“But my website has 2,000 pay clicks a day! Why should I care about where they come from?”

Hopefully, you’ve never said this, but if you have, there may be hope for you. Every person with a website wants someone to view their site (otherwise what’s the point?). While it’s exciting in the beginning to see how many views your site is getting, it can taper off after a while, especially if you don’t see any return on investment (i.e. ROI  or advertising effectiveness).

This is when ‘where the pay clicks are coming from’ ideology starts to count, especially if you have products or services you are selling through your website. If you’re a small business in Whatitsname, Arkansas and only cater to people in Whatitsname and the surrounding area, you probably don’t care about clicks coming from the United Kingdom or Outtherein, Nebraska. Why would you want to pay for clicks outside your target market? You want something that is more local: hyper local.

People who are not your target customers generally exit your website as soon as the first page loads. This leads to something called “bounce rate.” Ideally, you want to own a website with a low bounce rate, that is few people exiting the site soon after it loads. A low bounce rate typically means that people are viewing the content on your website and interacting with it in a positive way.

Ideally, if your website is correctly search engine optimized (SEO) and linked properly for search engines to rank effectively in their lists, then you should be getting your target customers who have interest in your business. SEO is a way of artfully implementing search terms people are using to find information into the content of your website. A search engine will scan your website for search terms and if they match will page rank your site in its results.

It’s easy to be sucked into catchy marketing companies that create websites, but many times these companies will ask for thousands of dollars just to create the site without actually helping you market it.  Before you make the investment of creating a search engine marketing campaign, be sure that your target customers are within reach and actually viewing your website.