If you are a website owner then you really need to get visitors/traffic to it in order to promote your business and make sales.  A lot of people go to their local website designer and get a website created but then do nothing to promote it.  It’s kind of like having a printer print you up some fantastic looking business cards and brochures but then you simply stick them up in your attic to allow them to gather dust.  What’s the point in that?

So here you will find out about what you need to do to get traffic to your website and what the different types of traffic is.

Un-Targeted Traffic

In order to understand what type of traffic you want to get to your website, you need to understand the type you should avoid.  A lot of people who are new to trading on the internet think that somehow the rules that apply to the offline world don’t apply to the internet.  This is how so many people get ripped off by buying into products and services that are completely and entirely useless.

(Ultimately it’s traffic that comes from the search engines that convert best into buyers so it’s search engine traffic that will be discussed here.)

If in the real world you are trying to sell a guitar, would you walk into a shoe shop and start trying to sell?   Of course not because the people in the shoe shop want to buy shoes - not a guitar. 

Even if you target people who like music and perhaps can play guitar you’re going to have quite a hard sell on your hands because the person isn’t really in a buying mood.  They might make an impulse buy if the price is cheap enough or your are lucky enough to find someone who is looking for a guitar.  But generally you’re going to have to be a very good sales person to sell anything this way.  And you are going to have to approach a lot of people in order to get a sale.

Targeted Traffic

However if someone has been thinking of buying a guitar for quite some time, they’ve done lots of research on the subject and have decided they want to buy a red Yamaha Pacifica with practice amp then selling to this person is going to be much easier because they have a need for the product.

When it comes to a website the trick is to identify the sort of keywords that people type into the search engines in order to buy a product from you.  Sticking with the guitar theme, according to Free Keyword Tracker, ~4000 people a day search for “guitar“.  But exactly do you think they are looking for?

Your guess is as good as mine, they maybe want to buy a guitar, download tabs, watch videos, find out about the different types, the history and anything else for that matter.  Basically ranking for “guitar” might seem really impressive but you’re only going to end up with a lot of useless traffic.  Also, remember traffic costs money in terms of your website hosting account so you could end up spending hundreds of dollars on hosting just to get useless traffic.

If someone is looking for a guitar they will quite often start with something very basic like “guitar” and then start refining their search as they gather more knowledge.  The sequence might look something like:-

Guitar
Electric guitar
Fender electric guitar
Fender Strat electric guitar
Fender Squier Affinity Electric Guitar Pack

Basically the more specific they are in their search, generally it’s more likely they are going to make a purchase.  So instead of putting your efforts into ranking for what’s known as a “top level keyword” you should be trying to rank for the “long tail buying keyword.”  You’ll not get as much traffic but the conversion rate is going to be considerably higher.