How to Exponentially Boost Your Targeted Website Traffic

August 19, 2009

Today's guest article was written by Hugo Guzman, the VP of SEO and Social Media at zetainteractive. Hugo is an online marketing expert with both in-house and agency experience. He's been working in the SEO field since 2002 and his work has been published in industry portals such as ClickZ and SEOBook.com. I follow Hugo's marketing musings on Twitter, and recommend you follow him as well.

Without further ado, here's Hugo...

++How to Exponentially Boost Your Targeted Website Traffic++

Few things in an SEO's life are sweeter than watching one page of a site hit pay dirt for a high-volume, high-relevance keyword in Google.

Witnessing your site appear above the fold for one of these "pay-dirt" keywords and watching the visits, conversions, and revenue roll in help reaffirm one's faith in natural search optimization and life in general. After all, SEO is one of the only channels that still gives the little guy – and the big corporations, for that matter – a shot at a level playing field due to the relatively low cost of entry. While this level SEO playing field is quickly eroding, most agree that the opportunity to stake a claim in natural search results is still there for the taking if you take the proper approach.

But what is the proper approach?

It's a tough question to answer, and there are various answers that would qualify as right. Unfortunately, most SEO agencies and consultants approach it the same way time after time: sticking to the conventional top-down approach that focuses on optimizing pages and engaging in link-building efforts geared toward the home page, followed by category pages, followed by granular product and content pages.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with this approach. It has stood the test of time and has a proven track record of results. Heck, even my agency bakes this process into the core of their SEO offering.

However, it's simply not enough in today's highly competitive SEO climate. You need additional measures, particularly in terms of striking while the iron is hot and identifying those "on the cusp" keywords and phrases that can lead to immediate and measurable return on investment.

On-the-cusp keywords are simply search phrases for which your site is gaining some traffic but is not yet ranking well enough (say, the top 3 for most people) to benefit from an exponential boost in traffic (and, hopefully, conversions).

So in layman's terms, if you're receiving some traffic from certain keyword phrases, but not as much as you could be, those phrases are on the cusp. And considering the exponential traffic and potential conversions you can gained by moving up above the fold in the search results, it's in your best interest to keep close tabs on each and every one of your on-the-cusp keywords.

Now, obviously there are some on-the-cusp keywords that are worth more than others, and this is where analytics comes into play. For starters, it's probably a good idea to pull search volume data for any and all keywords that are currently ranking in the 4–15 range, so that you can prioritize your optimization and link-building efforts and focus on the highest-volume keywords first. But using ranking report data is really not enough, mainly because it doesn't account for keywords that you don't even know you rank for, and they're not the same for every person.

Learn to decipher your analytics data.

Reviewing your search referring keywords data can help you quickly decipher which keywords qualify as on the cusp. It's simply a matter of identifying terms that are consistently sending in a trickle of visits – that is, one or more visits per day sustained over an extended period. What constitutes a "trickle"? That's subjective, but the idea is to triangulate on referring keywords that are new and/or refer a relatively low amount of traffic.

Don't focus on the long tail.

For this exercise, it's important to focus on two- to three-word terms as opposed to long-tail terms, because most long-tail terms will not generate exponential gains even if they move into the top position.

Once you identify these referring keywords that deliver a trickle of visits and cross-check their rankings to confirm that the keywords are in that 4–15 range, you can implement targeted page-level or internal linking elements that can help push the page above the fold. You may want to secure a few anchor-text–laden inbound links to give them that final push. In some instances, a single anchor-text–laden link (internal or external) or a slight adjustment to the page's title tag will do the trick!

Replicate this process again and again, and before you know it, aggregate natural search referrals (and conversions) will begin to show a tantalizingly noticeable increase.

Hugo Guzman
Vice President – SEO & Social Media
zetainteractive [Jill's Note: Thanks, Hugo! In addition to this great advice, you may also want to check out "Using Analytics to Measure Success"]

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Jerry Charles said:
This is great advice. Thanks for putting the time into writing the article. I use Google Webmaster Tools to monitor which keyphrases are in the top 20 or so and then create a punch list to start working on.

Hugo said:
Thanks for the positive feedback, Jerry! Glad that this technique is bearing fruit for you, although I would argue that using Google Analytics to find tangible evidence of visits is a bit more valuable than using Google Webmaster Tools to check for rankings.

Remember that just because a term is ranking well doesn't mean it's worth your time and effort to optimize. What really counts is whether or not that term drives actual search volume that relevant to the content you're trying to optimize. You can use keyword research tools to determine general volume, but if a term shows up in your Google Analytics referring keyword report despite not showing up above the fold in the SERPs, you can be sure that it is a term that will drive exponential traffic volume to your site once you get it above the fold.

Claire Hawley said:
Great post... So many SEOs don't rely enough on analytics! I like to balance focusing on boosting a couple of high-traffic keywords and long tail at the same time. Additionally, if you build a bundle of long tail articles around those high-traffic words, you get more opportunities to increase the anchor text to that target page. Also, use your analytics program to identify those keywords on the cusp... this set up for Google Analytics works great: http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-google-analytics/

GaryK said:
Thanks Hugo, I have just started a new health website/blog and have a keyword or two that is gaining that trickle traffic.So I will try your ideas and see what I can do.Thanks for the inspiration.GK

MinuteMan SEO said:
I like the article and this is something I have been doing and pushing for a long time (getting clients to take action on keyphrases that they are ranking ok for, but not great). But I find it interesting that time and time again I hear people deliver a similar message as this comment "it's important to focus on two- to three-word terms as opposed to long-tail terms, because most long-tail terms will not generate exponential gains even if they move into the top position."

I know you were referring to this particular exercise but there are plenty of keyphrases in all types of industries that could be classified based on this definition of a long-tail keyphrase (more than 3 words) as being long-tail, that really are core to a business and get thousands of searches on average per month. Case in point, I was working on site for a well known acting school and one of their most important keyhrases was "how to become an actor." Six words, based on your definition it would be long-tail and you would have me ignore it, but this is a core keyphrase and thousands of searches done for it per month.

I find that the definition of long-tail needs to be redefined a bit because the amount of words in the phrase in total shouldn't necessarily dictate the fact that it's a long-tail phrase. When I think long-tail it makes me think of a keyphrase that is obscure, or really specific, which I agree in many cases is based on the fact that there are numerous words in the phrase, but not always in my opinion.

Jill Whalen said:
@MinuteMan you are correct that you can't determine what's a long-tail keyword or not just be the number of words in the phrase. It's more how many searches the phrase receives.

Hugo was simply generalizing for purposes of this article, but I'm sure he'd also agree!

@Claire thanks for pointing out that analytics "add-on." I remember seeing it when it first came out, and meant to try it out, but never made the time to set up the new profile. Will try to remember now!

Anonymous said:
@Jill & MinuteMan - definitely agree!

Thanks for all the feedback on the article. I'm humbled and honored.

Hugo

Archery said:
Hi,

I just did this for my archery site. I used analytics to figure out the words, then rank checker to determine which ones are producing the juice - now I've buffed those up a bit and am going to check next week to see how it unfolds.

I was amazed at how many internal links were being cataloged by Google, while my home page with a PR of 4 didn't show up anywhere.