Sending “Targeted” Traffic To “Mediocre” Content? Pardon Bounce Rate!

In my article 5 Ways To Use twitter Mentions To Drive Traffic And Grab Attention?, I explained that I am in love with @mentions because everyone, including A-listers and influential people, take notice of them quickly and if the tweets including them were compelling enough, they can instantly drive targeted traffic to your blog.

At Garious, we hate talking theory! Using Twitter @mentions effectively sparked the interest of Mike Stelzner, SME founder, and Brian Clark, Copyblogger’s founder, to read two of our blog posts and comment on them. (You can read the articles and their comments on them here and here.)

In both cases, the technique was so darn simple: I tweeted the exact eye-catching article titles and @Mentioned the Twitter username of my “target” audience. As an example, One articles title was:

The Burning Question I Wish To Ask Michael A. Stelzner On The “Launch” of SME …

This is how the slightly tweaked tweet looked like:
The Burning Question I Wish To Ask @Mike_Stelzner On The “Launch” of SME

At a first glance, you may think that it was the compelling tweet that motivated Mike to comment on the post, BUT that is not the case!  The tweet pulled the trigger, but the underlying content is what actually inspired him to read it and take the time to comment.

It boggles my mind how many people are very clever at grabbing their target audience’s attention to their bounce-not-browse stimulating content!

Sending targeted traffic to mediocre content is the fastest recipe for “aggressive” bounce rate! By aggressive, I mean that your target audience will be very disappointed at the fact that you “tricked” them into believing your initial sweet talk but, when they took your word for it, they realized it had no substance to it!

I can assure you that these disappointed “target” audience will never visit your blog again!

The Solution Is Simple…

You have to nail both: Your external attention-grabbing and traffic-driving pitch, and your actual content. They have to be equally outstanding.

In doing so, it goes without saying that your first step must involve creating evergreen content that your target audience will devour.

Then, and only then, you can think of interesting ways to entice them to bring more targeted traffic to your blog.

In the example I presented above, Mike was my only target audience and that’s why; @mention was the most fitting attention-grabbing technique to use.

Still, it was only one piece of the puzzle. I can assure you that if he didn’t like the content, he would have left disappointed and wouldn’t have cared to comment!

The same technique will work like charm if your target audience was a niche group, not an individual. Either way, you will need to create a killer content before driving traffic but, if you are targeting a group, your attention grabbing pitch will be somewhat different. That’s all!

Key Takeaways

Here is the deal: When you invite your friends over, you clean and tidy up the house and make many arrangements to ensure your guests will enjoy their visit.

Similarly, think of your blog as your “virtual” house that needs to be revamped to make your guests stick around longer and browse-not-bounce. I love that thought!

On top of that, focusing on constantly delivering exceptional content can have massive SEO rewards and vice versa.

After the recent Google updates, it became crystal clear that Google Panda has zero-tolerance for mediocre content.

So, if you want to kill both SEO and SMM birds with one stone, make delivering quality content a top priority. then, come up with creative ways to drive targeted traffic.

Did these insights resonate with you? I would love to know your thoughts. Thanks in advance for your valuable contribution.