A key axiom of SEO is user intent—which is the best way to attract high-quality organic traffic. It’s a challenge for marketers, and too many marketers are focused on quantity over quality, to the point where their website acquires a high volume of search traffic (impressive on their monthly report)—but conversions are not following suit.
The solution is to lead with the idea that quality is king and to forget about volume for the sake of volume. Then, you can put together a plan of action that allows you to attract traffic that increases your bottom line.
In this article, we’ll uncover what quality traffic looks like, why you should prioritize it and how to secure more relevant organic traffic to your website.
Why Attract High-Quality Traffic Instead of Lots of Traffic
Lower Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a key SEO ranking factor that you need to monitor closely. If your bounce rate is higher than 40%, Google might punish you by knocking your website down the SERPs.
Essentially, if you attract millions of people to your website who have no interest in what you have to offer, they will exit. And this will send your bounce rate soaring, which signals to Google that your pages are of no value.
One of the easiest ways to reduce your bounce rate is to attract quality traffic.
Accurate Data
When you drive quality traffic, people will spend more time engaging with your website.
This will allow you to gather crucial behavioral data, such as which pages are your highest-converting.
You’ll also have access to audience insights that you can later use to segment your audience and create a stellar marketing campaign.
Higher ROI
Your ROI will determine how long users stick around and what they do once they arrive on your website. If everyone bails out after a few seconds, your SEO investment will crush you financially.
If you spend time, energy, and money attracting poor-quality traffic, your ROI will decrease.
How to Audit the Quality of Your Website Traffic
To help you audit the quality of your website traffic, it’s always a smart idea to turn to a few key metrics:
Bounce Rate
Nothing demonstrates how site visitors feel about your content more than the bounce rate.
Look carefully at the correlation between your targeted keywords and the pages your traffic is arriving on. If your bounce rate is sky high, it could mean that you’re targeting the wrong audience with the wrong content.
Average Time on Page
Bounce rate alone won’t give you a complete overview of the quality of your traffic. This is because bounce rate can also be caused by slow-loading pages.
By looking at the average time on page metric, you can get a better feel for how your site visitors truly feel about your content.
If they’re just skimming through the content without engaging with it, it’s a sign that you’re attracting low-quality traffic that isn’t truly interested in what you have to offer
You can also use this metric to gauge which pages are your strongest when it comes to high-quality traffic.
Conversion Rates
This is the number one metric you need to be monitoring because conversion rates are a huge indicator of the quality of your traffic and content.
A huge increase in traffic can cause your conversion rates to plummet if you’re attracting millions of unqualified leads who have no real interest in your brand, niche or offering.
How to Attract High-Quality Organic Traffic
Solid Content Strategy
Your content strategy needs to ensure you attract high-quality organic traffic to the right pieces of content that solve the end user’s problems.
It needs to be tied to your customer pain points, your product and user intent.
To help you understand user intent, it’s always a good idea to start by using a keyword research tool. This will give you insights into the search queries your customers are using. Then, you can build high-quality content based around your keywords.
You can also “spy” on your competitors to see what types of content they’re producing (but make sure you create content that is better than your rivals).
Use Sites Like Quora and Reddit
By posting regularly to sites like Quora and Reddit, you can position yourself as an authority figure in your niche.
The idea is simple: Answer as many questions as possible related to your niche. For example, a finance company aimed at startups could cover a variety of topics such as SaaS loans and what funding options are available.
The aim should be to provide incredible value and expertise. If you answer enough questions and build trust among your audience, you can over time direct traffic via a link in your bio (and sometimes in the answers themselves) to your website.
Write Guest posts
Guest posts are usually written for link building. But you can also write them to generate quality traffic by posting valuable content on relevant and related industry publications.
By doing this, you’ll position yourself as the expert in your niche who people begin to trust. It won’t be long before people understand exactly what you offer, and therefore have a genuine reason (and desire) to visit your website.
Create an Email Strategy
Email marketing allows you to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.
You can send out daily and weekly emails that build trust, such as educational emails, newsletters and promotions, and raise awareness of your products and offerings.
Then, you can include links to your content, such as your blog posts and offers—in your emails that drive relevant traffic back to your website.
Conclusion
Low-quality traffic results in many users who don’t engage with your website and who don’t buy your products.
Now is the time to create an effective SEO strategy that will attract high-quality organic traffic to your website. Over time, this will result in a higher ranking on Google, better leads, more conversions—and more sales.
