The above results come from a project done by an expert colleague in the US. But sadly, this seldom happens, as the goals for most website rebuilds is around ‘the look’. It’s somehow assumed that more traffic will magically follow! Yeah, right

Most people, especially company owners, still see the company website as a brochure, not a dynamic marketing tool needing constant care and investment – This old brochure mindset means there’s no strategy or funds made available for website SEO, promotion or marketing of the website – Which means only a modest, if any traffic improvement… Business owners are puzzled why the $5,000 or more they invested in the site update gives them no more website traffic or sales leads…

So, how do you get these 300%  traffic improvements from a re-build? Firstly, recognise that the site look or visual design has nothing to do with getting more traffic. It may help get conversions once people arrive as a professional looking site provides some peace of mind and confidence. But the look contributes little to gaining new traffic via any search (since 50-70% of traffic to the site will be via a Google search). It’s far more important the site structure, content and coding be clean, able to be easily indexed by Google. (read more)

Assuming we’ve a good back-end structure, here’s my ‘to do’ list for new website owners.

• Monitor Bounce Rates – After 30-60 days of website activity, check out your site’s bounce rate using Google analytics. Bounce rate tells us the number of people that leave your site immediately after arriving. Generally, the goal is to keep this below 30% for each page on the site. An examination of keywords and content provides the clues to what’s going wrong.
• Monitor & Adjust Keywords – Both Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools provides loads of data to tell us what’s happening. Webmaster Tools indicates what searches you show up on and Analytics will show you want happens when someone clicks through to your website from those keywords. Set a priority of action items based on your most important keywords. We also have our own expert SEO tools that monitor where you sit for Google page one ranking and keywords, against your competitors.
• Post Regular Articles – Search engines and visitors want to see fresh content. It gives both a reason to return to your website. Fresh content means adding or updating articles. Try to add new blog posts on a weekly basis. WordPress sites make this easy – And Google rewards you with traffic.
• Have a Link Building Strategy – Search engines look at who is linking to you and their importance. Quality prevails over quantity. You will need inbound links to many of your pages as possible to be able to up your ranking on competitive keywords.
• Use Pay per click – This is a great way to get traffic in a hurry. Googles amazing AdWords remains one of the best ways to quickly generate traffic and sales within days, not months. The trick is not just the words chosen, but to personalise the Ads, linked through to special offer landing pages on your website.

It’s a reminder that most of the real work to gaining website traffic comes AFTER the site is built. As we’ve said many times before, at least the same amount of time and money needs to be allocated to website marketing and traffic generation, as is set aside for the original design and building. Unfortunately this seldom occurs.

Ref: 12 Reasons Google Hates You

• 78% of websites have robots.txt and sitemap problems
• 63% of sites have duplicate titles and content issues
• 15% of sites misuse rel="canonical"
• 96% of sites have broken links and 404 errors
• 84% of sites have HTML and/or CSS errors
• 43% of sites lose link juice due to poor structure

Result? Google hates you. You’ve little chance of appearing in a search. And these six issues are just the tip of the iceberg of problems. Sadly, mentioning the above items to the average NZ web designer will get you a blank stare, or have it dismissed as ‘unimportant’.

Leaky Websites?

…sadly, most Web Develepers simply don’t understand how Google looks at their site

A good analogy of what’s wrong with most websites is the leaky homes situation here in NZ. If ‘the build’ isn’t done right, with poor materials and workmanship, then the long term result can be disastrous to the business. Sure, like these homes, it likely looks great when you first move in. The problems show up later. And fixing a poorly built website can be expensive, often as much as the original design cost. Like leaky homes, the problems lie underneath the classy exterior. They’re hidden from view, but NOT from Google…

For those of us with an interest in SEO, this is old news. The problem with most business websites in NZ, is that they’re built by web designers and developers that have only a superficial understanding of how Google looks at their sites. Many still think the inclusion if a few meta keywords is all that’s needed. This trick stopped working in 2003.

My SEO industry colleague, Jim Stewart, spoke earlier this year of what can go wrong for companies and developers around search. (left). Our experience is similar. Most websites today are poorly optimised for Google. It’s often easier to completely rebuild a website from scratch, than trying to patch up a weird html site or content management system.

In a world where everyone is looking for more traffic and a higher Google ranking, web designers aren’t helping their business clients. They’re naturally  focused upon what the site ‘looks like’ visually. There’s little concern, time or budget going into what hides beneath – What Google sees when it examines your website and determines if you’re worthy of its traffic and referrals.

Get expert help – Discover why you’re missing out on website traffic

We’re not asking web designers to learn all this stuff. SEO optimisation and understanding how Google works requires a different skillset, background and mindset from visual design. It’s certainly not a creative chore. SEO techniques also change constantly. There’s no local classes that teach it well either.

The solution? Designers need to partner with an SEO expert (like ourselves), when building any new website, large or small. Sometimes it means trashing their existing web developers toolset or content management system (CMS), in favour of WordPress. This change ensures we can guarantee the sites structure is clean and ‘Google-friendly’, but taking nothing away from the visual design or branding goals.

Call or email us for a free analysis of your site and what you need to do to fix it

p.s. Want an idea of how good/bad your site is, for FREE? Enter your website into Websitegrader  A score of 80+ is the goal. Anything under 50 means you effectively don’t exist online, at least as far a Google and sales leads is concerned.

“Direct traffic” is web traffic you get from people who already know about your website or store. They either click a bookmark to come to your site or type your site’s URL directly into their browser’s address bar. By comparison, “search engine traffic” comes from people that probably don’t know about your site. They were looking for a keyword or phrase and your site just showed up in the results on Google, Yahoo!, or MSN’s Live Search.

Finally, “referrer traffic” describes web visitors that follow a web link or online ad to your website.  This type of traffic and it’s value is greatly over-hyped. Generally, SEO traffic accounts for under a quarter of your visitors. Yet there’s an entire SEO industry setup to promote the value of search engine marketing, almost the the exclusion of all else.

Value Direct Traffic More Highly than Search Engine Traffic

Smart retailers would take pains to track just how much direct traffic they get and measure direct traffic conversions against search engine traffic and referrer traffic conversions. It is also helpful to follow up with customers that do know your URL. Try to learn how they heard about your site, so that you can replicate that sort of marketing and create more direct traffic visitors.

Summing Up With Five Direct Traffic Tips

Too often retailers overlook brand and direct traffic when they plan their marketing campaigns, instead focusing on search engine traffic. But, you should do more to build direct traffic, and here are five things you can do.

1. Follow up after a sale. Great follow up and exceptional customer service can convert a one-time customer, who may have surfed to your site from a search engine, into a “direct traffic,” “brand aware” customer that will go to your site first next time.

2. Establish a newsletter. Develop a content rich newsletter that doesn’t just promote your products but also includes interesting content. It’s often the stories and human touches of your newsletter that people will remember. As an example, if you sell hiking equipment try including short stories about hiking, say a first person article about a recent trip.

3. Develop a product update RSS feed. Allow site visitors to subscribe to a product update RSS feed that provide them with price and availability information when a product they’re interested in is updated.

4. Offer services or downloads. Keep customers coming back by offering them something other than a sales transaction. For example, an online store featuring school and art supplies might offer free downloadable coloring pages that are branded with the stores logo. Parents and teachers can download the coloring pages for their students or children. And don’t ask for their name and email first. Do this after they download – You’ll get 10-20x the numbers signing up.

5. Consider traditional media channels . Nothing says brand like print advertising that shows something about your company’s values and products. Use PR to get articles written about you in reputable magazines and newspapers. It holds much more credibility than something you write on the net. Oh, how did Google get their name out there in the early days? They started with print advertising.

Related: Google drives more people to your site

Sorry to disappoint. Yes, many people will use Google to find out about you or get to your website. But, the bigger question is what gets those same individuals to do a search in the first place? What’s the ‘original’ motivator that got them to your website the very first time to buy your product or service? Surprisingly, it’s most often offline forces. e.g. Printed materials, TV, Word of mouth referrals etc.

It seems two-thirds of online searchers are driven by offline channels!

iProspect, Jupiter and Forester Research have done independent studies on consumer behaviour. Specifically, how and why do people arrive at a specific website? What part does other media like TV, Print and referrals have on online purchasing? As iProspect summarized, ‘this survey seems yet another sign that marketers need to approach online strategy for what it is; the tie that binds ALL multichannel efforts’.

It’s the same in Europe

Pitney Bowes surveyed 10,000 people as part of a pan-European study that took in the UK, Germany, France, and Scandanavia.  According to the report, 60 per cent of those interviewed felt that marketing such as addressed mail was more effective in prompting a visit to a company’s website, compared with 24 per cent who felt that an e-mail, website advert or sponsored link was a stronger means to inspiring a first visit.

“These figures demonstrate how critically important it is for businesses to find the right marketing mix”.

On a more in-depth level, direct marketing was seen as being more effective at creating consumer traffic than digital advertising across all the age groups surveyed. Of those questioned, 67 per cent of consumers in the 35-44 age bracket were more likely to visit and consider a purchase following the receipt of an offline message.

However these figures could vary with different industry sectors and consumer demographics. For example those in the 15-25 yr old market will likely favour online and electronic communications over offline. The obvious trick is to segment your offering and use the media each grouping prefers.

Gareth Stoten, general manager of Pitney Bowes DMT in the UK and Ireland, said: “These figures demonstrate how critically important it is for businesses to find the right marketing mix”.

But Google Say They Send Me Loads of Traffic…

For those of you that see much higher traffic coming via Google search, it’s likely that you’re using Google’s own free Analytics package or figures to track visitors*. It seems Google Analytics will often overstate (by 50-300%) the number of people that visit your site as a result of a Google search. In real terms they provide figures of say 30-40% when it’s really 5-15%. You must alter the default settings to get a more accurate, reliable result… read more here

The other forgotten factor that distorts the Google search result is that many people today will key the website url into the Google search bar (Google result), instead of the main url address bar (direct result). It seems many people now use Google to navigate, not just search. Use the powerful google analytics advanced segments tool to obtain more accurate, useful visitor stats. read more here.

Are marketers and advertisers doing enough to drive traffic?

The iProspect/Jupiter report also came up with some recommendations for creatives, marketers and advertisers who often aren’t doing their bit to drive traffic. Far too many are approaching campaigns from a traditional advertising perspective. Look at the demographics of the audience. Many would likely prefer to respond online. Help them!

1. “…..67% of online users are being driven to perform a search as a result of exposure to these offline channels when the majority of offline advertising does very little to facilitate the process. In other words, they [the advertisers] don’t exactly make it easy for potential customers to find their company’s website.…
2. …Marketers who take pains to have their toll–free number repeated several times within their messaging would be well–served to incorporate their URL. Simply adding the phrase “…or find us online at…” could prove to greatly enhance [sales] results…
3. … Moreover, it is more economical to communicate with potential customers online than it is via the telephone; it allows information to be easily disseminated, and orders expeditiously placed.”

I guess it all just means we need to get the right balance between what Google wants and how people use Google as well as appreciate where offline and word of mouth referrals sit in the bigger picture. Look at ways to integrate things more, using the unique benefits of each marketing channel. As in life, all is seldom as it seems.

* For those that find Google analytics too complex, try out GetClicky. It’s not free, but worth the small annual fee.