It would be nice if all website traffic was qualified traffic. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. There are all kinds of reasons why people visit your site, and it isn’t always with the intent to buy, sign up to your newsletter, or learn more about what you offer.
For that reason, it’s worth knowing what qualified traffic is and how to get more of it. We’ll go through three solid tips to help you qualify website traffic, and give you specific examples below.
First, it’s worth discussing what qualified traffic actually is.
What is qualified traffic?
Qualified traffic is traffic that is already aware of your brand and is primed to buy from you. In other words, they fit the description of your target audience.
Usually, the more qualified traffic that visits your site, the higher your conversion rates. There’s a positive correlation at play that you’ll want to optimize for so you can get the best results possible.
Why is qualified traffic important?
Qualified traffic is the lifeline of your business—whether you’re getting that traffic through SEO or other means. The more qualified traffic visits you have to your site, the higher the chance your website will fulfill its goal.
Is that goal to get more sales? More email sign-ups? More clicks? That’s ultimately up to you to decide. Once you’ve chosen your focus, you’ll want to optimize for qualified traffic with these three SEO tips:
Tip 1. Match searcher intent
By matching searcher intent—or the reason that drives a search query—you increase the chances of getting more of the right traffic to your site. To do that, it takes some keyword research. That way, you get a real glimpse of what your target audience is searching for.
Say you sell dog grooming supplies, and you want to bring in more qualified traffic to your site with SEO to make more benjamins. This is where you’ll want to consider searcher intent and do your best to match it.
Why would anyone be looking for dog grooming supplies? What do they want to achieve? What are they willing to pay? The answers to those questions will help you match your website content with searcher intent more effectively.
For example, if you specifically offer “dog grooming supplies,” you wouldn’t want to match your search intent to rank for “grooming supplies.” That’s too broad of a keyword, and it isn’t clear if that’s grooming supplies for men, cats, horses, or rabbits (true story).
That’s wasted SEO potential that won’t lead to any sales. At best, it would bring you mostly unqualified traffic. You want to be specific when you’re trying to match searcher intent.
Let’s take it a step further. How about the words users are pairing with seed keywords? Additional search intent can be signified by the supporting words someone includes in a search query. Specifically, if you’re selling a product, it’s helpful to think about transactional intent.
Think of words like:
- Near me
- Best
- Price
- Affordable
- Cheap
- Wholesale
They tend to signify the intent to make a purchase. Pair these words with your seed keyword (dog grooming supplies), and you’ll have a much easier time matching search intent to increase qualified traffic. Once you’ve sorted your search intent, you can start focusing on backlinks.
Tip 2. Get backlinks
When visitors land on a relevant website and see a helpful link back to you, they were already searching for related content before clicking anyway. This works as a two-for-one.
- Google sees your website as more valuable the more links point back to you, increasing your rankings.
- Those backlinks also send you qualified traffic assuming the site is relevant to your niche.
The secret is in winning valuable links since not all links pointing back to you are created equal. So how do you build backlinks the right way? For starters, you want to find relevant websites in good standing that could benefit from linking back to you.
One way to do this is by broken link building. The gist? You find a dead webpage that leads to a 404 error message from a competing website and create that same resource but better. Then reach out to whoever is linking to that 404 page and ask them to replace the dead link.
You can find relevant broken links through Ahrefs’ Best by links feature. Say you want to win some broken links from a big competitor. In our case, one of the top-ranking sites for “pet grooming supplies” Is PetEdge.
Look up the domain under Site Explorer, then navigate to Best by links on the left-hand menu. Filter it to show only 404 not found pages, and finally, sort by Referring domains. You get:
Bingo! There is a handful of referring domains pointing to dead 404 pages with product names in the URL, including pet supplies like:
- Cordless nail grinder
- Grooming tables
- Pink small pet grooming tables
- Disinfectant/deodorizer
Each of these pages is linked back to form a total of 21 websites. Not bad at all for something you could do in one afternoon. Now, keep in mind that we did this for only one competitor.
If you do this with a handful of competitors, it’s easy to come up with a long list of broken links to go after. Once you’ve compiled your list, it’s a matter of sending the right email message to successfully land the backlink. Once you have landed that backlink (bravo!), you can move on to targeting long-tail keywords.
Tip 3. Target long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords tend to be more specific keywords with clearer search intent. You also have a better chance of ranking higher for long-tail search queries since they tend to come with lower competition.
If you pair that winning combination with search intent, you’ll set yourself up beautifully for attracting more qualified website visitors. Continuing with the pet grooming supplies example, let’s look at some of the long-tail keywords you could try ranking for.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to look through Google’s search bar suggestions. When you type in “dog grooming supplies” you get:
These are all great long-tail keywords to try ranking for–but not before doing a bit more research with Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
Under Keywords Explorer, once you enter “pet grooming supplies” as the seed keyword, click on Matching terms on the left-hand menu. Then set the keyword max difficulty lower (in this case Max 50). You get results like:
Voila! Your newfound set of long-tail keywords opens a world of options to build more qualified traffic to your site. You can choose them by volume and difficulty.
With over 11 billion keywords indexed, using Ahrefs is a great way to find low-hanging fruit you can rank for that you probably wouldn’t have thought about before. Do this with enough long-tail keywords and you’re bound to watch your qualified traffic grow.
Win more qualified traffic
Aiming to get as much traffic as possible shouldn’t be the goal with SEO–at least not if the goal is to do more with less. Instead, you want to opt to rank for qualified traffic as much as possible.
Matching search intent, targeting long-tail keywords, and winning relevant backlinks can all lead to traffic that equals actual conversions.
From there, it’s pretty much down to how well you’ve optimized to capture leads and how enticing your offers are. In that case, Ahrefs has the power to put the wheel in your hands as you keep optimizing for relevant search queries and uncovering audience insights.
Got questions? Shoot me an email.
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