What Is Qualified Traffic for Your Website?

The Basics of Qualified Traffic

The specific definition of “qualified traffic” will differ from organization to organization; it can be summarized as site visitors who may already be aware of your brand and whose demographics fit within your target audience (as defined by your customer personas). In short, qualified traffic consists of people who are most likely to become future or recurring customers. Qualified traffic is likelier to convert; less qualified visitors may give you clicks and impressions, but they aren’t going to convert and become customers.

Improved traffic is generally — but not necessarily — associated with improved conversions. Without optimizing for the right keywords and implementing a strong internal linking structure (including toward important product or service pages), even securing page-one results might not get you the conversion rates you’re looking for. 

High Visibility, Low Conversion

For example, if you have a website for a local business in Detroit that primarily sells lighting solutions, a piece of linkable content providing tips about energy efficiency may rank well for general queries related to energy conservation, generating a lot of impressions for the page. However, the percentage of impressions and site visitors who access this content through such queries may not be interested in your products, much less live in your area. For this reason, the traffic you earn through this content will not likely lead to many conversions, though it is still valuable for SEO purposes.

Increased impressions, additional keyword rankings, and better overall visibility can help demonstrate your site’s relevance, build topical expertise, and allow you to earn links from more sites, boosting the performance of your site as a whole. This doesn’t directly yield more qualified visitors, but it can be a foundational step toward that ultimate goal.

Low Traffic, High Conversion

Conversely, a piece of keyword-focused content about affordable lightbulb options in Detroit would lead to a substantially lower amount of search traffic. The percentage of these visitors who may be interested in your services, however, would be substantially greater and you would likely see higher conversion rates.

While not all examples will have such drastic differences in traffic and potential conversions, this does illustrate two different types of marketing strategies: conversion rate optimization and search engine optimization.

CRO vs. SEO: Which Should You Focus On?

It’s difficult to measure the success of your marketing efforts if you aren’t clear on what your objectives are. Are you focused on improving your site’s conversions, such as generating sales and prospecting leads? Or are you more concerned with improving the broad visibility and authority of your site on search engines for industry-relevant search terms?

These two marketing objectives can be accomplished by conversion rate optimization and search engine optimization, respectively. While these terms are sometimes confused with one another, they have distinct meanings:

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Strategies for increasing the number of site visitors who ultimately convert into customers (or take some other desired action on your website).
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Strategies for maximizing the number of total site visitors by improving the site’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Ultimately, a well-rounded approach integrates both CRO and SEO, but it’s important to clearly define your objectives in order to fine-tune your marketing strategy.