two terms interchangeably) in the title and description on the site. You can also use them in appropriate tags. Of course, you want to write the title and description for your visitors first. But if you can work your keywords in, great. And don’t forget to take advantage of channel and board titles and descriptions as well.
From here, you can help your new content in several different ways. Your best strategy is to create fresh, optimized content on a regular basis. Encourage engagement via other social media channels. Respond to and encourage comments. All of this will help your videos and pins become more searchable. As your channel and boards grow, so will your audience. Not every video and every pin will rank well and get you lots of exposure in those channels. SEO or YouTube and Pinterest optimization is a big of a gamble. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. That’s okay. Each and every piece of content will help you in the long run and if you add a call to action and link that leads back to your website, you’ll be generating a steady stream of evergreen traffic as well.
DAY SIX
Profitable Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can be a great asset to your business. It can create quick boosts of traffic and get your message in front of your ideal target audience. It can also be a colossal waste of time. How do you make sure your social media strategy is worth your time? You do it with tracking.
Start by tracking yourself. Social media is designed to be addictive. The main job of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the likes is to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. It’s important that you protect yourself against their efforts to waste your time. And the best way to do that is by tracking what you’re doing on social media. It’s all too easy to convince yourself that you’re busy working on marketing and generating traffic, when what you’re actually doing is procrastinating on things that would actually make a difference to your bottom line. And that’s without giving into temptation to watch cute cat videos.
Now that you know why you should track yourself, how do you go about doing it? It’s simple. You start with a plan. For example, you may decide to post three new posts per day and spend ten minutes interacting with your Facebook fans. Put it in writing and keep this paper at your desk. Don’t overthink what the plan should be. Start with what you think might work. You will evaluate and adjust as time goes by. Set a timer, especially in the beginning. Anything outside the parameters you set for yourself should be considered leisure activity, not work, and most certainly not social media marketing.
Another great option is using automation tools. They allow you to post and share content on a regular basis without having to access the social media sites directly. Instead, you’re crafting your posts inside a different piece of software or website, and the content goes out at the time and date you specified. One of the reasons why this can be very effective is because it allows you to batch your social media marketing. You spend an hour one day a week getting everything set up, and you’re free to work on other marketing and product creation tasks.
Last but not least, consider outsourcing your social media marketing. Not only does it free you up and save you from the temptation of wasting time on your favorite platform, it gives you real numbers to compare. Are you generating more revenue from social media than you’re paying this person? If not, it may be time to make some adjustments to your current strategy.
DAY SEVEN
When It Pays To Pay For Traffic
So far we’ve talked a lot about getting free traffic by tapping into existing sources, upping our social media game, and investing some time and effort into SEO. All of this requires time, and often it’s time well spent. There is a second way to get highly targeted traffic. Paying for it. While there are many different ways to do this, I want to discuss two strategies with you. Paid advertising and recruiting affiliates to send new leads your way. Let’s take a quick look at each.
I’m sure you’re familiar with some forms of advertising. The idea is to pay for targeted traffic. There are various different forms of advertising from space on websites or mentions in newsletters or pay per click advertising. Facebook and Google Ads are good examples of the latter.
Start by choosing one advertising strategy you want to try. Work on one at a time. This way you can monitor results reliably, and you can master one strategy before moving on to the next. Start small and up your budget when you see it’s becoming profitable. Once you’re there, you can continually work on improving your ads to result in lower costs and bigger profits. Don’t turn on the tab too fast. Even with this slow, conservative strategy, you’ll get traffic faster than if you build it organically.
The biggest problem with advertising, especially when you are getting started, is the risk. Chances are, you will lose some money before you figure out what you’re doing. Yes, you can mitigate this risk by starting small and upping your budget as profits allow, but it’s a risk, nevertheless. If that doesn’t sit well with you, or if you simply want an additional strategy to grow faster, consider setting up an affiliate program.
With an affiliate program, you agree to track traffic, leads, and customers that your affiliates sent you and to then pay them an agreed-upon commission for any sales these visitors generate. For digital products, the commission is usually 50%. In some cases, it makes sense to offer something higher, especially on a front-end product if you have a large funnel in place. For physical products, because of additional cost and overhead involved, lower commissions anywhere from two to ten percent are more customary.
The big benefit of an affiliate program is that if you recruit the right people, you can instantly get your products and services in front of their large audiences. There is also no up-front risk. You don’t have to pay your affiliates unless they make sales, thus guaranteeing profitability for you.
Give both methods a try and see how much traffic you can generate with ads and affiliates.
