Let’s try to make this very simple:
Rankings 
Traffic.
Rankings do not equal traffic.
Getting rankings is not enough to drive traffic. And if you don’t drive traffic to your website, no one can use your services or buy your product. But how do you achieve it?
Be compelling.
Getting rankings on search engines or social sites is half the battle. You must compel your customer to click through to you!
You must compel people to click-through to your website.
Example.
Did you ever get in front of a pushy salesman? Someone that won’t go away and hits you over the head like a sledgehammer but doesn’t necessarily compel you to listen? That’s achieving visibility but not compelling.
Let’s give an example: which compels you more to click?
1. SURFEX.COM — Welcome to Surf Express!
Load SURFEX.COM home page, The People of Surf Express, Click for IMPORTANT TRAVEL INFO, SurfEx shirts, hats, and more… Post your surf reports and pictures! . …
2. Surf Travel
Surf Travel with Wavehunters! Wavehunters is full-service surf travel agency, with airfares and custom packages to prime surfing areas around the world. …
#1 describes, #2 compels. You might have guessed that this copy is the result of a search engine search. Even though SURFEX.COM was in first place, which would you click on? (by the way, we’re now #1 for surf travel)
If you don't drive traffic, you can't sell anything.
Primary Tactics
- Copywriting & Creative: Write good copy. There is a difference between describing what you sell and convincing others that it’s interesting stuff. You must use compelling language to drive traffic. By using creative writing, you can actually modify the title and description that search engines display, and beat out your competition, even if they are ranked higher.
- Branding: Distinguish yourself, favorably. Building brand is important overall, but on social media sites, there is the additional advantage of grabbing favorable product/service testimonials. When you have a brand that elicits and emotional response, then traffic will flow. By the way, why didn’t we select social media marketing overall as a tactic? Because there is so much chaff out there, you must be the wheat by branding and
- Email Marketing: Real traffic from ‘warm’ customers. A form of direct response marketing, bypass the ’spam’ issue by allowing interested parties to ‘opt-in’ for marketing messages.
Not necessarily moral, but does it work? (And no, we don't use this tactic.)
Secondary Tactics
- PPC. Test what marketing language works, quickly. Running a multivariate campaign (2+ ads, same landing page on your website) can tell you very quickly what language is most compelling to your customer. Is it cost, quality, or emotion that drives click-thorough? Then, you can fold that back into the very fabric of how you build your website and beyond.
- Competitor Analysis: What do your competitors do? Learn from your competitors on how they compel your customers to buy from them. Simply go to a search engine, type in how you would find yourself. (Go to the resulting websites and look for pages like “why choose us?” and other such phrased pages.)
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