Growing Web Traffic - Check your Task List and Analyze your Results

Fifth in a Series

Theory is interesting, but performance puts money in your pocket. Here is your checklist for optimizing your website as well as tips for how to measure your success.

Since the beginning of the year, we have been passing along tips for generating more – and more targeted – traffic to your website. There are plenty of other strategies that will boost your web presence even more, but if you haven’t set up these foundational steps first, you’re wasting effort. Are you sure your website is ready? Will you know how to tell if it’s working? Let’s review:

Prepare for traffic by reworking your website

• Install Google Analytics
• Create a compelling Call To Action
• Brainstorm incentives to encourage lead generation
• Design a unique landing page
• Plan the customer’s journey through your website

Gather and refine your business information

• Build a customer persona for targeted marketing
• Standardize your business name, contact info, and mission
• Define your product or service, as well as your unique selling proposition
• Research the terms people use to search for what you are offering

Develop your Google Business Profile  

• Claim your profile, if you haven’t already, and verify it
• Correct your page to match the standardized business information
• Enhance your profile with your logo, photos, and other graphics
• Fill in all the blanks using the information you gathered earlier
• Respond to comments and reviews
• Monitor your competition

Optimize your website for search engines as well as users

• Build a list of search terms to help people find what you offer
• Assign certain terms to certain pages rather than using all of them everywhere
• Insert those terms into the page, description, and H1 tags of your website
• Use those terms conversationally in your website content

Log in to your Google Analytics reports regularly

Google Analytics now has two versions: the standard universal analytics (UA) and the newer Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Not all third party tools are consistently integrating GA4 yet, so we recommend installing both. The reports below are generated by GA.

• The Audience > Overview report gives a quick look at how many users have been to your website, how long they stayed, and how many pages they looked at while they were there
• The Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report shows you which pages on your site are attracting the most users
• Using the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report, you can see what page links people clicked on from other websites rather than navigating within your website. 
• The Behavior > Behavior Flow report details how a user walks through your website and where they jump off.

Once all the basics are covered and the starting measurements are identified, you can concentrate on further strategies with confidence. Whenever you tweak a web page or launch a marketing campaign, you’ll know how to evaluate each individual effort because your foundation is solid. 

If you are already making big marketing plans and have no time to complete all these foundational tasks, let our Sprocket Website team do it for you. Click on the link below to get started fast!

Get Our Price

Read the next post in this series.

Image: Checklist - CC0 Public Domain

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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Full biography

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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