Most businesses think about SEO as a way to improve their Google rankings, increase traffic on their website, and get new customers online. However, many campaigns don’t spend enough time making sure you’re attracting the right organic traffic. If you’re a French restaurant, you don’t want to be funneling people onto your website who are searching for Ethiopian food.

The people you attract to your website should be searching directly for your products and/or service with the intention of making a purchase. Here’s how you attract the kind of website traffic through SEO that’s ready to buy.

Identify The Audience You Want To Attract

You know the target audience that’s interested in your product or service better than anyone. However, when it comes to local SEO, it’s difficult to target everyone interested in your product in one go. It’s important to start by going after a small piece of the audience you want to attract, and systematically adding keywords that target new segments as you continue to see rankings improve.

Advice: Start with your most profitable segment as well as those segments that are less competitive. If you’re local to DC, ask a DC SEO company to provide some guidance here.

Select Keywords That Have The Right Intent

Once you’ve identified the target audience you want to attract, it’s time to select keywords that have the following qualities:

• The keyword phrase has significant search volume.
• The keyword phrase doesn’t have significant competition.
• The keyword phrase shows intent to find the services/products you offer with the intent to buy.

Let’s look at the following two example keywords.

Keyword Phrase: “lawyer washington dc”

Monthly Searches: 200 | Competition: High

Keyword Phrase: “car accident personal injury attorney in washington dc”

Monthly Searches: 20 | Competition: Low

You may at first be tempted to go after the keyword phrase “lawyer washington dc” because it gets so many searches every month. Although it would be advantageous to win some of that traffic, the phrase is too vague to want to optimize for, as people searching this way could be looking for any kind of lawyer. If you’re a personal injury lawyer and receive a web visitor who’s searching for an immigration lawyer, you’re out of luck.

Advice: As a personal injury attorney, Matador Solutions would definitely advise you to go after the second search phrase! Less competition means you’ll be able to rank for that term much faster. Also, the intent to find the exact service you offer is clear. Better to get 5 high-intent visitors every month from 20 searches than 0 high-intent visitors from 200.

Write For Your Audience

Ensure that the target audience you’re funneling into your website are actually able to engage with what’s there. Here are three questions you should answer to ensure you continue to get more customers online:

Is your traffic highly academic? Make sure there’s lots of information available for people to read and post new content regularly to show your an expert in your industry.

Do your customers want to see previous work? Make sure to have a gallery or portfolio online of previous work. People want an excuse to call you – give them one.

Do you sell a product/service for which reviews are important? Having a strong reputation management campaign in line is important here so that when people find your reviews online, they are stronger than those of your competition. Also make sure testimonials are easily visible on your website so that potential new clients, customers, or patients know you’ve provided good service in the past.

Getting new customers online is difficult, but far from impossible. A robust search engine optimization campaign is the way to increase traffic on your website, but making sure that traffic is going to translate to your bottom line is what really matters. Hope this helps!