How To Find Hidden Traffic And Use It To Get More Clients
Posted November 21, 2008 in How-To, Marketing 15 Comments »
Finding clients isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Working above and beyond to get great customer feedback and solid word-of-mouth advertising isn’t always enough to keep the bills paid and the fridge stocked, so any client-grabbing advice is welcome news to the harried freelancer.
But did you know that underserved, ready-to-buy clients might already be visiting your website? Let’s take a look at how to use statistics tools and SEO plugins to find these “hidden” visitors to your website, and then how you can convert them into clients.
First, Take A Look At Your Unexpected Traffic Sources
If you’re not already using a stats-gathering tool for your website or blog, you need to start doing it immediately. The easiest free web-based stats tool to use is Google Analytics, and you can easily add it to your site even if you don’t consider yourself a techie. Just sign up and get a free account, follow the instructions, and you’re on your way.
Once your stats tool has been gathering data, take a look at the keywords that bring traffic to your site and keep an eye out for unexpected search terms that you’re ranking for. For example, my blog was optimized for time management keywords but I realized that I was getting a good number of hits for things like “double your sales” and “triple your wealth.” I Googled those phrases and to my surprise I ranked #5 and #1 for those terms, respectively. That was an eye-opener, because business-builders are my main client base.
You see, these seemingly random terms that lead people to your site are important because it means that for those keywords, you probably rank on the first page of search results, which is very, very good. Because if you add more content to your site around those phrases, you’re going to continue to rank well for a focused group of searchers that want what you’re offering. Once you’ve identified these unexpected terms that bring qualified visitors to your site, you can move on to the next step:
Begin Writing Additional Content To Strengthen Your Ranking For Those Visitors
If you rank well on accident, it likely means that you don’t have a lot of competition for those keywords and creating targeted content can only make your ranking better. Once I realized that sales-based articles brought me traffic, I began to write more about how time management could help you “double your sales.” Web traffic increased, and I began to have more entrepreneurs contact me and ask for coaching.
If you write more target content for the unexpected keywords that bring traffic to your site, you have the opportunity to keep a dominant position on Google’s front page and bring even more of that highly qualified traffic your way. Just write an article series based on those keywords and add some strong internal linking to connect the articles and you’re on even better footing. Then you can move to the final step:
Optimize Your Pages For SEO To Bring In More Traffic
Remember, you’re ranking for these keywords accidentally, so being a little more diligent about it can only help you leverage them more. Here are two simple things you can do to optimize your pages SEO-wise, even if you don’t know a whole lot about SEO:
- Use your search engine results to link to your services. If you’re ranking on the first page of results for a random article or page you’ve written, make the most of it. Edit that page so that it has links back to your services page or contact forms so that when the visitor arrives, they are steered towards a buying decision.
- Get the All-In-One SEO Plugin if you have a blog. This plugin is easy to install and use to add some SEO power to your blog posts. Download the plugin here and read this tutorial or watch this video on how to use it.
Start Drawing In More Clients Without A Whole Lot Of Extra Work
Remember, you’re ranking well because you don’t have a lot of competition for those keywords (yet). Take advantage of that. Find those hidden gems, create some content based around them, and lead visitors to your service pages every chance you get. Do this well, and you may find yourself with a healthy boost in paying jobs before you know it.
About the author: Dave Navarro is a business productivity coach who loves showing freelancers how to make more money and have more time for themselves. Get more of the good stuff at Rock Your Day or follow Dave on Twitter.
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15 Comments
Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy
November 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pmOptimizing Web pages based on “accidental” search results and thereby improving Web site is a good idea. This will improve business for the existing services or products offered.
The accident search stats is also likely to throw related search words used by the users. For example, if one is offering copyediting services, the user might have wanted indexing services in addition to copyediting services. This throws up a new business opportunity in a related domain. By carefully studying stats, you could also draw up plans for prospective business opportunities and start offering services in those related and high-demand areas.
It helps to have a diverse portfolio of related services for revenue optimization and viable business expansion as demand grows.
George - LogoDesign.org
November 21st, 2008 at 2:31 pmHmm, very helpful, thanks!
Andy Sowards
November 21st, 2008 at 4:51 pmThanks for the Great tips! I’ll have to try all of these! Nice Effort
Clare
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:21 amVery helpful post – its always worth optimising your site for terms you are already ranking for. My tip of the day is to make sure that if you ever change your site’s design or theme you make sure you reinstall the GA code (I just discovered that I forgot to do just this last week!)
Tracey Grady
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:58 amI’ve been looking with interest for a while at the accidental search terms which deliver traffic to my site. I hadn’t yet given a great deal of thought to the next step: making the most of that traffic. This post has provided some great ideas. Thanks.
Jeremy
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:25 pmVery interesting point and something that I often overlook, I would be interested to track how many of those “miscellaneous” or accidental keywords actually convert to clients once you begin taking notice and focus on trying to sell them a service. Thanks for the tip!
Ted
November 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pmThese days you gotta use both: SEO and PPC for maximum traffic results, this way you are a bit insured in case search engines change their algorythms.
Danny Outlaw
November 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pmChecking your stats often is important for anyone with a website for sure. I probably check mine more than I should.
I highly suggesting taking some time to get to known google analytic or your stats program of choice. The better you understand the program, the more you can get out of it.
Erwin Tan
December 1st, 2008 at 9:57 amI’ve been using Google Analytics since day 1 and never look back since then..
Helpful article..
Christian
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pmAn other helpfull tool is Visitors > Network Properties > Network location. The info here tells you more about who’s your visitor, where they came from and what the time is they where on your website.
For example, if there is a company ( a lot are listed with company names) in your list witch visited you for some time, you can asume they are looking for something your company has to offer. This is a very nice tool to get in contact with prospects from wich you know they are looking for compareable services you have to offer.
Next step is to go for an nice follow up, send an mailing, call them or do whatever to contact them and tell them about your services.
srikanth
December 4th, 2008 at 12:18 amGoogle Analytics is an Excellent tool to track our website Traffic.Every day i Check my google Analytics Statistics to see where my traffic comes from.Thanks for sharing.
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