Why You Need High Quality Traffic (& How to Get More of It)

Here is a statement we hear quite often: "We need more traffic to our website."

Sound familiar? You've probably said that yourself at some point. The truth is, you don't necessarily need more traffic. What you really need is high quality traffic, and that's where you should place your goal posts. 

Your business is too important to settle for less.

Quality Over Quantity

Many companies only focus on the amount of website traffic they want. It doesn't matter what kind of traffic, as long as people are viewing their website. In reality, this mindset could be holding you back from seeing real results.

High quality traffic produces quite a few benefits over just any traffic.

1. Higher conversion rates - Targeting people who have shown an interest in your product increases the likelihood that they'll convert.
   
   
2. Lower bounce rates - People who are interested in your website are less likely to leave the page immediately. This also increases the quality of your SEO.
   
   
3. More engagement - Interested people are more likely to interact with your brand in some way: contacting you with questions, subscribing to your blog, commenting on your social media posts, etc.
   
   
4. More sales - More conversions means more chances to make a sale.
   
   
5. More referrals - Logically, higher conversion rates lead to higher close rates. More sales mean more referrals from happy customers. Referrals have the highest chance out of any marketing tool of leading to another sale.

Por Que No Los Dos?

That's well and good, but why can't we have both quality AND quantity? The truth is: you can! It just takes time to see a steady stream of truly valuable traffic.

You'll have to work at building up your collection of content, your SEO, your social media following, and your reputation online. This doesn't happen overnight, especially if you haven't done much online marketing previously. You can use fast-acting tactics, like PPC and paid social advertising, to supplement your organic strategies in the meantime.

How to Get More High Quality Traffic

The cream-of-the-crop, best of the best marketers use the following tactics to attract their own traffic, leads, and sales. Following these tips will bring you both better quality and more abundant traffic. 

1.  Target Your Buyer Personas

Your buyer personas represent your best buyers - the people most likely to purchase your product or service. Aiming your content their way results in higher conversion rates, increased ROI, and the other benefits that we listed above. 

Want to utilize buyer personas, but don't know where to start? Here's a free guide.

2.  Don't Be Afraid to Narrow Your Focus

Even professional marketers can experience targeting anxiety! With each targeting criteria I add to a paid social media advertising campaign, the audience pool shrinks. I start feeling nervous - "Should I really exclude all those people? What if I miss a great client by being so picky with my targeting?"

Don't let this anxiety trip you up. Yeah, you could grab a great client by targeting a broader audience... but what are the odds? Statistically, the chances of hooking a buyer who will click your ad, convert to a lead, and become a new customer are itty bitty.

Those chances increase drastically when you focus your targeting. Target people you know are likely to be interested in your product - you'll see an increase in ROI, conversion rates, and sales.

3.  Always Be Relevant

So you've identified your buyer personas and have a laser focus on your target. Right now, the last thing you want to do is scare your prospects away with irrelevant content and ads. 

This means only using relevant keywords throughout your website, content, and sponsored ads. One black hat SEO tactic is keyword stuffing with whatever keywords you could think of (this actually worked before Google started cracking down on shady tactics). Companies would rank for things that had nothing to do with their services, resulting in frustrated searchers. Although those companies were ranking higher and getting seen more often, their visitors bounced more frequently because the website wasn't what they were searching for.

Always provide what your targets are looking for. That means CTAs that link to relevant landing pages, and no tricky or misleading ad copy. 

4.  Nurture Qualified Leads, Disregard Unqualified Leads

Not all leads are created equal. You'll need to use lead scoring and funnels, and understand the buyer's journey to identify which leads are worth pursuing. Nurturing unqualified leads is like throwing money into a black hole.

As with traffic, you don't want just any leads. You want to attract high quality leads. The difference between a mediocre marketing strategy and an effective marketing strategy is how well you attract the highest quality traffic and leads for your business.

That's why you shouldn't be afraid to disregard leads that aren't worth your time. Keep them on your radar, but don't put effort into nurturing them. Save your resources for the best leads - the ones who are most likely to purchase your product or service.

How Do I Know Whether My Traffic Is High Quality?

The best way to figure out if you're bringing in high quality traffic is to analyze your metrics. Here are some of the most common figures marketers use to measure their traffic:

Average conversion rate: According to Search Engine Land, the vast majority of businesses across all industries see an average conversion rate between 1-3%. If you're in that range, you're perfectly average (but you could do better). The top 10% of businesses see conversion rates of 11% or higher.

Here's a graphic from MarketingSherpa showing conversion rates by industry:

You can compare your own current conversion rates to this chart, and set a goal conversion rate based on your industry. If you're feeling ambitious, you can choose a higher conversion goal (try to keep it realistic, though).

Average bounce rate: According to KISSmetrics, across all industries, the average bounce rate is 40-50%. That means 40-50% of your visitors are navigating to your website and immediately leaving for one reason or another. Ideally, you want your bounce rate to stay under 30%.

Average lead-to-close rate: According to Implisit, an average of 6% of all leads close into sales. 

Average click-through rate: WordStream reports that the average ad click-through rate is a mere 2%. However, if you target your audience correctly, it can be 10% or higher. Email CTRs hover around 20-25% on average.

Aside from these numbers, you should feel comfortable in how often you're bringing in new customers. You should feel good about your following on social media and your website engagement.

For us, one personal measure of B2B success is being able to turn away less-than-ideal clients. You don't want to be so desperate that you'll work with someone you hate just so you can put food on the table.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles...

Blah blah single step, you get the idea. You have to start somewhere. 

Don't be intimidated if you're sitting at the bottom of the totem pole compared to the averages. Don't be discouraged if you've never done anything with online marketing before. Take it in stride, but don't delay any longer. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll see high quality traffic coming through your website.