A website is as good as it’s traffic. It’s very simple. Internet marketers have overused the phrase “build it and they will come” and how it does not apply to website building – but you can’t argue that argument’s validity – a website not indexed by search engines with no in-links, no advertising campaign and no type-in potential will simply not receive any visitors regardless of how beautiful it looks or how user-friendly it is. That is a fact.

It is another well known fact that website visitors do not necessarily equal conversions i.e. customers. A lot of websites suffer from the fate of providing content that applies to a lot of generic search terms without being specific enough to flip that “buy it now” switch within a visitor’s mind. Many of those websites register extremely low conversion rates – whether they employ direct product, adsense, advertising or affiliate monetization techniques. A lot of them suffer from high bounce rates too.

Is your website bounce rate extremely high?

I hear you.

As they work towards a beautiful design, web designers can overlook the key concept of structuring a page to draw the attention of a site’s visitors towards key areas of a specific page. Have you thought about what is distracting your visitors from your content and driving them to click away?

Optimizing pages for keywords

Misleading search results are another frequent reason people click away from pages they find through search engines. Analyze your traffic. Are people finding what they are looking for on your pages? If someone searches for “outdoor chairs” and your page is getting a lot of traffic for those keywords even though your content talks about you “sitting on a chair outdoors”, of course they will click away. They didn’t find what they were looking for. Traffic Travis is just one of many tools you can use to check your page to keyword optimization.

Providing high quality content

So you have sorted your mismatched search terms and yet your page bounce rates are still not low enough. Perhaps you haven’t really been working hard enough on your content. Are you really providing content that’s worth reading.

What I do is whenever I write a post on any topic, I try to read it from the perspective of a website visitor. Is there any substance to what I have written? Is my content helpful and on topic?

Focus on the visitors’ needs

Humans are selfish. This universal fact applies to website content and website visitors too. Visitors want to see benefits from reading content. They want answers to their questions. Focusing on what you can do for your visitors is the only way to retain them. Think about that. Think about a visitor’s short attention span and how long they’ll stick around if you don’t give them what they are looking for!

Make your website easy to navigate

A website must be easy to navigate. Badly structured websites will lose visitors – it’s as simple as that. This applies to sites that sell products and those that don’t. Sites that sell products should drive their visitors towards the purchase area via easy to follow directions. Content based websites should allow visitors to search and browse their websites with ease.

Building relationships

Trust is extremely important in online business. People will buy from you and through you if they trust you to keep their personal information safe and if they believe that what you are telling them is the truth and not some sales mumbo jumbo. Needless to say you should always opt for integrity and honesty over any quick money schemes.

A relationship with your visitors that’s built on trust will be more profitable in the long run too, as those visitors-come-customers will keep coming back for more.

And finally, test and optimize

Obviously, we are always learning. No one – not even the top experts – can honestly say they know everything about website and traffic building. As your websites grow you will find yourself analyzing your website’s stats and optimizing for better performance. It’s important to test and retest – adjust design, rewrite content etc – in order to achieve optimum results. Only by trying different methods and techniques will you learn what works within your niche and for your target audience.