Driving Website Traffic: Don’t forget the basics!

March 14, 2011

When we are looking to drive website traffic with our content marketing strategy, we often put our creative caps on and try to think of the latest and greatest ideas to get clicks. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that the real things we should focus on are the basics, not controversial headlines, SEO tricks or top 10 lists. Here are the basics that I often fall back on when worried about driving website traffic with content marketing:

1) Know Your Audience: Step one to driving traffic is to really know your audience. In a video series we recorded with Joe Pulizzi, he said it is important to know what keeps your customers/audience up at night. Those are the items you want to deliver against!

2) Create GREAT Content: Catchy headlines & clever tweets will send some traffic, but if you are looking for sustained growth – you have to look at your content. Does your content answer the pain points of your audience? If you answered “no”, then it is simply not good enough. When you get to the point that you really understand what your audiences needs are and you can satisfy them, then you are in a place to drive significant traffic through great content.

3) Make it Easy: Is your website easy to use? Can users easily navigate the pages to find what they are looking for? If so, they are likely to come back to your site and use it as a resource in the future. Repeat traffic is the best compliment your site can receive!

When it comes down to it, we as marketers can always do more in these spaces. We must learn to never be satisfied with the information, the site or the content we have. Always push to make it better!

Owner

Corey was a marketing analyst at OpenView from 2010 until 2011. Currently Corey is the Owner of <a href="https://prepobsessed.com/">Prep Obsessed</a> and was previously the Marketing Manager at MarketingProfs.