Something we get asked often is how we measure the success of a blog.
As with anything in business, we focus on the end result for all marketing efforts: sales.
For our clients, the best kind of sales usually come in the form of new customers or new clients.
Sometimes we focus on writing blog posts that will help sell new services or additional services to existing clients, but most times we’re looking at acquiring new customers, which helps to grow a business for the long-term.
To measure our success we talk to our clients about how their business is doing. We ask our clients to ask their new clients how they heard about the business. We like to see if new clients have read blog posts. A new client often remembers reading a specific post or they remember that they, “…read a post about [fill in the blank]…”
On a basic level, we do track traffic. It’s a good general metric to see if your blog and business website are doing well.
There is a misconception that you need a lot of traffic to get a lot of money, but that’s not always the case.
Small Businesses + Small Traffic = Steady Income
We work with a number of small businesses.
For some, getting between 50-100 visits per day on their website is plenty of traffic.
Compared to the biggest sites on the web, that’s an incredibly small number.
Big websites usually sell advertising. Ads typically pay a small amount per view. So big sites need tons of views to pay the bills.
The higher your product costs the less traffic you need to generate profit.
Even if you sell something that costs $50/month, 50-100 visits per day is a great place to be. You can definitely get more, but don’t get frustrated when you reach this stepping stone level.
Yesterday we looked at how long it takes to build organic website traffic. It can take six months. And that’s just to start generating some traffic.
Most people get frustrated with that level, but for a growing small business, it’s a good place to be.
Not All Traffic Is Good Traffic
When you start chasing traffic you can get into some bad traffic.
And if you’re not focused on your target customer then you can get into some bad traffic.
One of our first steps with each new blogging client is to focus on their target customer. We want to make sure we’re attracting the exact target customer to the website.
This increases the conversion percentage. If you’re bringing the wrong person to a website then they’re not going to buy what you’re selling. That’s a waste of time.
We identify the customer and write about the questions they have regarding a business’s industry. We provide value, earn trust and chances are the person will have an interest in what the business is selling.
Consistent Content For Target Customers Lifts Your Entire Site
If you want to build good traffic for your small business website, start publishing consistent content.
We’ve been blogging here on the GBW website for about three years. We don’t get traffic like major online publications, but we get a number comparable to the one I shared above.
And that’s more than enough to bring in a steady stream of new clients.
And over time, the posts we publish earn links and shares on social media. Those are indicators that Ghost Blog Writers is a brand and a website to be trusted by our target customer.
That lifts the profile of our entire website including our homepage, which often ranks highly for blogging services-related keywords on search engines.
Conclusion
Building organic traffic for your small business is a long-term marketing strategy. If you’re not willing to commit at least six months and probably 2-5 years then it’s not the strategy for you.
Think about it this way – the blog post you publish today will start providing dividends in six months. And from there it will continue to deliver a little more traffic and it all adds up to a steady stream of traffic.
Focus on the right customer. Then you won’t need huge traffic numbers to get new clients each month.