Five Ways to use Local Data to Drive Traffic to your Website

In previous posts, I've discussed using local data to nurture leads and capture leads for your site. You can also use data to drive traffic. Here are five things you can do today to drive more traffic to your site using the local and property information found at Onboard.

Local Landing Pages

We've spoken at length on the benefit of local landing pages. Essentially, local landing pages are custom online pages for targeted locations. If your business sells home insurance with locations across several states, you might want a page around specific locations featuring local content. This way when someone searches "home insurance in the Mission district" your brand will rise to the top of local search engines. If you're unclear of what local landing pages are or how they help, this video is a good two-minute guide.

To develop local landing pages, first identify how you want to segment your pages geographically: by place, city, county, zip, neighborhood, etc. The more finite the segmentation, the more landing pages and the larger impact you'll have driving organic traffic. However, more pages also mean more data, more resources, and potentially a larger investment.

Once you have your roadmap, you'll need to create unique content for each page. Onboard can provide that dynamic content. It must be unique to each page. Duplicate content on several pages will actually be flagged by search engines like Google and might harm organic search results.

Link these pages to your top level menu – perhaps under something like "places we serve." This way, it will be connected to your entire website and you won't have "dead ends"– something that Google also doesn't like. If you're interested in learning more about local landing pages, visit us here for a free guide, video and more info on how they drive traffic.

Blog

Before you groan about blogs, they're a great way to create relevant, compelling, dynamic content on your site. On the business side, make sure they're working to drive organic traffic by:

• Using your main keywords throughout the content
• Consistently blogging – don't do it once a year, steady unique content is key
• Encourage engagement with readers by asking questions and allowing comments
• Add share buttons to incorporate social media

To make it easy, dynamic content like what you find at Onboard can be a baseline. Pull dynamic content by area. Even something as simple as home sales trends or demographic changes can be a great blog post. Use this dynamic content as a headline and have local agents add color to why this trend might be happening, pull in local articles from other publications, add photos, etc. Now for minimal effort, you have a custom blog that's relevant to your end consumer and helps promotes your sales force.

Social Media

The more places you are online, the more opportunities you have to drive traffic. So don't rule out places like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to drive traffic to your site, especially if you have the marketing staff to support it.

Use local data to create fun tweets, hashtag local areas, and become a local expert in every area your company serves and promote it through social media.

Custom stories

Onboard has been helping publishers write top 10 stories for over 13 years. It's proven so successful we now have a division dedicated to it. Some of the most popular stories have been Money Magazine's Best Places to Live and rent.com's stories around the best places for newlyweds, couples and singles.

We can develop stories for your company as well. Utilize our data to create the story and get pick-up in markets across the country driving people to your site. It's a great traffic generator and a good way to gain exposure to your brand and your company using content people care about.

AdWords

If you really want to get creative, you can use dynamic content to fuel your AdWords. If you're running ads for a real estate company, for example, you could do a campaign around "houses for sale in Kearney, NE" or you could use dynamic, relevant content to shape ads that practically beg to be clicked.

• "The most expensive house for sale in Kearney, NE"
• "Crime has plummeted in Kearney – the safest place to buy a house"
• "The best school district in Kearney – find the perfect home for your family"

Buzzfeed is a really great place to look for headlines that jump out for clicks. If you're looking to get the most from your AdWords buy, it doesn't hurt to be creative. Having access to unique, dynamic local content is a great way to do that.

So bottom line – you can tap into the local content at Onboard and use that to fuel a strategy that drives serious traffic to your site. Develop unique content and put it on your ads, social media, blog, and landing pages. Sync up the keywords and make sure it's current, changes frequently, and is associated with the local areas people care about.

You're well on your way. If you're ready to take the next step, contact us today. Next week I'll discuss how local content can help your sales team qualify leads.

To view the original article, visit the Onboard Informatics blog.