Zero to 10K Website Visits a Month

Your website is one of the most important investments you can make in your business. A well-designed site that speaks to your target audience, provides rich and useful content, and is built (and designed to grow) using SEO best practices can provide an astoundingly firm foundation for your online success.

Before you worry about total website visits or type out your first line of code, it’s a good idea to review your niche, your angle, and your target market. Is your niche a profitable one, with adequate demand? What makes your company more attractive/useful/compelling than your soon-to-be competition? What avenues of marketing and service have been overlooked? How can you speak directly to, and meet the needs of, your audience? These are just some of the questions you’ll want to have firm, and thorough, answers to before you create the framework and code for your site.

Your domain name is another critical part of building a successful site. With nearly 113 million .com domains in use today, choosing one that’s memorable and on-brand has become more important than ever. One quick and easy way to gauge your domain’s effectiveness is to subject it to “the radio test.” If you heard your domain read aloud on the radio, could you (and all your potential visitors) spell it correctly the first time?

Two other components—content and analytics—come into play once you’ve got your site up and running. Your customers may come to your site the first time to read about your products, or to browse your wares and services, but to keep them coming back, high-quality content is essential. Blog posts, pages, and other onsite content should provide value, support your brand, and evoke a response from the reader, or they’ll quickly move on to greener—and more useful—pastures.

Analytics are another must-have for your online toolkit. Monitoring website visits, user activity, and emerging browsing patterns helps you develop an overview of your site. Using an application such as Google Analytics or KISSmetrics helps you monitor traffic, develop more useful content, and, most importantly, develop an understanding of what’s working on your site—and what isn’t.

You don’t need to be an Internet wunderkind to create a successful site, but you do need to invest the time, energy, and effort in building your online presence, content, and reputation. Follow our checklist, and you just might find your site traffic—and your online success—zooming to heights you never imagined.

Zero to 10k Visits Per Month

Are you ready for Internet success? Our checklist will help you focus on building your website the right way, from the start. You’ll be on your way to 10k monthly visits in no time!

Choosing Your Niche

• Is it profitable?
• • Are people buying products and services?
  • Can your product or service fit in the demographic?
• Is there traffic potential?
• • Use a keyword tool to check monthly search volume.
  • • Search multiple niche keywords.
    • Low search volume often indicates low traffic potential.
• Is there a lot of competition?
• • Search keywords in your niche to see:
  • • Who is ranking
    • What is ranking
    • • Pay attention to URL structure
      • • Short descriptive URLs help:
        • • Users see what to expect from the page
          • Search engines better understand what a page is about
      • Types of content
  • Evaluate the competition.
  • • Use a backlink checking tool to get a closer look at the links to the competition.
    • • Good tools to use include:
      • • Open Site Explorer
        • Ahrefs
        • Majestic SEO
• Do you have an angle?
• • Creating a unique angle allows you to carve your place in the niche.
  • • How can you fill the competition’s void?
    • What is your competition doing well, that you could do better?
    • Is your competition lacking features you can add?
• Does it have potential?
• • Use Google Trends to gauge the interest in a niche.
  • • If it’s going up steadily, there’s potential.
    • If it’s going down, the window for potential is closing.

Selecting Your Domain

• Is it brandable?
• • Your domain is an important tool for generating marketing buzz.
  • • Build domains around popular words with mass appeal.
    • • Domain Bot: Enter a word or phrase and it will find available domains.
      • Domain Hacks: Get creative suggestions to help you find a domain name.
  • Brandable domains help with word-to-mouth marketing.
  • Branded domains are the third most trusted advertising source.
• Is it short and memorable?
• • Short and memorable makes it easier to pass along to others.
  • Does it pass the “radio test”?
  • • Is it impossible to misspell after you hear it on the radio?
• Is it a .com?
• • Most popular top-level-domain (TLD)
  • 48% of domains registered in 2012 were .com
• Are you marketing in a specific country?
• • Consider a country specific TLD, such as co.uk.

Keyword Research

• Are you optimizing for traffic?
• • Pay attention to monthly search volume.
  • • Monthly search volume indicates how many people are searching for a topic.
    • The more searches, the more popular it is.
  • Pay attention to relative competition.
  • • The more competition, the more people are going after the keyword.
    • It may be harder to rank for the phrase if there is a significant amount of competition.
• Are you optimizing for conversion?
• • Does more traffic translate to more revenue?
  • • Focus on conversion related keywords
• Do you have a clear idea of searcher intent?
• • Understanding the context of the search will help you choose valuable keywords.
  • Organize your potential keywords by stage of the sales funnel.
  • • You’ll avoid alienating the audience that isn’t quite ready to convert.
• Have you chosen a keyword tool?
• • Google Keyword Planner shows search volume.
  • Ubersuggest scrapes keywords to expand to variants and additional phrases.
  • SEMRush shows:
  • • Search volume
    • Cost per click
    • Number of competing pages
    • Related keywords
    • Advertisers buying ad space
  • SpyFu shows:
  • • Search volume
    • Clicks per day
    • Number advertisers bidding on the keywords
  • KeywordSpy shows:
  • • Search volume
    • Cost per click
    • Related keywords
    • Organic and paid competitors
    • Misspellings

Content

• Are you creating assets?
• • Content assets provide value to your customers and make you money.
• Are you creating value?
• • Is your content helping your audience solve a problem or fill a need?
  • • If visitors don’t find the content useful, they won’t do anything with it.
• Are you evoking emotion?
• • Emotion is a key aspect of virality.
  • • When your content makes readers “feel” something, they are more likely to share it.
• Do your headlines grab attention?
• • Great content can be hidden by a boring headline.
  • • Make a claim
    • Stir emotion
• Are you telling stories?
• • People will talk about a product or service if it’s part of a larger narrative.
  • Stories help people make sense of things when we don’t have facts.
• Is your content timely?
• • Breaking news or at least guiding your audience through new market developments helps increase your popularity.
  • • Use Google Trends to find hot topics to develop your content around.

Analytics

• Are you using analytics software?
• • Analytics tells you:
  • • Who your audience is
    • What they’re doing on your site
    • What they like and what they don’t.
• Are you using multiple tools?
• • Tools vary in the information they provide.
  • • Google Analytics:
    • • Benchmark against other analytics programs
      • Track advertising and marketing costs and campaigns
      • Track mobile audience
      • Cost: Free for all users, enterprise options are available at $150,000/year
    • KissMetrics:
    • • Integrates well with email marketing and customer relationship management software
      • Visitor focused data rather than broad statistics
      • Cost: $49 to $499 per month
    • WebTrends:
    • • Unlimited custom metrics
      • Customizable social and mobile metrics
      • Heat maps
      • Cost: Custom quote
• Are you using the data to make improvements?
• • Notice people aren’t drawn to a certain piece of content?
  • • Analyze it and how you can improve it.
  • Notice people aren’t spending as much time as you’d like?
  • • Link to other material.
    • Encourage them to comment and interact with other readers.
  • Notice traffic coming from social channels?
  • • Make sure you’re interacting on social media.
  • Notice mobile visitors?
  • • Make sure you have an optimized mobile site.

Social

• Do you have a social media presence?
• • Start a Facebook page.
  • Start a Twitter account.
  • Join other networks you know your target audience is involved with. Some key platforms may include Instagram or Pinterest and even a niche specific community.
• Are you actively building your fan base?
• • Can visitors easily “like” or “follow” you from your website?
  • • Add a “follow us” box.
  • Keep a small part of your article visible.
  • • Ask readers to like/follow you to continue reading content.
    • Readers can still read content if they’d rather not follow you via social media.
• Are your posts well timed?
• • Posting at the right time during the day can maximize exposure.
  • • Use the free tools at Simply Measured to analyze your audience and find ideal posting times.
• Is your content easy for readers to share?
• • Place share buttons on every piece of content on your site.
  • Place buttons above the fold, so people don’t have to scroll to get to them.

Growth Hacking

• Do you have a inbound-marketing strategy?
• • 1 to 2 Weeks to Execute:
  • • Create an RSS feed
    • Ask people you know for links to drive visitors
    • Thoughtful blog commenting on other sites in your niche
  • 4 Weeks to Execute:
  • • Interlinking to other pieces of content
    • Link out to other sites (to start the relationship with them)
    • Press outreach
  • 8 Weeks to Execute:
  • • Create a blog
    • Timely and seasonal content
    • Case studies
    • Complete guides/resources
    • Interactive content
  • More than 12 Weeks to Execute:
  • • Building relationships
    • • Social
      • Customer
    • Educational content
    • Getting interviewed
• Are you actively building content that people will share?
• • Egobait
  • • Talk about big names in your industry.
    • • They’ll help you spread the word.
  • Live blogging
  • • Talk about everything that’s going on at an industry event.
  • Event recap
  • • Create a clean event recap from notes you’ve taken during sessions or live blogging.
  • Covering news first
  • • Stay on top of industry news and write about developments as they come in
  • Surveys
  • • Reach out to people and ask them to take the survey
    • Release the results as your own content
  • National Days and Events
  • • Create content to leverage them
    • Promote other content leverage them
  • Infographics
  • • Create a fun way to digest lots of data.
  • Contests
  • • Host or sponsor a contest
    • Cost effective option
    • Make sure linking/sharing is a requirement

Conversions

• Are your main “money” pages built to convert?
• • Above the fold: People spend 80% of their time above the fold.
  • • Attention grabbing headline
    • Image or video that offers explanation
    • Benefits
    • • Use bullets.
      • • Visitors will scan, not read
      • Call to Action
      • • Use strong copy.
        • Make it look different from the rest of the page.
  • Below the fold
  • • Links
    • Description
    • Testimonials
    • • Reinforce claims and results
      • Blend in with your content
    • Trust elements
    • • If you are aiming for an instant purchase, use security seals to increase trust

Partnerships & Business Development

• Are you remarketing?
• • When people visit your website:
  • • Cookie them with an ad code.
    • Whenever they browse the web, they will see ads related to your offers.
• Are you building a community?
• • Offer customer support
  • • Live chat
    • Social media
    • Knowledge base
  • Offer documentation
  • • If your product needs it, offer documentation to show them how to use it.
    • • You won’t retain customers who don’t know how to use your product or service.
  • Integrate social features
  • • Let your customers interact with each other.

Sources

• How to Conduct Niche Research for an Affiliate Site – sugarrae.com
• 11 Best Practices for URLs – moz.com
• 5 Awesome Online Backlink Checker Tools for Your Website – bloggerssentral.com
• How to Choose a Domain Name – whoishostingthis.webstag.xyz
• 8 Tools to Help You Find the Right Domain Name – vandelaydesign.com
• How To Do Keyword Research For SEO – seonick.net
• Contagious Content: Six Insider’s Secrets – whoishostingthis.webstag.xyz
• Creating Content on Industries you’re not an Expert in – kaiserthesage.com
• 11 Content Marketing Lessons Learned from 20 of the Top 100 Blogs – quicksprout.com
• Headlines That Grab Readers by the Eyeballs and Suck Them into Your Message – michaelhyatt.com
• Guide To Analytics Software Platforms: 25 Analytics Tools Compared – searchengineland.com
• Using Analytics Data to Improve your Traffic Generation – kaiserthesage.com
• 7 Simple Yet Effective Social Media Tactics You Should Leverage Today – quicksprout.com
• Increase Social Sharing by Moving Your Like Buttons – placester.com
• Link Building Tactics – The Complete List – pointblankseo.com
• The Anatomy of a High Converting Landing Page – quicksprout.com
• How You Can Use Remarketing to Close a Business Deal – quicksprout.com
• Growth Hacking Chapter 9 – quicksprout.com