Not to diminish the advantages of SEO but it’s not the only consideration when marketing your small business online. While many sites depend exclusively on traffic from search engines, many people forget that getting “new” traffic is only one part of the equation.
Once you get someone to your site for the first time, you need to be sure the content is compelling and informative enough for them to return again and again. If visitors don’t return to a site, you’re putting yourself into the position of having to rely on visitors coming directly from the search engines. The problem with this of course is first-time visitors are least likely to subscribe or buy.
Your best customers will be those who have reviewed your site several times and know it better rather than first-time visitors coming from a search engine who just quickly glance at your page and move on.
So keep reading for three steps you can take to get first-time visitors to come back again and again.
Step #1 – Optimizing your site for the search engines
Of course, the first step is getting new people to your site. Optimizing your site to rank on page 1 in the search engines is key to making this happen. Be sure your site architecture is friendly to search engines and your content contains valuable keywords woven into the content. Meta and title tags do help and you also need to obtain inbound links from other sites.
Step #2 – Write great content that keeps visitors reading
Someone coming to your site for the first time is unlikely to return if they don’t entirely read the first page they land on. If your site/business depends on people taking action on your site, you need to engage them from the very beginning so they’re interested in the entire page and want to come back for more. To succeed at this, you need to diversify your content beyond simple advertising slogans and the like.
Step #3 – Get people to come back again and again
For those of us who have sites primarily consisting of content, it can be quite a challenge to develop engaging content that keeps people coming back. You’re likely one of hundreds or thousands of sites offering information on the same subject. Simply adding more pages won’t keep people coming back…to do this, you must:
- When compared to other sites on the same subject, your site’s content needs to provide more value
- Add great content frequently and let people know you’re adding new stuff in the near future to keep ‘em coming back
- Invite your readers to leave comments and suggestions to engage them with your site
- Take full advantage of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to get people talking about your content amongst their friends
To summarize, content driven sites need to stand out from the pack in order to maximize conversions. Basically speaking, your content has to be good enough for people to want to come back again and again.