Five Pro Tips to Drive Web Traffic, From HubSpot's Jeffrey Vocell

InVerve Marketing & Web recently had the privilege of hosting HubSpot’s Principal Product Marketing Manager, Jeffrey Vocell for an evening of results-oriented inbound marketing chatter. Speaking to the Lansing Regional HubSpot User Group (HUG), Jeffrey outlined in detail many tips to help drive traffic to your website – from enticing Calls-to-Action and quality content, to website security and proper keyword research. But, we thought he might have a few more secrets in that genius-inbound-marketing-brain of his, so we sat him down to delve a little deeper. We wanted to zero-in on the tips that Jeffrey found most successful. So we asked, “If you had to choose, what would be the five most important tips to drive users to a website?” Here’s what he had to say:

HubSpot’s Jeffrey Vocell:
Five Pro Tips to Drive Web Traffic

1. Provide meaningful answers to other’s questions

Giving meaningful, relevant answers to others who are genuinely interested – while driving them back to your own relevant content – can really boost your website’s traffic.

Answering questions on services like Quora or Yahoo Answers that are related to your company or industry can provide gains in your site’s traffic. Jeffrey suggests answering the questions in two to five paragraphs, without the answer sounding like a sales pitch. Answering with a steady dose of information shows that you are a thought leader, and your trust is more easily gained.

Then, towards the end of the post, give a few relevant links back to pages on your site to bring the users over.

2. Set Google Alerts to monitor new content

If you’re not familiar with Google Alerts, it’s a service that sends email notifications of new search results that are relevant to what your preference. Basically, Google recognizes new web pages, blogs, articles, or research that are pertinent to you, and then lets you know about it.

This is a great way to monitor things that are being said about your company or industry, while giving you an opportunity to chime into the discussion if you choose (just like he suggests in the first pro tip).

3. Use internal links often

It’s great that you got people to your site. But how do you keep them there? Vocell suggests linking to relevant internal links as much as possible. “Think thoughtfully and to specific pages. You have to do your research,” he said.

Linking to pages on your site just for the sake of trying to keep users around will only turn them off—and can discredit your company—so only link internally to highly-relevant content.

4. Truly know the basics of SEO

Vocell says that all too often, web pages are created which do not follow the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Forgetting about basic SEO strategy can severely hinder a page’s traffic performance. Vocell says there are three main SEO basics that should always be done:

• H1 tags for on-page titles

H1 tags are used to create titles at the top of any given webpage, displaying the largest on-page text. For best optimization, use proper language and write to your personas.

• Include relevant keywords (but not too many)

Keywords are great and, if done properly, can really boost your site’s traffic. But be careful not to overdo it. Just like links, throwing in keywords “just because” can mess with how well it reads, along with annoying users.

• Don’t forget Meta descriptions

These are those nice little explanations of content on a site’s page that show up when you use a search engine. Make sure these are one or two sentences, and include a keyword or two for good (SEO) measure.

5. Optimize your site for the user

Persona research, customer surveys, and closed interviews—oh my! Vocell suggests tapping into your ‘inner researcher’ to find out how you can best optimize your site for the user. For example, conducting persona research or distributing surveys can be very helpful in site optimization.

A tactic that Vocell loves to use is the “closed-won” and “closed-lost” interviews. A closed-won interview asks prospects that became clients why they ended up purchasing from you. Conversely, a closed-lost interview asks prospects who chose not to do business with you why and how they made their decision. These types of interviews can be far more in-depth than a general survey, which leads to much better user insight.

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of a HubSpot Marketing Manager’s mind, you can go out and put all this inbound knowledge to use.

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