(Newswire.net — April 20, 2018) — Could you be costing yourself valuable sales?
You probably are—and you don’t even know it. There are people out there who would love to buy what you’re selling, no matter what it is. And they’re trying to find you, or people like you, every day.
Where are these potential customers? And what are they using in their hunt?
Did you realize that 93% of online purchasing experiences begin with an online search query? And the most likely platform for that query is (and will likely remain) Google, the search engine giant that occupies pole position. As of March 2018, Google dominated the global search market, with more than 70% of all queries flowing through its portal.
If you’re not capturing the attention of the right people on Google, though, it doesn’t matter. You need to go after groups that already have high buying intent.
How do you do that?
1) Embrace the Power of Long-Tail Keywords
You’ve probably heard of the long-tail before. But it’s perhaps more important now than it’s ever been.
Put simply, a long-tail keyword is a keyword that’s related to the main topic of your website, but embraces a specific aspect of it. For example, if you ran a business selling designer sunglasses, your website would rank for designer sunglasses. But let’s be real—unless you’re Dolce and Gabbana or some other equivalent company, you’re probably not going to rank very highly.
Focus on more specific aspects of designer sunglasses, though, and you’re getting somewhere. So you could focus on ranking for, say, “designer gold frame jeweled aviator sunglasses”. This benefits not only your search rank (since the long-tail keyword is usually less competitive), but also your quality of customer that you reach.
2) Work Smarter, Not Harder With Page Analysis
You’re probably already tracking your conversions—but if you aren’t, why not?
Analyzing your traffic sources and where people are accessing your site can show you what pages you should focus most of your efforts on. Sometimes it’s surprising what pages rank the best and drive the most traffic to the website. Where do people engage?
Tailoring the content on your most-trafficked pages so that it’s most geared towards your audience will help you find better-quality prospects.
3) Embrace the Power of ‘Meta’
Meta descriptions are the lifeblood of targeting customers with higher buying intent. They don’t directly influence Google rankings, but they’re great for one thing: giving the prospect an elevator pitch of what the page is about.
Your meta description is the first impression the person who’s searching for you has of your page. Prioritize your main page and popular pages first. It needs to be accurate, brief and attention-grabbing. Accuracy is key. Screw this up and you’ll increase your bounce rate—people will leave because they’re not looking for what you’re selling.
4) Create Content Silos
Siloing is a term used for creating an organizational structure that makes sense for your site. When either a person or a search engine looks at your site, can they find a coherent theme? Does the layout of the site make sense, both on the front end and behind the scenes?
If your website is laid out cleanly behind the scenes, it will rank better for both generic search terms and the juicy long-tail keywords. Creating a coherent plan for your site can also have the side benefit of helping you weed out irrelevant content.
There’s much more to siloing than this, but it’s beyond the scope of this article. Don’t disregard this crucial tool.
5) Audit Your Content
You probably already go over the goals and themes of your company periodically to make sure you’re staying focused on the right things.
Do you do the same with your website?
Content that’s relevant to your target market will help Google find better-qualified prospects. Going back to our sunglasses example, if our website has content that’s focused towards people who buy their sunglasses from a gas station, it’s not likely to get much attention from our preferred audience—and Google won’t know to send them our way.
6) Remember That ‘Content Is King’
You’re probably running a blog for your site already, but is it an afterthought? Is the content on the rest of your site well-written and relevant?
Good content gets people in the door because they can tell you know what you’re talking about. Great content continuously generates value, because as people visit it spreads—by word of mouth and by linking from other sites. Build a core of content that’s relevant to your business and you’ll increase interest in what you’re actually trying to sell.
More Needle, Less Haystack
Applying these 6 tips to your website can help you find a more qualified audience that’s more likely to generate conversions. So start today. Use these tips and you’ll be well on your way to a profitable future.