How to Drive Traffic to Your Business Technology Website
By popular request, this post is a high level look at some of the tactics technology marketers can use to increase the traffic (or leads) going to your website. You could make a pretty good argument that virtually any marketing tactic can be used to create traffic. But, since 80% of business technology buyers say that they found the vendor (the vendor did not find them), I’m going to focus on tactics that drive traffic by increasing your online visibility.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When someone types a keyword phrase into a search engine, they get two types of listings. One type is a paid listing and the second is a natural or organic listing. These non-paid listings show up as the result of algorithms the search engines use to determine which web pages are most relevant to the search.
The goal of SEO is to achieve good organic search engine listings. “Organic” means that search engines find your web pages naturally – you are not paying for the listing. Many of the other traffic-building tactics in this article are used primarily to increase search engine optimization.
For more info, see Intro to Search Engine Optimization
Search Advertising.
When we talk about Search Advertising we’re usually talking about Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, you bid on keywords and your ads are displayed when those key words are searched. The order of the listing varies from search engine to search engine, but it generally ranges from simply the bid amount (high to low) to a far more complex combination of the bid amount, the relevance of the ad, and the advertiser’s past success in getting a high click-through percentage. As an advertiser, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
For a more detailed explanation, see Pay Per Click Defined.
Blogging.
A blog is basically a website that allows you to easily add content, which is organized in reverse chronologic order. Blogs have a whole slew of benefits to offer a technology marketer, traffic generation being a major one. Search engines love new content and, since a good blog is updated frequently, an active blog can get you get high organic search rankings.
Bernie Borges has a good overview called Blogging Basics for Businesses.
Whitepaper Syndication
Business technology buyers use whitepapers to help in their purchase decision process, and by distributing whitepapers through syndication networks you can become more visible to people who aren’t aware of you yet. White paper syndication generally involves making your white paper available through a network of specialized websites. You pay the service provider to place your white paper on these websites.
For a list of places to syndicate whitepapers, see 12 Places to Syndicate White Papers.
PR.
Public relations efforts can be very useful in increasing your visibility and therefore driving traffic to your site. There are a couple of somewhat different ways this works. One is to publish news releases through online distribution services. When the news releases are picked up by online news services and industry websites, you get some visibility; but more important you get links back to your site. This adds to your SEO efforts.
The second way PR can be used to increase visibility is by reaching 3rd party influencers such as bloggers, conventional media and analysts – all of whom can help to spread the word.
Article Marketing.
Article marketing refers to writing many articles and offering them for use by newsletter publishers and website content managers. This tactic has been used extensively by internet marketers to gain outside links to their websites (which is good for search engine optimization). This works because the articles are offered free of charge to publishers as long as the publisher agrees to include a paragraph about the author at the end of each article. This author’s paragraph contains – you guessed it – a link back to the author’s website. Business technology marketers can use this tactic for the same purpose and end up with good thought-leadership exposure as a bonus.
There you have it. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways you can drive traffic to your site. But concentrating on any one of these tactics can help in the traffic generation department.
Technorati Tags: traffic generation, seo, search advertising, blog, blogging, pr, articles marketing, technology marketing
This article was first published March 19, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog
By popular request, this post is a high level look at some of the tactics technology marketers can use to increase the traffic (or leads) going to your website. You could make a pretty good argument that virtually any marketing tactic can be used to create traffic. But, since 80% of business technology buyers say that they found the vendor (the vendor did not find them), I’m going to focus on tactics that drive traffic by increasing your online visibility.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When someone types a keyword phrase into a search engine, they get two types of listings. One type is a paid listing and the second is a natural or organic listing. These non-paid listings show up as the result of algorithms the search engines use to determine which web pages are most relevant to the search.
The goal of SEO is to achieve good organic search engine listings. “Organic” means that search engines find your web pages naturally – you are not paying for the listing. Many of the other traffic-building tactics in this article are used primarily to increase search engine optimization.
For more info, see Intro to Search Engine Optimization
Search Advertising.
When we talk about Search Advertising we’re usually talking about Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, you bid on keywords and your ads are displayed when those key words are searched. The order of the listing varies from search engine to search engine, but it generally ranges from simply the bid amount (high to low) to a far more complex combination of the bid amount, the relevance of the ad, and the advertiser’s past success in getting a high click-through percentage. As an advertiser, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
For a more detailed explanation, see Pay Per Click Defined.
Blogging.
A blog is basically a website that allows you to easily add content, which is organized in reverse chronologic order. Blogs have a whole slew of benefits to offer a technology marketer, traffic generation being a major one. Search engines love new content and, since a good blog is updated frequently, an active blog can get you get high organic search rankings.
Bernie Borges has a good overview called Blogging Basics for Businesses.
Whitepaper Syndication
Business technology buyers use whitepapers to help in their purchase decision process, and by distributing whitepapers through syndication networks you can become more visible to people who aren’t aware of you yet. White paper syndication generally involves making your white paper available through a network of specialized websites. You pay the service provider to place your white paper on these websites.
For a list of places to syndicate whitepapers, see 12 Places to Syndicate White Papers.
PR.
Public relations efforts can be very useful in increasing your visibility and therefore driving traffic to your site. There are a couple of somewhat different ways this works. One is to publish news releases through online distribution services. When the news releases are picked up by online news services and industry websites, you get some visibility; but more important you get links back to your site. This adds to your SEO efforts.
The second way PR can be used to increase visibility is by reaching 3rd party influencers such as bloggers, conventional media and analysts – all of whom can help to spread the word.
Article Marketing.
Article marketing refers to writing many articles and offering them for use by newsletter publishers and website content managers. This tactic has been used extensively by internet marketers to gain outside links to their websites (which is good for search engine optimization). This works because the articles are offered free of charge to publishers as long as the publisher agrees to include a paragraph about the author at the end of each article. This author’s paragraph contains – you guessed it – a link back to the author’s website. Business technology marketers can use this tactic for the same purpose and end up with good thought-leadership exposure as a bonus.
There you have it. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways you can drive traffic to your site. But concentrating on any one of these tactics can help in the traffic generation department.
Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum