Search traffic is great for getting traffic to a site, but most people want to keep their visitors coming back for more content, possibly to comment, possibly to buy something or just for the pleasure of communicating with others.
There are lots of theories, courses and eBooks on building site traffic, but the usual mantra is just to write great content. It sounds simple enough, but even if you do write great content wouldn’t it be nice if you could know what topics are the most popular or are in your site visitors minds when they are viewing your site?
Short of being Carnac, there are a few less mystical methods to gain awareness of this useful information and use it to your advantage.
Use Analytics For Your Site
Duh, you say? Sure, I know you’re already using analytics on your website. This is probably the first step everyone takes after they are up and running. Everyone likes to see the number of people checking out their web site, right?
Egos aside, the analytics provides an elegant way to generate new content topics.
Of course, Google Analytics is probably the most well known, as well as easiest, method to get started with site statistics. If you use a WordPress blog, you can use the Google Analytics For WordPress plugin to easily add your search tracking code without having to modify any templates. Don’t forget to donate if you find this useful.
If Google Analytics isn’t specific enough or just seems overwhelming, there are alternatives. Another WordPress-specific statistic tracking tool is the WordPress.com stats plugin from Automattic.
[This Plugin] Focuses on the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provides them in a clear and concise interface.
You’ll need to use either an Akimset API key, or your key from WordPress.com if you have an account there. Here is more information on API Keys for WordPress if you aren’t sure which one to use.
Catch Your Bad Links
On the rare occasion that someone gets an outdated, malformed, or otherwise bad link to a page on your site, they will see a 404 Error. While you can check for broken links on your site, there is no way to prevent them from external sites which link to your website. However, once again, there are plugins that can provide many different functions when a 404 page is uncovered.
Useful 404s is a way to be notified (by email) when a 404 error occurs and give you details as to what’s broken. This can give you clues as to what people may think is on your site, even if it’s not.
Providing useful 404 Error pages is another way to keep people on your site, even if they didn’t find what they were looking for.
Stalk Your Visitors
Well, I don’t mean that literally, even though it’s wildly successful for some people.
One simple way to track site usage is by watching what links are getting clicked on by your visitors. Are they going where you would like them to?
You can track link activity on a WordPress site easily with plugins. Some popular ones are Pretty Link or GoCodes. These let you set up not only tracking of links, but also cloak prettify them to make external links appear shorter, cleaner and localized to your site. All good things.
Is Your Site Searchable?
If you don’t already have an easy way for visitors to search your site, go add it now. No, right now.
Just about any website management tool or blogging platform provides a way to search for content on your site. Google Custom Search can also give you easy steps to allow search of your web site.
Once you have a way to search, make sure you are tracking what people are searching for. The Search Meter plugin is useful because it automatically records what people are searching for—and whether they are finding what they are looking for. You get a simple tracking of search history and results of those search terms.
With Search Meter, you’ll be able to find out what people are searching for, and potentially give them customized topics if you create new, keyword targeted posts on popular search phrases.
Learn By Writing
There are many ways to do keyword research and find out good topics to write about, but sometimes you can find topics just by writing.
It’s no secret that the more you write, the more content the Search Engines can index. Creating more content is a great way to not only provide more search-able content, but also will increase your chances of targeting more search phrases that visitors might type into Google. Some that may surprise you.
I’ve stumbled upon several popular keyword phrases by accident, just by writing an article that contained a phrase I didn’t set out to write about, but once published, it became one of the more viewed articles. This in turn gives you more related search traffic on keywords which you can feed into additional new articles, providing free inspiration and easy traffic. A big win.
Certainly you are already writing what your site visitors want to read, but these are a couple of ways to find out what’s popular, what may be missing or other changes you could make to ensure you continue to provide great content.
Image Attribution: Flickr via CC License
