We’ve written articles in the past that have discussed that an increase in overall traffic is not indicative of a successful digital marketing campaign being that several factors comprise total traffic, including direct marketing, referrals, paid advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, display, organic, and more.

When working with an SEO company, the most important type of traffic to monitor is almost always organic traffic. If there’s a consistent trend in organic traffic, it is easy to argue that the SEO campaign is moving in the right direction….

…or is it?

Of course, at this point, it is imperative to point out the differences between qualified and unqualified traffic. Is your organic traffic pulling in people who can become potential clients, or just people coming in to read information with no further intentions? The first red flag any SEO campaign has for unqualified traffic is if the trend is upwards for traffic, but there is little to no increase in leads. At the end of the day, a campaign that brings in 100% more organic traffic and 10% more leads is less effective than a campaign that brings in 20% more organic traffic and 20% more leads.

So, what are some ways you’d be able to start digging to find signs that your organic traffic isn’t as qualified as it could be?  First, you’ll want to access your Google Analytics:

From here click on organic traffic (for the period that you’d like to specify, which you can define at the top right-hand corner of the page).

At this point, you’ll get a breakdown of all the landing pages on your website that get organic traffic. Also, on the bottom right corner of this page, you’ll want to select “show rows” and make sure it is set to the highest quantity so that you can display all your landing pages on one page.

Next, you’ll get an idea of all the pages on your website that get organic traffic.  For us, we are glad a couple of blogs get traffic (Adwords Conversions for WordPress, a List of Legal Directories). The “Vine Business” blog is worthless because Vine is dead, but evidently, people still search for it. You want to be aware of bogus pages that will inflate your organic traffic, which is the entire purpose of this exercise.  From here we see traffic that we would welcome, which would come from people like:

  • Fitness Business Owners
  • Lawyers
  • Chiropractors
  • Home Contractors
  • Business Owners in Orlando

If you’re going through and looking at content saying, “I don’t even provide that service” or “I don’t handle that,” those leads would not only be unqualified for you but would be inflating your overall organic performance.

The next way you can check whether incoming traffic is qualified is by seeing where it comes from. If you’re a plumber in South Florida, you know you’re not trying to travel to Orlando for work 99% of the time. If you service a state, you know other states aren’t going to be a good fit. Even if you sell a product in the United States, you know that traffic from other countries isn’t going to help you.

In this situation, there’s no issue with traffic since it is all domestic (and getting traffic from NY, LA, Miami, and other major cities is ideal). But how about a page that targets a specific region, like a Boca Raton personal injury landing page?

This one looks good – all included cities come within a 50-mile radius besides Orlando. If these cities were scattered all over the state – or country – the page would not be serving its purpose.

Keeping track of your site’s performance requires keen attention to detail and is best left to a professional digital marketing agency. At Market My Market, we’ll follow your data to bring you the most pertinent information and develop targeted strategies to help you get the leads you want. Contact our firm for a free consultation and see how we can help you make the most of your marketing.