How to drive traffic to your Squarespace website
You have a website so why aren’t you seeing the success you’d like? More specifically, why isn’t your website making the phone ring, getting you new leads, or making sales?
There are several reasons this could be the case like your website is outdated or isn’t mobile-friendly. Don’t get me wrong, these are huge website drawbacks, but beyond that, there are few fundamental reasons your website isn’t bringing in the bucks.
The importance of driving quality traffic to your Squarespace website
Often people will have a decent amount of traffic coming into their website but they won’t see the conversions they were hoping for. When this happens, either something is going wrong on their website, or something is going wrong in terms of their traffic. Let’s start by looking at traffic.
If your website isn’t helping move the needle for your business, it comes down to the quality of your website traffic, and if people are finding what they need from you. These seem obvious, but I’ve seen many people fooled by lots of traffic, not realizing that the traffic they were paying for was of little to no use.
A few key examples of how poor quality traffic happens:
I’ve certainly come across examples where business owners had lots of traffic but never realized the traffic they were paying for was just another vanity metric - it wasn’t helping move the needle for their business. Here are a few key ways I’ve seen people unintentionally drive poor-quality traffic.
What you need to know about Google Ads
Google Ads is a super powerful tool and I’ve seen it deliver amazing marketing results. It is important, however, to make sure your bidding decisions fit your use case. For the sake of an example, let’s look at a small accounting firm bidding on the word “accountant.”
You might get a good chunk of traffic but you are going to capture traffic that may not be looking for your accounting services. This could capture people looking for a career in accounting, accounting software, and so on. The keyword accountant may be quite costly, and someone might end up spending money on clicks that drive visits from people who don’t necessarily want their business offering. For some small business owners, it makes sense to focus on long-tail keywords.
If however, you are really hoping to drive a lot of traffic, because more traffic paired with a steady conversion rate means an increase in sales, it is important to add negative keywords to your Google ads account. Adding negative keywords would stop your ad from showing for searches related to “jobs”, for example.
To learn more about promoting your business using Google Ads and landing pages, visit this article.
So what exactly are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are ones that indicate that someone is showing intent. For example, if your accounting firm deals primarily with personal over corporate clients you want to capture that audience. Here you might bid on the keyword “+best +personal +accountant +vancouver” or “+personal +tax +return +vancouver.” Using long-tail, broad match modified keywords means people who are actively searching for your services can land on your website. Of course, quality traffic is only one piece of the puzzle. Once you get quality clicks, you need a website that can drive conversion.
What about Facebook & Instagram?
Facebook ads is another really powerful tool. A key reason for this is targeting.
Generating quality traffic on Facebook goes far beyond boosting a post. With the massive decline in organic rankings on Facebook, we are in a pay to play environment. That doesn’t mean boosting any old post. To see success with Facebook advertising it is important to think about the goals of your content before it is created.
Consider what your content’s purpose is, what your call to action is, where you are sending people on your website, and what your audience will look like in terms of demographics, location, and interest areas. Fortunately, Facebook Business Manager is a very powerful tool and allows you to account for all of these when you build out your campaigns.
Now that we’ve talked about traffic let’s talk about your website. In this scenario we’ll assume you are driving amazing quality traffic. You are picking great long-tail keywords, the CTR on your ads is strong, and your Facebook campaigns are carefully targeted but you aren’t seeing results.
Google Analytics goes a long way
Here, it is critical to dig into your analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website PLEASE set it up right now. This is the foundation of making data-informed decisions that will help your business succeed. Without Google Analytics or some sort of tracking, you are spaghetti marketing - throwing something out there and hoping it sticks. As you can imagine, this is a very frustrating and expensive way to meet business goals.
Often you’ll see people are bouncing very quickly from your site or hanging around but not taking any of the actions you’d like. Google Analytics can help uncover areas of improvement. Perhaps people are navigating your site and even get to the point of adding something to a shopping cart but fail to take the next steps. Here, the fix may be as simple as requiring visitors to fill out fewer form fields, or it may be a bigger task like addressing your shipping prices and considering if your offering is competitive.
If you find people are sticking around but aren’t taking the actions you’d like it’s also possible your content organization (or lack thereof) is to blame.
To learn more about digital marketing measurement, visit this article.
The importance of easily accessible content and intuitive design
Perhaps you have a website and it is swimming with a ton of great content, but if that content hasn't been structured in such a way that is intuitive and easy for your user to grasp, you aren't doing yourself any favours.
If you have a site with a bunch of content, first make sure that content is necessary. Of the content that you deem necessary, make sure you are using headings. People have increasingly smaller attention spans and are likely only skimming through your website. Most importantly, include calls to action. Communicate the next steps clearly and make it easy for a visitor to take them.
To learn more about conversion-focused web design, visit this article.
Passing the blink test: Communicating your core service offerings and benefits
Alternatively, if you find people are bouncing from your site or staying very briefly, it is likely they are confused by what they have landed and can’t make sense of what you do. In short, their expectations weren’t met.
When someone arrives on your site, they should know what you do within the blink of an eye. Additionally, this information should appear above the fold. If someone arrives on your website and it takes them longer than 3 or so seconds to figure out what you’re offering and how you can alleviate their pain points, they are likely to go back to Google and search for your competitor.
To learn how to communicate your product and establish your value proposition, visit this article.
