What is Good Traffic?

The other day I wrote about why Some Traffic Just Sucks. Now I’d like to talk to you about “good traffic.” It’s the stuff that people pay big bucks for. It’s not just traffic for the sake of more traffic, though. It’s really purpose-driven traffic. What does that mean?

Why do people come to a site? To consume content. To download or buy something or to gain some satisfaction; or some value. That’s what it’s all about. Providing value.

When you provide value to people something happens. People stick around, they read more content; the tend to purchase additional things, sign-up for promos etc. It’s not automatic though. It takes time and it takes thought.

How does one get good traffic?

Define the goal: Again, let’s start at the end. What is the ultimate result you want from better (good) traffic? The answer should be short and sweet. You’ll probably want more sales. Maybe you want more people to sign-up for a certain newsletter. Perhaps you just want to get more clicks and lower your bounce rates. Regardless, define your goals. They should be Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic and Time specific. S.M.A.R.T.

Define what is valuable to your audience: Why do people seek you out. Are you a local business or service provider? What do you do that another competitor doesn’t? Here, at DigiSavvy, we do WordPress development. Lots of shops out there do WordPress development. We are able to differentiate ourselves through the following ways: We work with Education and WordPress a lot. We are also a PPC management agency and we kick ass doing it. We also do Website Audits to help businesses find out what is and is not working with their website. Find the ways in which you are different. Perhaps its service; perhaps you have a cute puppy! Identify that difference and tell folks about it!

Generate content consistently: Undoubtedly, you will come across the point where you need to create honest-to-goodness content. No two ways about it. Content matters and you need to write something pretty frequently. Multiple times a week, if you can help it. Each thing you write should be about a specific topic, that’s a good practice. That said, good practices are always made to be ignored. Don’t be afraid to write something personally. And don’t worry, even if your content or business is boring, you can still generate good content, you just need to be a little crafty.

I was introduced to the concept of “cupcake blogging” by a colleague, Kirsten Wright. The concept is simple. Write bite-sized, valuable bits, of content that aren’t just walls of text. Keep it to the point and keep it valuable and, if you can help it, actionable. Actionable posts are big bonuses. Delicious! You’ll notice this post is about “Good Traffic.” My previous post was about “Bad Traffic.” Splitting the content up allows me to be very specific about a key topic, which can be useful for search engine friendliness, too. Although, do write the occasional long-winded post that goes in-depth, great detail to an almost painstaking degree.

Engage your community: Don’t be spammy. That’s the first rule, but do reach out to your community, do reach out to folks share their content, comment, participate in discussions and after you’ve done this, then start sharing your content. Start putting yourself out there. Do comment, do discuss and do be supportive. It comes back to you eventually.

This definitely means you need to put your best networking face on. Go to your local networking events, be they Chamber of Commerce meetings or your local meetups. Find where folks gather that would find your skills complementary and go participate.

Become a go-to resource:  In the field I work in there are folks who specialize in a lot of areas. Some people are front-end developers who work on building themes. Others focus on the back-end and do plugins, or custom scripts. And we can drill down into even more specific specialties.

I work with Education and do a lot of theme development. I organize a WordCamp and meetup and am pretty active in the community. I’m well known within my community. People reach out to me pretty frequently.

Bringing it full circle…

Start at the end and work backwards. Why are you trying to get better traffic? Who are you doing this for? What is the value for the folks you’re doing this for?

Once you have your starting point, create content. How to generate content is a whole other topic, but it’s something you need to do consistently. Once you start generating content, reach out to your community. Know who they are. Engage with them online and offline. Couple those efforts with being a resource; that helpful bloke is a popular bloke indeed.