Part III, The Building Blocks of a Successful Online Presence

How to Funnel Qualified Traffic to Your Website

In the first two parts of this three part series I discussed proper planning and development techniques for creating a consumer friendly, market ready website. Here, I will discuss what should happen post-development.

I'll start by asking a simple question. Is it better to have a million visitors that hit your website by chance, or is it better to have 1,000 visitors that came to your site because your content specifically fit their needs? With websites, especially those that include advertising space, raw traffic numbers are hard to ignore, but for those business's that are seeking to advertise a product or service, quality reigns quite soundly over quantity.

But how do you funnel quality traffic (meaning those consumers that are specifically researching or interested in your type of business) to your website? With today's technological advances, especially those applications that have been created in the Web 2.0 era, it is now easier than ever to find the consumers that are looking for you.

1) Email Marketing

Beyond design and content, the real deciding factor in the success of your email campaign is the quality of the sender list. And with today's standards in acquiring demographic as well as behavioral traits from Internet users, you can cherry pick your list for the best possible results. There are endless listing companies offering sometimes millions of emails to rent, but it's important to consult with a professional marketing company to make sure you're getting the best list at the best price. Send them your product and service, tie it up with a killer offer or incentive, and watch the buying traffic come knocking at your website's door.

2) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In part II of this series, I discussed the importance of optimization when developing your business's website. SEO takes it a step further. SEO is the purposeful manipulation of your content and design to attract researching and buying consumers that use search engines to navigate the Internet's nearly billion websites. Some companies can afford to simply spend their marketing dollars on efforts that specifically drive direct type in traffic to their websites, but that can be ineffective, costly, and hard to track. SEO allows you to design specific pages as entry points into your website, and the more specific your keyword phrases the better. Remember, though many would try to disagree, it's quality over quantity. If you ranked highly on the term "restaurant" you would see tens of thousands of people visiting your website, but you have no idea exactly what about "restaurants" they are looking for. But if you rank highly for the term "Seafood Restaurant Calabash North Carolina", those search engine users are going to find exactly what they're looking for, and will be that much more likely to convert into a paying customer.

3) Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (PPC)

PPC campaigns are a great way to not only test your most effective keywords (see SEO above), but their results are easily tracked, and changes can be made to them instantaneously. Here's a quick fact to remember about PPC. Though it costs more money than waiting for free organic (SEO-driven) traffic, it is proven that Internet users who click on a PPC ad are three times more likely to convert because they are in "buying mode" rather than simply doing research. And with PPC interfaces such as Google's, you can even pick what website you want your PPC to be syndicated on, adding value beyond traditional search engine listings.

DSL Marketing specializes in:

Myrtle Beach PPC, Myrtle Beach SEO, and Myrtle Beach Interactive Marketing