If you’re spending money to get visitors, look at the phrases you’re using.
Being at the top of the search engines for “Christmas gifts” is not only going to cost a lot of money, it’s also pretty useless if you only sell one or a few things.
“Christmas gift baskets” is more targeted and will help raise your conversion rate.
Other fairly useless phrases I’ve come across people using recently (and I use the word useless to mean that although they generate a lot of traffic, they don’t generate targeted traffic).
• Web design (on a site that was very focused locally, so “web design Northampton” would provide more qualified traffic)
• Graphics (on a printing site where ‘exhibition graphics’ would have been more targeted)
• Coaching (on a business coaching site – ‘business coaching’ would have been better)
• Sales jobs (again on a geographically focused site – “sales jobs Milton Keynes” would have been more suited)
Think differently – search engines aren’t the be all and end all of website traffic generation;
* The Northampton based web design company would be better off targeting local search phrases, and putting their link on localised websites. Most towns and/or counties have local directories. They could also try a targeted email campaign to Northampton based businesses.
* The exhibition graphics company could advertise on sites that promote exhibitions, as well as finding better targeted phrases for search engine promotion.
* The business coaching company could advertise on sites devoted to new and growing businesses, as well as a targeted email campaign to businesses of a certain size.
* The sales recruitment company could again advertise on local sites, as well as free recruitment sites, and job seeking newsgroups and forums.
Lots of traffic is good – lots of targeted traffic is even better.
