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You are here: Home / Archives for Web development

Web development

Dec 08 2022

10 Expert Tips For Writing SEO Optimized Blog Posts

Driving traffic to your site relies heavily on the effectiveness of your content. In order for people to click on your pages in a search result, they have to rank high enough to be seen by users. Learn how to write SEO optimized blog posts to increase the traffic your site generates.

What is SEO content writing?

The difference between publishing SEO content and a typical journalist-styled article is that SEO content is created to rank in the search engines and has a call to action.

SEO content should play a specific role in your sales funnel. There should be a conversion objective for each article you publish that targets a specific keyword. That’s one advantage of having an SEO company in Toronto in your corner to help with content creation.

For example, if you’re explaining SEO to a beginner, they may not be ready to jump into a regular monthly investment after just learning about what SEO is for the first time.

The call to action from an explainer article would be to ask the visitor to read an article that is positioned deeper in the sales funnel.

For instance, an article on The 10 Greatest Benefits of SEO would bring that reader another step closer to wanting to invest in SEO after reading the positive effect it has on a website and ultimately a business.

Header for article on how to write SEO optimized blog posts that rank high on Google

Here are 10 expert tips for writing SEO optimized blog posts that rank well and convert readers with a call to action.

  1. Reverse roles with your audience
  2. Use Google to suggest keywords
  3. Analyze search term metrics
  4. Visit sites where your audience hangs out
  5. Create a scannable outline
  6. Write at a 9th-grade reading level
  7. Use the inverted pyramid style of writing
  8. Optimize blog posts for a target keyword
  9. Leave a call to action
  10. Drive traffic to newly published pages

Reverse roles with your audience

Every great article begins with extensive keyword research. The first step to hashing out an outline is to think of the needs of your audience and what they want to read about.

Brainstorm the search terms that your audience would type into a search.

When you have a few good keywords, you will want to dive deeper into the related topics of that keyword to create depth in your content.

You can use your head for this one as well, but what will help create a more detailed strategy will be the use of a few tools.

Use Google to suggest keywords

Based on the results of your list, type them into Google and take a look at a number of different places on the page such as:

Google autosuggest;

Google autosuggestions for SEO content

the people also ask box;

PAA box for SEO content writing

the featured snippet;

Featured snippet for SEO content

and the related searches box at the bottom of the page.

related searches for SEO content

The words and phrases you find in all of these parts of the SERP are popular search terms that are repeatedly searched on Google.

Add the most appropriate results to your list.

If it’s necessary you can go a few levels deeper by typing in the new results in a search and see what different terms are generated.

Analyze search term metrics

As a precursor to writing SEO-optimized blog posts, it’s worthwhile to run a keyword report to get an idea of the competition, traffic and some keyword suggestions.

There are dozens of keyword tools available to choose from but the most popular publicly available would be Moz or SEMRush.

MOz keyword report on SEO content
Moz keyword report on SEO content

Make sure your keyword has a minimum level of search traffic that matches your overall strategy. You don’t want to target a keyword that gets zero searches a month.

Take note of other search terms suggestions that would fit nicely in your article.

Choose a few terms to target that are essentially variations of your target keyword.

Make it a point to use them in your content and subtitles to contribute to optimizing your page.

Visit sites where your audience hangs out

Part of a good research strategy is to find niche forums, social media groups and places your audience hangs out to discuss your keyword topic.

Quora gets a lot of traffic on a monthly basis and by scanning through questions you can get an idea of the most commonly asked questions and the terminology people are using while discussing your topic.

Research your audience on Quora to write an SEO optimized blog post
Quora results for search term “SEO content”

One of the biggest groups for finding a lot of relevant Q & A’s is Reddit. Simply type your keyword in Reddit to get a list of the discussion groups you can join.

Write an optimized blog post by researching reddit: example is for SEO content

The culture here typically has a low tolerance for self-promotion so keep that in mind if you’re engaging in any discussions.

The goal is to gather as much information about your topic, what’s trending and what people are most commonly talking about.

Create a “scannable” outline

Most people who read articles online will scan through the article to see if they are even interested in the content on the page.

Create an outline consisting of subtitles to serve as the skeleton of your article.

The outline should summarize the story of your writing with as much descriptive detail as possible.

A scannable outline on how to write SEO optimized blog posts

A solid outline creates an easy-to-follow guide for writing your article. Each segment is already laid out so you merely are filling in the blanks between your subtitles.

Write at a 9th-grade reading level

Write in a conversational tone that is easily understood by readers of all ages.

Approximately 50% of the US population reads at a basic or below basic level. Make your content extremely easy to understand by avoiding technical jargon and complicated words.

By making your content more difficult to read you are essentially losing half of your readers.

You can use the Fleishman score to determine how easy to read your article actually is. The Yoast plugin offers this feature.

An excerpt from Wikipedia on the Flesch reading ease values showing the table and formula
Image source: Wikipedia

Use the inverted pyramid style of writing

When journalists write they use a style of writing that is known as the inverted pyramid. This style of writing gives readers what they need to know at the beginning of the article and what is nice to know in the latter part of the article. This is a sweet little undervalued pearl of wisdom found within the many online marketing tactics you need to employ.

The inverted pyramid is a journalistic styled approach to writing SEO content

This may sound counterintuitive to those who appreciate a nice build-up. The logic behind it is that people are impatient and if you want to rope them in immediately, give them what they need to know regarding their query.

Be the last destination in their search. If they are interested in secondary details, history and other useful facts you have added, they will read on.

This style of writing insures you don’t lose your visitor to another site.

Optimize blog posts for a target keyword

It can be argued that if you’ve explained your topic extremely well that Google will automatically understand what keywords best represent your article.

However, the strategic placement of keywords will emphasize the target keyword in which your article should rank and improve your on-page SEO.

  • Make sure you include your keyword in your title, URL and make sure it occurs at least a few times within your content.
  • Use your keyword within the first paragraph (or 100 words).
  • Enhance your optimization by adding the keyword to the image alt tags.
  • Include variations of your keyword in your subtitles and text.

Leave a call to action

Readers need to be told what to do upon completing an article. What may seem obvious to you may not be as obvious to someone who is visiting your site for the first time.

Your call to action should move your reader further along the sales funnel. If it’s a new visitors reading a basic introductory article about your business, recommend another article on your site that builds more awareness of the benefits of your product or service.

If it’s an advanced article, leave a link to a service page or contact page to set up an appointment or phone call.

Leave a call to action based on what stage of the funnel your article represents.

Drive traffic to newly published pages

Even the best content in the world needs a little help in being found. You can give your pages the help it needs by driving traffic through an internal and external linking strategy as well as all social media outlets available.

Outbound internal links

Good on-page SEO means incorporating a few internal links. Include outbound links to related content. Link to some articles you’ve previously written to enhance the reader’s understanding of your topic.

Inbound internal links

Search engines rely on internal links (and your sitemap) to find new content. To get your page indexed quickly, add a few links from related articles you’ve previously published. Those inbound links will allow search bots to find your new content.

Internal links also bring readers to your newly published page, which promotes a higher click-through rate within your website.

Outbound external links

It’s considered best practice to reference authority sites from within your SEO-optimized blog posts. It adds credibility to your pages and shows Google that your page is truly serving your user’s needs.

Although it may be an SEO tactic, choose your outbound links wisely to send visitors to quality sites that will indeed enhance their user experience.

Inbound external links

Backlinks are a major consideration when it comes to ranking. Choose the most appropriate backlinking strategy that suits your goal.

If you’re attempting to rank locally you may need to lean heavily on the local link building tactics to create the most relevance for your page.

Social media outlets

Always post your content to every social media profile you’ve created. Posting over a long period of time builds an audience that provides a quick solution for getting your pages noticed and your content read.

Drive traffic to your page by leaving a call to action on every post that links to your site. Don’t forget to ask people to share with their network to get your content in front of as many eyes as possible.

Create content for users to build a loyal audience

Many mistake the purpose of SEO optimized blog posts as content that is created solely for ranking purposes.

This may have been true in a time when Google was less capable of determining the value your content holds for readers.

Create your content for users and not search engines.

The more you hold the attention of a reader and satisfy their search intent, the better your page will perform.

There is a close correlation with the quality of content and a first-page ranking. The biggest ranking factor is typically seen as the ability to satisfy user intent.

Make it your priority to write content that specifically tackles a specific search query from a user.

Combine the technical aspects of writing SEO content with a focused strategy to satisfy search intent and enjoy the fruits of a first-page ranking.

Related reading:

  • 10 Amazing Headline Strategies
  • How To Outsource A Freelance Writer For SEO Content At Your Website
Christian Carere
Christian Carere

Christian Carere is the owner and founder of Digital Ducats Inc. in Toronto and heads the SEO team at Austin Bryant Consulting in Plano, TX.  Christian has been published on publications such as Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.

old.digitalducats.com/

Written by Christian Carere · Categorized: Content strategy, Web development

Oct 31 2022

Pillar Page Best Practices For Structuring Content

Publishing content regularly can result in your blog resembling a scattered array of articles that don’t work together as themed content. One advantage you can create as a publisher is defining themes within your content by organizing them in topic clusters. As a precursor to creating an effective topic cluster, use the pillar page best practices outlined in this article.

What’s a pillar page?

A pillar page represents a major keyword topic on your website that can be broken down into smaller subtopics. This page would briefly summarize the subtopics, but not go into great detail about them. Instead, it would link to narrowly focused articles that target long-tail phrases and in turn link back to the pillar page.

Pillar page best practices shown as creating a central page and linking smaller subtopics to and from the page

The interlinking structure formed by establishing a pillar page binds your major keyword topic. Since every smaller article points to the pillar it becomes the central hub for the topic, which enhances the page’s authority and ranking ability.

This internal linking strategy raises the profile of the pillar page to demonstrate the importance of its content as it relates to your website. This page represents a central idea being supported by a number of different articles to create depth and expertise in the subject.

Five separate topic clusters with pillar pages and cluster content

There’s no limit to how many pillar pages you create on your website. For every major topic, create a pillar page to create the main hub for how the information on your site is organized.

What are the benefits of using a pillar page?

This type of structure organizes your content for both users and search engines. The interlinking structure guides and encourages users to read more related articles on the website. This leads to higher click-through rates and extends the average length of time a user spends on your website.

An increase in user engagement translates to stronger ranking signals, which results in more traffic through improved search visibility.

Pillar pages tend to rank for multiple keywords and phrases because of the breadth of content that is incorporated. This gives publishers a lot of opportunities to target featured snippets and win positions in the People Also Ask box.

It also allows for the opportunity to target long-tail keywords using the clustered content as opposed to trying to target those keywords within one pillar page.

The traffic that is driven by the clustered content is a good match to your content since the visitors enter your site through article ranking for long-tail search phrases.

The stronger your cluster content, the stronger your pillar page becomes in terms of ranking ability. It’s similar to a tree growing taller because of a strong root system. With more cluster content that ranks and drives relevant traffic to your pillar page, the more your pillar grows in stature and authority.

Tips for creating a pillar page

There’s no single way to create pillar pages and for every website, it might be different. If there’s already an extensive amount of content on your site, the process will be different than if you’re publishing fresh brand new content.

Some publishers recommend writing your clustered content first so that you know exactly how brief to be in your pillar content. There are others who prefer to write the pillar content first and create cluster content afterward.

Whichever way you go, here are some universal tips, tactics and strategies, and pillar page best practices that will help you along the way to creating well-defined topic clusters that satisfy user intent.

Select your target keywords

Every website needs a strong keyword strategy. There’s simply no way around it. In order to have a clear idea of how to create an effective pillar page, you’ll need to do some keyword research to clarify the terms that your page will target.

Start with the most obvious terms

Almost every keyword strategy begins with a logical list of topics and subtopics that are relevant to your business. Create a list of terms that summarize the most important aspects of your business.

If you’re a digital marketing company, one of your pillars should be about lead generation. Write down every aspect of lead generation to start your list of clustered content. Examples of subtopics would be email marketing, call to action, content strategy, keyword strategy, etc.

Fine-tune your selections

Once you’ve got a basic list you can then add to it using keyword software and fine-tune your selection based on competition, volume, and the value each word represents to your business.

Perform a competitive analysis

You can’t outperform the competition without knowing what exactly they’re doing to rank on the first page of Google. Perform a thorough competitive analysis to find common characteristics of the top-ranking pages.

A content gap analysis will indicate the content your page is missing by identifying what keywords the competing pages are also rankings for to include those keywords in your strategy as well.

Determine the level of detail required to rank

Figure out what the average word count is for the top 10 ranking pages. The average length of a page in the top 10 positions for your keyword indicates the level of detail required to be competitive.

Keep in mind that it isn’t the word count that makes the page competitive but rather the topics that are being covered within the page. There may be room to further break down some of the subtopics you’ve established into several subtopics.

Create content that meets and exceeds the value a user receives from the top 10 ranking pages to make sure you earn the first-page position.

Address each stage of the buyer journey

The pillar page is the central hub of a major keyword topic, so it should naturally be assumed that this page should have the ability to convert visitors into clients. To do this, you should address each stage of the buyer journey to guide your visitors from wherever they are, to making a purchase.

Awareness

Create a stronger awareness of your product or service by incorporating basic information about your keyword topic. Start your pillar page with definitions of your keyword topic so that visitors have a clear understanding of what the page is about.

Consideration

List the benefits and practical applications associated with your product service or major keyword topic. You can always link out to more detailed articles when you touch on a topic that deserves more attention and can be broken down with more detailed explanations.

Decision

Bring the visitor to the conclusion that your company offers the best solutions for what they need. Using comparisons, case studies and testimonials can help influence your visitor into a favorable purchase decision.

Optimize your content

Take advantage of the opportunity to appear in SERP features-more specifically the People Also Ask box and featured snippet. You’ll need to be aware of the questions that appear in these features in order to know how to optimize correctly.

Analyze the SERP by clicking through the question in the PAA box and copying every question that is relevant to your keyword topic. Repeat the process for related terms that your page could also rank to get more options and ideas for how to structure your headings.

It also helps to have a list of secondary keywords to use in addition to your primary keyword targets. Having a list of optimized search terms can influence the headings you use within your content.

Link to all relevant content within your topic cluster

In order to bind your topic cluster together and identify your page as a pillar of your website, you need to build internal links. Your pillar page only becomes your pillar when it’s obvious that there are multiple pages within a cluster that are linking back to it.

Link to every article within your topic cluster and make sure they link back to your pillar. Pillar pages have the most link equity and will increase in authority with more cluster content linking to them.

Be sure to link your cluster content together to emphasize the relationship of the articles within your cluster. This is not only beneficial from a technical standpoint but also enhances the user experience.

Give users the opportunity to read related content by linking to articles that move them through the buyer journey. Keep them learning about your business and how it can help them solve the problems that are commonly faced by those looking for your product or service.

Use call-to-action banners

The purpose of creating content is to educate your audience into making a purchase decision with your company. Make sure you give them plenty of opportunities to make a call, fill out a form, or complete the objective conversion goal you’ve created for your website.

Use a CTA banner throughout your pillar page wherever it makes sense. Definitely leave a call to action at the end of your pillar page to encourage more goal conversions.

Example of how to create a pillar page in a topic cluster

Create options for keyword topics by listing the major keywords of your website. Each of these keywords will act as an idea bucket which you will fill with terms that belong under your main keyword topic.

For example, let’s say your website is about home renovations. One of your pillar pages would target the keyword kitchen renovations. A potential topic cluster that organizes the information related to kitchen renovations into smaller detailed articles would look like this:

Kitchen renovations pillar page and topic cluster example

Although you would mention all of these subtopics on your pillar page, you would need entire articles to go deeper into detail on each aspect of kitchen renovations in your SEO writing.

Silo your content

Keyword topic clusters can have more outer levels than just the one that surrounds the pillar page. In the kitchen renovations example, you could break down the topic kitchen countertops into deeper detail if there is a demand for that content in your product.

Example of siloing the information needed or kitchen renovations in a kitchen counter tops topic cluster

Repeat the pillar page creation process

Organize your content using a structure that search engines and users understand. Topic clusters are one of the top content structures for encouraging user engagement and ultimately high rankings.

Publish pillar pages to compete for competitive keywords and increase the authority your site demonstrates for that major keyword topic. You can build the level of depth and expertise your website has by continually adding to your clustered content and providing users with the solutions to commonly asked questions and problems.

Search engines prefer to display websites they trust and those that are considered to have an expert opinion. Demonstrate both of these ranking factors by implementing these pillar page best practices to create topic clusters that rank highly to drive high volumes of traffic.

Related reading: 10 Expert Tips For Writing Expert SEO Content

Christian Carere
Christian Carere

Christian Carere is the owner and founder of Digital Ducats Inc. in Toronto and heads the SEO team at Austin Bryant Consulting in Plano, TX.  Christian has been published on publications such as Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.

old.digitalducats.com/

Written by Christian Carere · Categorized: Content strategy, Web development

Sep 25 2022

33 Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Website

The number of ways to drive more traffic to your website is growing by the day. New ways of sharing, new websites and new developments have created a long list of options to choose from. At the end of the day, you need to do what makes sense for your business, within an acceptable time frame and within the limit of your resources. 

Whether you’re doing your own SEO for your small business or are just getting acquainted with how to drive more traffic to your website, here are 33 methods to produce that long-anticipated spike in your monthly search volume.

  1. Publish SEO content
  2. Build links
  3. Improve CTR
  4. Repurpose content
  5. Update content
  6. Perform a technical audit
  7. Improve on-page optimization
  8. Guest posting
  9. Merge Content
  10. Press release
  11. Split testing
  12. Email marketing
  13. Page speed
  14. Host an event
  15. Website performance analysis
  16. Optimize for SERP features
  17. Use structured data markup
  1. Paid Ads
  2. Social media marketing
  3. Social share CTA
  4. Form a PIN
  5. Local SEO
  6. YouTube marketing
  7. Podcasts
  8. Image optimization
  9. Topical organization
  10. Internal linking strategy
  11. Use SEO software and tools
  12. Develop a tool or app
  13. Publish evergreen content
  14. Answer questions on forums
  15. Comment on high-traffic websites
  16. Post to content aggregators

Publish SEO content

Building a blog is undisputedly one of the most effective methods of organic traffic generation. It’s not only the volume of traffic that is so appealing, but also the fact that you can place your website in front of people who are actively looking for what your company offers.

Choose the keywords your prospective clients are most commonly using and break them down into problems and solutions you can publish content about. Publishing high-quality content that has value to your future and current clients is a surefire way for building an audience that’s responsive and engaged with your content.

As you build a library of resources on the topics that revolve around your area of expertise, your website gains authority, as does your ability to answer search intent. When it comes to choosing what websites will rank on the first page of the search results, Google and the other major search engines factor in the authority of your website compared with your competition. 

A large part of this ranking signal is built through its content as well as how your audience responds. The concept of building authority can also be accelerated through link building.

Build links

The links that a website acquires validate the credibility, authority and popularity of a website. These are all ranking factors that will improve the ranking ability of your website for keyword related searches.

Not only do quality backlinks increase the authority of your website but also provide more entry points to your site so that more users can find your content. A backlink is considered to be good quality if it improves your authority or sends good referral traffic to your site.

Link building can provide a competitive edge, however, when done incorrectly can also result in some adverse changes in search visibility. Build links that improve the user experience and are in accordance with Google’s Best Practices to ensure your site an upward climb in authority, ranking and the volume of traffic it receives.

Want to learn more about how to do link building yourself? Here are 17 Backlinking Strategies to try.

Improve CTR

Did you know you can increase the traffic your site receives without even the rank of your pages changing? By attracting more clicks directly from the SERP (search engine result page) you’re able to increase the number of visitors that click on your search listing.

Entice more users to click on your pages by improving your headline. The first thing a user sees is the title of your page and if it’s a bleak and boring title it can easily go unnoticed. Use numbers, percentages or list-styled formats of your headline to maximize your CTRs directly from the SERP.

Popular blog types to drive more traffic to your website

Not only does your title have this power to attract more clicks, but your meta description is also another form of advertising you can use to win over the users’ interest. Be creative and descriptive within your meta description and be sure to use your keywords within the 160 characters limit to present your case.

Repurpose Content

Make the most of the content you’ve published by creating different forms of it using multimedia. This strategy can work to improve traffic on underperforming posts that were once generating traffic and have since declined as well as posts that are popular and still generating traffic.

Everyone has a preference for how they choose to digest information, whether it be through video, audio, images or text. When you can supply different forms of the content your producing, you’re able to cater to a broader base of users and appeal to the different preferences each type of user might have.

For your stout followers and subscribers, this also provides a diverse way to present useful information in more engaging formats to keep them engaged and their interest piqued.

Update old content

New information is always being presented and we live in a fast-paced society where content can grow old and outdated fairly quickly. Search engines love fresh content and if you’ve got content that’s been sitting around and getting stale, an update can help revive your traffic.

If you’re in an industry that loves statistics, like the SEO world, having updated facts and stats is absolutely essential to providing value and being credible.

The competition for search visibility is also steadily increasing and it’s fairly common for websites to use content that ranks to make better versions of it on their own websites. If you’re not keeping up with the status quo in quality, your content will eventually slide right off the map.

Keep your content relevant and useful by updating periodically to see spikes in traffic.

Perform a technical Audit

This may be the most boring part of SEO, but it can also be the most important. If your website is not functioning properly, you might be giving up a lot of search visibility from a build-up of error codes or from pages that aren’t being indexed properly.

A technical audit will uncover many problems that can impact ranking. Use the search console to monitor your site on a regular basis. The first signs of trouble can usually be detected directly from the search console under the core web vitals tab.

Software such as Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl will also be helpful for identifying pages that have gone missing, that are indexed and that need attention.

Improve on-page optimization

It’s already been some time since Google has moved away from ranking by keywords and now ranks by keyword topic. This shift in how Google assesses your website has resulted in higher quality search results because top-ranking pages are optimized for the entire keyword topic as opposed to stuffing content with keywords.

As a result, if you rank #1 for your target keyword, you will also rank for a number of other keyword variations. Capitalize on the opportunity to improve your ranking by enhancing your on-page optimization for additional keywords.

By placing your keyword in the metadata of your content, you can instantly boost the on-page optimization. Look for opportunities in the title, body of content, and image alt tags. Refrain from changing the URL as this would be the equivalent of creating a brand-new page.

Be an active guest author

Although much has changed in the last year and a half, guest posting, when done correctly can be extremely beneficial for branding and traffic generation. Guest posting allows you to leverage other websites’ traffic by posting your content and linking it to your site.

The links can also improve your authority and ranking ability when they’re posted on topically relevant, high-authority websites.

Publish top-notch content to brand your company and entice users to click on your links. Be sure to include links to valuable resources that people will find useful and ideally present some business value to your company to convert visitors to clients.

Guest posting should be done with careful prospecting and in moderation unless you’re using nofollow links to your site. Google has been exceedingly vigilant in devaluing links from excessive link building by guest posting so you’ll need to strategize accordingly.

A tweet from John Mueller on guest posting as a form of link building to drive more traffci to your stie through improved rankings
This tweet was in reference to a thread about SEMRush’s proposed guest posting service (which was soon dissolved). but lead to the conversation about the effectiveness of guest posting.

Merge Content that targets the same keyword

Google’s decision to allow the full transfer of authority through a 301 redirect makes merging content one of the options that can supercharge your traffic. Rather than have two mediocre blog posts on your website that don’t generate traffic, combine the two posts together for a bigger and better version.

Redirect the pages you delete to the new URL in order to combine the links and authority of the deleted page. This tells Google your content has moved from the detled URL to the new URL.This option should be exercised with pages that target the same keyword topic to get the full benefits of the merged content so the links pointing to those pages remain relevant.

Publish a press release

What better way to reach a broad audience and get published on some high authority websites than to release newsworthy information to the press about your company? A press release will put your content in front of a large number of journalists who regularly monitor press releases to write about something of interest to their audience.

As an old form of link building, you need to be wary of the links that are used in your press release. Most sites will only use nofollow links in your PR-which is a good thing because you don’t want Google to penalize you for unnatural link building. The bonus is when your story is syndicated on other websites, and many of those nofollow links will often become followed on other sites.

Not only do you receive referral traffic and branding but you also pick up a bunch of good backlinks that lead to an increase in search visibility and ranking.

Split testing

A/B testing can be one of the best ways to make decisions on content that provides higher conversion rates. Using software like Crazy Egg can help you conduct different spilt tests to identify what’s working best to generate more traffic to your website.

You can use split testing on your websites as well as in your email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing

This is one of the oldest forms of online marketing and still, today remains the most cost-effective method. Email marketing can get you an industry average of 3800% return on your investment and can instantly drive more traffic to your website at the click of a button.

Avoid spamming your email list with every update to your company and stick to sending fresh content according to the preferences of your audience. Every list should be segmented into each person’s preferences so you can personalize the type of content you send and get a positive response demonstrated by high CTRs to your website.

Page speed

The time it takes your pages to load can affect the number of visitors that make it your website. Studies show that for every second it takes, your site will lose visitors who become impatient and back out from your web page. The number of times a visitor lands on a page and backs out without clicking further is referred to as your bounce rate.

IMproving page speed reduces bounce rate and drives more traffic to your website
Image source: Backlinko

Improving page speed ensures more users stay on your page for more user engagement and ultimately more return visits.

Fast page speed is also considered a ranking factor. So if your website is ridiculously slow, you might be seeing some adverse effects in your ranking. In this situation, improving the speed at which your pages load will increase search visibility and drive more traffic to your website.

Host an Event

Hosting an event is a surefire way to garner more interest in your company and drive more traffic to your website. Whether it’s a live event or a webinar, posting the event on bulletin boards, on your blog and on social media will stir up a loyal and faithful audience as well as round up a few new people.

Analyze your website performance

When you want to see improvement in the performance of your website you need to be aware of the analytics it’s generating. Google provides two of the most valuable pieces of software for free to every website owner which is arguably the most comprehensive of all options.

Using Google Search Console is the equivalent of looking under the hood of your car when there’s a problem. The search console will report everything that going on in terms of functionality as well as performance. You can find errors, backlinks, impressions, clicks to your pages, penalties issued to your website and more.

Google Analytics is useful for running reports on user behaviour, traffic statistics, comparative analysis, goal conversions and customized reporting.

Analyzing the performance of your website can provide you with an accurate way of gauging the success of your current efforts and provide you insight into how to adjust and improve. Analytic reporting informs your keyword and content decisions for more successful campaigns.

Optimize for SERP features

Dozens of features appear on the first page of results in which you can optimize and capture more search visibility. The most obvious features include the featured snippet and PAA boxes.

featured snippet and PAA box present traffic opportunities within your existing content that ranks on the first page of search results

These options are the most common and therefore present more opportunity since a position can be won by optimizing existing content. The additional positions will contribute to higher click-through rates and drive more traffic to your pages.

Use structured data markup

Although implementing Schema and structured data markup does not directly affect your ranking, they can greatly affect the click-through rate your pages receive from the SERP. Using structured data markup can result in rich results that will enhance your search listing.

The faq rich results on a whitby location page leads to higher click-through rates and therefore more traffic

Some of the most common types of rich results you can influence are FAQ, Q & A, How-to, reviews, recipes and show times. The opportunity for rich results exists under specific conditions, one of them being that your page ranks on the first page of Google.

Invest in paid Ads

It may be obvious, but it needs to be mentioned as paid ads are an extremely viable way to drive more traffic to your website. The option for paid traffic exists on both search engines and social media.

Google ads example for how to increase traffic

You can reduce the cost of this recurring expense by using retargeting ads where your ad continues to appear in front of those who have already visited your website. This form of advertising boosts your conversion rates since the concept is based on retargeting those who have shown interest in what your company offers.

Engage in social media marketing

Social websites are extremely valuable for increasing search visibility and getting your company in front of a larger audience. For B2C businesses social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram can supply massive sources of high converting traffic.

Did you know that 47% of “pinners” log on specifically to shop?

Effective social media marketing humanizes a business and makes them more relatable to the consumers. Avoid posting content like a robot and make sure you’re able to dedicate some time to interact with your followers.

Get social with your audience, after all, there’s a reason its called social media.

Leave more social share CTA’s

Include a call to action at the end of your posts to get more people sharing your content. People need to be told what to do in order for them to do what you want them to do. Sharing content may not be at the top of a persons list after reading something you’ve posted, but if you leave them a subtle reminder, you can improve your sharing statistics.

On facebook, if you leave CTA’s on your page you can increase your click-through rate by 285%.

The larger the audience you have, the more people will click on your site. Always leave a CTA at the end of your posts to maximize the number of people that view your content.

Form a P.I.N. (Personal Influencer Network)

Do you see many of the same names and faces in your niche? Reach out those who are in a position to amplify your content and come to an agreement about how you can support each other’s efforts.

If you’re actively guest posting it would be ideal to reach out to authors and arrange a link for link agreement. For every article you publish, you can include a link to their site and they can do the same for you.

With enough people in your P.I.N., every article you publish has an exponential impact as it becomes worth as many links as the number of people in your P.I.N. that you’ve linked out to in each article.

Establish a local SEO strategy

If you’re a brick-and-mortar business you can leverage the traffic you receive by establishing a local SEO strategy to drive traffic from your specific location. One of the best ways to rank on the first page of Google is to get your website on a Google property.

List your company in Google My Business to get your website in front of people looking for local businesses like yours. Local traffic tends to have a higher urgency for making a purchase and visitors are typically in the later stages of the buyer journey. Being in the local pack and showing up for localized search results can drive more traffic to your website and increase your bottom line significantly.

YouTube marketing

Video has exploded in popularity. It’s nothing new to business owners considering 81% use video as a marketing tool. The widespread use of video is up 18% from last year and still continues to grow.

Engagement statistics such as time spent on a page and bounce rate improve with the addition of a video. After watching branded social videos, 64% of people will make a purchase. Social shares are higher with video and 6 out of 10 consider video the preferred method of learning.

As mentioned above, some of the best ways to rank on Google is to be on Google-owned properties. The number of searches that click on a Google property has officially passed the 50% mark forming the proverbial walled garden.

Ranking on Google properties are among the best ways to drive traffic to your site This graph shows total website traffic referrals

Use this to your advantage by leveraging the second most popular website in the world; YouTube.

YouTube videos account for over 90% of the videos that rank in Google search results. If you’re considering publishing a video, it wouldn’t make sense to do it anywhere else.

You don’t need to rank on Google to drive more traffic. YouTube has become its own search engine and can generate thousands of views from a successful video. Include a link to your site in the video description to refer your viewers to your website.

Participate in a podcast

Video is not the only form of media that’s been gaining popularity. Podcasts have exploded over the last few years creating more opportunities for your message to be heard.

Creating your own series requires a lot of time and resources, which can definitely pay off in the long run, however, you can also ask to be a guest on someone else’s podcast. The host of the show should have no problem linking to your site from the podcast description for some sweet referral traffic to your website.

Even if they don’t, as long as they have a decent subscribership, being featured as a guest is excellent branding and will stir up some interest from an untapped audience. Podcasts are continuing to grow which is an opportunity in itself to capitalize on getting more visitors to your website.

Optimize your Images

A potentially underrated form of driving traffic to your site is through image optimization. Be sure to optimize your images with the keyword in the filename and alt tags. Include a descriptive title and captions whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The more information you give to search engines, the more they have to associate your image in keyword-related searches.

It’s not just the keyword optimization that will get your image to the top of the results but also the number of links it has pointing to it. Create visually appealing images (with data when applicable) and ask people to give you proper attribution with a link.

Organize your content topically

Increase the search visibility of your website by organizing your content topically. If you’ve been doing your homework, you would know that Google is ranking pages based on keyword topics rather than keywords themselves. With a topical organization, you can add the depth of topic your site demonstrates and drive more traffic to your website through increased search engine rankings.

topic clusters concept to structure your content in an SEO campaign for additional visitors to your website from higher rankings

Create topic clusters to emphasize the most important keyword topics of your website. There are pillared content and clustered content that make up a topic cluster. The pillared content is the pages that represent the major keyword topics of your site. They typically cover your topic in breadth and not depth.

The clustered content is smaller more narrowly focused articles that solve specific problems or answer specific questions. For this reason, the clustered content typically targets long-tail keywords in order to rank highly and drive traffic from a highly engaged audience.

topic cluster illustration to show how content should be organized to drive more traffic from increased search visibility

The topical organization of your site makes it clear what the major keyword topics are, which appeals to search engines. It also becomes clear for users to identify the most important topics on your website and get a sense of the depth of your expertise.

The pillar page model establishes credibility, authority, expertise and trust in its niche whic are positive ranking signals that influence more search result appearances for keyword related searches.

Internal linking strategy

The internal linking strategy you implement on your site has a direct impact on your pages performance in the search results. Internal links are also used to form topic clusters and increase the internal click-through rate so users can navigate to related pages with ease.

Use descriptive anchor text to enhance the on-page optimization for individual pages. Sometimes building more internal links to a page can improve ranking with the improved optimization.

Link to related content to guide visitors to pages that are within the same topic cluster. Clustered content always links back to the pillared content in order to build the authority of the keyword topic, improve click-through and drive more traffic to your website through increased ranking ability.

Use SEO tools and software

There are a number of tools and software that allow you to multiply the effectiveness of your efforts. Using tools can give you the insight needed to make better decisions for more calculated success.  

Use analytical SEO software to find backlinks and traffic sources of your competition. Why should they keep all their juicy sources of traffic to themselves? Ahrefs, Moz and SEMRush are all versatile tools that can give you a fast and sure-fire way to ramp up your efforts on finding the best sources for quality visitors.

For instance, you can see the exact keywords make up a website’s organic traffic using SEMRush.

SEMRush allows you to see what keywords a website is ranking for the top 100

You can also discover popular content topics by using Buzzsumo. Type in the keywords of the content you want to see being shared the most so you can publish content that people have the most current interest in reading and sharing.

An example of what Buzzsumo shows as the top performing content for the term "keyword research"

Stay on the cutting edge of your industry by making use of the tools that give you the ability to collect valuable data about your audience.

Develop a free tool or app

If you have the resources, develop a tool or app that would make life easier for your potential clients. Many businesses drive thousands of visitors to their site just to use a tool they offer. For example, Ahrefs offers users its tool called Free Backlink Checker. This page alone gets thousands of visitors from organic traffic. 

Drive more traffic to your website with a tool like Ahrefs Backlink checker

A few other examples are Ubersuggest, Answer The Public, GTMetrix and the list continues. Even Moz and SEMRush have free versions of their software to get more people familiar with their company. This may be something that is out of your scope but you should know that the potential to drive traffic to your website exists when you can offer a free tool or app. 

Publish evergreen content

Rather than publishing articles on your blog that lose relevance or value overtime, publish evergreen articles that won’t lose value in the foreseeable future. News updates and current events have a short lifespan and become useless for driving traffic and acquiring backlinks. Evergreen content provides both for your website.

The bottom line for producing evergreen content is that you’re able to publish something that can be considered a link-worthy resource. This means that over the life of your post, it continues to collect backlinks, drive traffic and encourage return visits because of its inherent value as a resource.

Evergreen content typically takes the form of long-form content, such as ultimate guides, listicles, case studies, reviews, white papers, interviews, expert roundups, infographics, Q & A pages and more.

Answer questions on forums

This method of traffic generation was a widely practiced link building tactic before Google put a hex on the links that are accumulated from forums. For this reason, many people shy away from using forums for traffic regardless of the fact that it can result in streams of targeted visitors to your website.

Being able to answer people’s questions effectively and thoroughly creates trust and is a way to showcase your knowledge in your field of expertise. The trick is to answer questions on forums that are specialized to your industry as well as drive a decent amount of traffic. Quora is one question and answer site that qualifies in both categories.

Quora gets over 300 million users on its site every month and you can find people asking questions in almost every niche imaginable. You are permitted to leave links to your site within your answers and can introduce people to your business through the content you produce as answers to their questions.

Comment on high-value industry articles

If you’re not reading the biggest and the best blog sites in your industry, you should be. Not only does reading what the top websites publish to keep you current on what’s popular and trending but it also gives you a chance to send visitors from those sites to yours through some well-placed comments.

It’s true, commenting on guest posts and leaving your link has gotten a bad rep, but remember that’s because people were abusing it. There’s nothing wrong with leaving a link to your site on an insightful comment when it makes sense to do so. 

Get your company and website in front of an audience that is obviously interested in the content your producing. The search visibility on some of the top sites is insane and a popular article could receive hundreds of thousands of views over time.

Leave your two cents about that article and if people like your stance, you can bet they’ll click on a link to hear some more of what you’ve got to say.

Post to content aggregators

The best thing about online strategies is that they have the ability to go viral. Submit your content to the aggregators who have the ability to get it in front of thousands of people. Many websites will syndicate the content they find which can lead to some pretty good backlinks.

What’s more, is you can get featured in Google News in related search results if your content gets a good response. 

Medium has the potential to get your content in front of a huge audience because of the way their algorithm works. If your content starts getting a lot of views and social engagement, you’ll see it being shown to more people on the Medium platform.

Neil Patel claims his first big break came when an article of his was featured on Techcrunch. Leverage the most popular sites that allow you the greatest potential of going viral. 

Increase traffic with the methods that are right for your business

Every industry and niche has proven methods for increasing the traffic to your website. For example, if you’re in a B2B service industry, you wouldn’t get as much from relevant traffic from an Instagram campaign as you would from publishing and ranking blog content.

There’s no right or wrong way to get people on your website but you can find the best ways by learning from those who are killing it in your field.

Analyze the efforts of your own campaigns in order to continue to learn and grow from what works best so you can scale up in those areas and continue to drive more traffic to your site on a regular basis.

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Christian Carere
Christian Carere

Christian Carere is the owner and founder of Digital Ducats Inc. in Toronto and heads the SEO team at Austin Bryant Consulting in Plano, TX.  Christian has been published on publications such as Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.

old.digitalducats.com/

Written by Christian Carere · Categorized: Web development

Jan 23 2022

How To Choose A Good Domain Name For Your Business

Choosing a domain name may seem like the easiest part of your journey, make no mistake, the selection and securing process are layered with pitfalls that can affect the future of your business. There is literally a list of considerations to ponder before deciding (hence the existence of this article!). Learn how to choose a good domain name for your business and you will be one step closer to experiencing success on the search engine result page.

Approximately 37% of all domains are .com but does that make it the right choice for you? Here are a few things to consider when you’re both choosing your domain and setting it up with your registrar.

Choose a name that’s easy to remember

Try to pick a name that best represents your brand but is simple to remember. It’s a great name when people can simply type it in and go directly to your website. It helps when the domain has something to do with the product or service you provide.

More often than not, a shorter domain is better.

One or two words are ideal.

Three words are acceptable.

Four words are overkill.

Using keywords vs. a brand name

Consider the SEO strategy when you’re deciding on the domain name of your website. If you’re in an intensely competitive field, you may want to avoid choosing the name of your business as the domain. Without a big budget, it may be difficult to rank your website for a keyword(s) that could literally be worth hundreds of thousands a year.

For example, to rank a lawyer’s website for the top keywords in a big city it would be advantageous to use big keywords that get thousands of searches a month. Look at the search result page for DUI lawyers Toronto.

how to choose a good domain for your business website

Two of the top five results include the keyword (or partial-which works well too) within the domain name. The third domain at the bottom does not have an exact match but Google recognizes the search intent and has matched this domain to the keyword search.

Note that none of these domain names mentioned is NOT the name of their law firm.

Avoid hyphens & stop words

Stay away from using hyphens and stop words that could lead to confusion or mistakenly landing on someone else’s website. Stop words are words that separate keywords but are generally filtered out by search engines.

For example, plumbing-contractor.com is actually a pretty good domain name however, it would be better to get plumbingcontractordallas.com because

a) Plumbing is a service industry that’s limited to specific service areas (unless you’re a national franchise). and

b) You can still rank for plumbing contractor AND people won’t land on someone else’s site if they forget the hyphen.

There is SEO value in incorporating hyphens when you’re competing for a competitive keyword but it’s better to avoid it whenever possible.

Stop-words or adding letters and numbers to your domain is an SEO technique that can be useful. The problem is it doesn’t look very professional. Depending on the purpose of your site, consider whether you business is best represented by a domain like this:

domain with letter at the end

Choose a top-level domain (TLD)

TLDs are the domain extensions that are widely recognized and considered at the top of the list of options. These used to be the only TLDs during the first days of the internet:

  • .com
  • .net
  • .org
  • .int
  • .gov
  • .edu
  • .mil

Each of these TLDs represents a category that the content of the website fell under. Now there are over 1000 new extensions to choose from including country code TLDs. Here are just a few examples of what you may have seen if you’ve been shopping:

  • .digital
  • .agency
  • .club
  • .today
  • .solutions
  • .co
  • .shop
  • .biz
  • .pet
  • .blog
  • .io
  • .coffee
  • .online
  • .me
  • .xyz
  • .live
  • .co
  • .store

So how do you choose a good domain name for your business website? In most cases, the best option is to go with a .com since people are 3.8 times more likely to assume that the end of a domain name ends in .com.

This is good for businesses operating in the United States and who target a global audience.

If your business only provides services or products within your country, then using a ccTLD (cc=country code) is the best option. Search engines recognize ccTLDs as local businesses and will give some preference to websites in a local search result within your country.

Map of the top level domain names by country code

You can go outside the norm and get creative with your gTLD (g=generic) when you feel there is a good way to create a unique and memorable name. If you’re selling coffee beans, it may be advantageous in the long run to register www.beans.coffee as your domain name.

Secure your domain to avoid disaster

When you choose a good domain for your business website, you’re laying the first level of foundation for your business website. You will undoubtedly put endless hours of work (or money) into developing it. Building a business isn’t a short-term project either. Stop for a second to think of what life would be like if, after 6 years of pouring blood, sweat, and tears into your site, it suddenly disappeared from your account.

No words can describe the horror of this situation. It is a complete nightmare to live through. Believe it or not, this happens to people more times than you ever thought was possible.

Here are a few tips to make sure this never happens to you.

Switch your domain to auto-renew

Sounds simple enough right? When the time comes for your domain to renew, the payment is automatically made, and you’re all set to go. Most people lose their domain because they let it expire. Think your domain is safe now? Nope! There’s more to this story.

Enter a secondary payment method

Adding a secondary method of payment creates a failsafe for things that can go wrong. Perhaps you renewed your credit card and the number changed. Maybe your card was at the threshold and the payment didn’t go through. Whatever you think is impossible to happen can eventually find a way to happen.

Enter a secondary email address

Normally when your domain is set to renew (or expire) you get multiple email notifications that count down the days to give you time to pay. It’s not unheard of for people to switch email addresses and forget to update their address with their domain registrar.

Changing the [email protected] address to [email protected] might be the dagger that kills your communication method between you and your registrar. If they can’t tell you your domain is expiring or your payment hasn’t gone through, you’ll lose your domain.

Always maintain ownership of your domain

Never allow an agency to purchase your domain for you. If the domain is in their account, they literally own the domain. It’s like buying a car in someone else’s name who also holds on to the pink slips. If there is a falling out and they want to hold your domain hostage, there’s not much you can do about it.

Delegate access rather than divulge login info

You can delegate access to employees and third-party companies who may need to point to nameservers, work on email accounts, or whatever. This way they can still access your account to do what they need to do but do not have the authority to transfer domains out of your account.

Option to delegate user access to employees when your domain is in the same account
delegate access when you choose a good name for your business that you don't want to risk losing

Lock your domain

You should have the option to lock your domain to prevent transfers to another registrar. It should be as simple as clicking a button or editing settings.

Enable two-step verification

Two-step verification is another way to control who has access to your registrar account. Every time someone (including yourself) tries to log in you will be prompted to enter a code. This prompt is usually sent to you via text, phone call, or email depending on your setup.

The shortcut to quick rankings

It needs to be mentioned that one of the quickest ways to achieve instant traffic and potentially high ranking in search engines is to buy a domain that has been around for a few years. One of Google’s ranking factors is trust. Aged domains are like fine wine. If they haven’t changed hands extensively, they get better with age.

That being said, this tactic is a well-known SEO tactic where we redirect the aged domain to a target domain that we want to rank higher. So you can use the domain itself (if there are no copyright infringements OR if it’s a generic name created for SEO you can use it for your own business. For example, https://seoallentx.com would be the perfect domain name if you wanted to rank for SEO Allen TX on Google.

Purchase from auctions and expired domain sites

You can find domains available for purchase on websites like Flippa.com and expireddomains.net. Afternic is an afterthought, so if you can avoid them-do it (I have personal grievances with this GoDaddy-owned lump of crap).

Businesses that are closing

If you know of any businesses that are scheduled to close their doors they could be in the market for selling their domain. Try to tender and offer personally before they list their domain on an auction site or it could be months before they actually sell.

Love the domain name you choose

At the end of the day, love the domain name you choose. If you’re going about your decision in the right way, you’re probably going to have that domain for a long time. You’re going to need to look at it every day and even if it’s a brand new domain it will gain value overtime just like your business.

Christian Carere
Christian Carere

Christian Carere is the owner and founder of Digital Ducats Inc. in Toronto and heads the SEO team at Austin Bryant Consulting in Plano, TX.  Christian has been published on publications such as Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.

old.digitalducats.com/

Written by Christian Carere · Categorized: SEO strategy, Web development

Apr 05 2021

Marketing Funnels: Get More From Your Website Traffic

Marketing funnels are a solution to get the most from the volume of traffic that lands on your website. Search engine optimization drives traffic that attracts visitors at various stages in the buyer cycle. Many visitors may not be ready to purchase immediately and therefore require more information and nurturing to convert them into clients. Marketing funnels provide a system for moving your website visitors closer to purchase with your company. 

Create content to address The Buyer’s Journey

Generally, the buyer’s journey is divided into three main categories; Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

the buyer journey and the content to include when incorporating SEO with web design

The awareness stage

At the awareness stage, visitors are just learning about the problems they have and what the potential solutions are for solving those problems. This is where they first may encounter your company through a blog post that is aimed at explaining the basics of your niche.

An example of a blog post at the awareness stage of a person searching for SEO would be How do I make my website number one on Google?

The answer to this question is search engine optimization but as far as the user goes, they may not realize what this is until they read the article. Articles such as this would be aimed at expanding the audience in which your content targets.

The content that you publish at this level in your marketing funnels are considered TOFU content (Top Of The Funnel content). Due to the broad nature of the topics, the audience is the largest at this stage of the buyer journey and therefore will also have the greatest drop-off in interest (hence, the funnel concept).

Top to the bottom of the funnel content

Getting people to your site is only one aspect of your growth efforts. When you’ve effectively captured the interest of a new website visitor, the next step is to move them to the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

The consideration stage

When a potential client is in the consideration stage, they already aware of their problem and require more information to guide them to a purchase decision.

For example, if you’re searching for an SEO company, you may want to know about the benefits of SEO to consider whether it’s a good fit for your business. Reading about what SEO can do for your company would certainly give you more incentive to move forward with your decision.

Content that provides incentives, facts, and social proof can be considered MOFU content (Middle Of The Funnel Content). Essentially this is content that moves a potential buyer to the decision-making stage.

The decision stage

The last segment of the buyer journey is called the decision stage. It’s where the buyer is past the research stage and is ready to purchase.  At this point in marketing funnels, the content that is needed is called BOFU content (Bottom Of The Funnel content).

Decision stage content

Examples of content that convinces a buyer to purchase from your company can be landing pages, case studies, service pages, product pages, and squeeze pages. Essentially, any page that is geared towards convincing the visitor to make a purchase is bottom-of-the-funnel content.

The ultimate goal for your website is to generate revenue. An effective marketing funnel means all content on your site should in some way be leading your website visitors to a specific action that moves them closer to purchasing. That means moving visitors to content further down the funnel through a specific call to action (read more, download, opt-in, or purchase).

Customize your sales funnels

While the buyer journey is a good concept as a basic model, you can optimize your marketing funnel to be more effective by adding detail to each stage. The level of detail is based on the type of clients you deal with regularly.

In many industries, the process for going from learning about a product (or brand), comparing options, and purchasing a product may be completed in one session. This means that you can create content that addresses each of these stages all on one page. Many landing pages for retail products are published to do exactly that.

In this example, LinkedIn is offering a free credit for advertising as well as a strategy guide in exchange for an email address. This is an excellent example of how to get prospects to move from consideration to decision with an incentive as well as free trial to see how effective the product is firsthand.

LinkedIn using a targeted opt-in box in one of their marketing funnels

In other industries, the lead-time for selling B2B services or big-ticket items is often much longer and requires more nurturing during the research stage. For these types of clients, your marketing funnel would need to be more detailed and include more micro-stages to move them along.

Detailed digital marketing funnel

5 reasons to consider email marketing within your sales funnel

As mentioned earlier, SEO brings many different types of visitors to your door. No matter what stage they are at in the buyer journey, it’s important to identify what your potential clients need to give them enough confidence to making an informed decision. Email marketing is an effective solution for layering content in your marketing funnels and getting the most out of your website traffic for the following reasons:

Build relationships

When you capture an email address from an interested website visitor, it provides you with a way to maintain contact and to continue to move that visitor further within your marketing funnel. Email marketing allows you to learn more about your audience and respond with more content that they’re interested in learning about.

Personalization is high on the list for many companies now and what better way to build a relationship than with content that is specifically tailored to your audience? List segmentation, surveys and questionnaires can help you optimize your campaign and get insights into your audience.

Build confidence in your brand

An email marketing system provides your company with a way to continue to help your potential buyer find more what they’re looking for as well as present the reasons why your company is the best option for what they need.

If your product or service requires a longer lead-time before closing a sale because there’s more research involved before making a decision, your sales funnel would include sending informational emails before trying to close a prospect. Structure your campaign to teach your prospect more about the inner workings of your niche to build confidence in your brand.

Increase conversions

The ultimate goal of digital marketing is to generate more revenue. When you consistently remind prospects about your company and the products you offer, you increase the likelihood of acquiring them as customers.

An email campaign can increase conversions by getting your product in front of more interested website visitors (subscribers) more times as opposed to losing them forever when they leave your website.

Increase repeat sales revenue

Once you sell to a client, it doesn’t mean the end of your relationship. Happy clients will often become repeat customers. Use your email list to notify new and existing clients of promotions and sales. An email list can increase the number of sales you make for seasonal specials as well as the regular flow of prospects that go through your marketing funnel.

Promote brand advocacy

There’s no better form of marketing than word-of-mouth marketing. When you have happy customers, they will recommend your services and products and are 75% more likely to become advocates. It’s as simple as that. Brand advocacy adds another form of advertising that is achieved by incorporating content creation for existing clients.

Brand advocacy starts with a great customer experience

Examples of content that is geared towards brand advocacy can be follow-up emails about the service they received, surveys, giveaways, and contests. Maximize the lifetime value of a client by learning more about their preferences and making changes to accommodate them as best you can.

Optimize your conversions with an effective marketing funnel

The traffic your website generates will always consist of visitors at different stages in the buyer journey. Identify what content they’re looking for and what they need to move forward in the buyer cycle to facilitate more conversions.

Develop effective marketing funnels on your website to create the perfect tool for lead generation. Your website should be your number one salesperson and contribute to your revenue, leads and new clients daily.

Need help getting more visitors to your website? Contact us today for a discovery meeting and learn about the best available options to grow your business to the next level. For a free website analysis fill out the form below.

Christian Carere
Christian Carere

Christian Carere is the owner and founder of Digital Ducats Inc. in Toronto and heads the SEO team at Austin Bryant Consulting in Plano, TX.  Christian has been published on publications such as Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.

old.digitalducats.com/

Written by Christian Carere · Categorized: Content strategy, Email Marketing, Web development

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