How to Increase Traffic & Conversions in the Age of AI

As we head into the new year, marketers are racing to the finish line and getting their plans set for 2024. 

To inspire your teams and help kick things off right, we teamed up with Erika Varangouli, Head of SEO Branding at Semrush to discuss how marketers can increase traffic and conversions in the age of AI.

If you aren’t familiar, Semrush is a leading online visibility management platform and is used by over 10 million digital marketers worldwide. They are also our latest integration partner!

That’s right. We have OFFICIALLY partnered with Semrush to bring together traffic and conversions.

Semrush helps marketers grow their traffic and Customers.ai helps marketers turn that traffic into sales. It’s a perfect match (get it in the Semrush App Center).

It’s also the basis of our latest webinar, 2024 Playbook: Increasing Traffic & Conversion in the Age of AI.

How can marketers skyrocket website traffic while leveraging AI and website visitor data to launch high-converting marketing campaigns? 

We’ve got the answers and it starts with traffic.

How To Grow Your Organic Visibility Through Content

We know that content is crucial in organic visibility. 

In fact, according to a study done by Semrush and Brian Dean, the #1 ranking gets 10x+ the traffic of position #10, for a single keyword. If a piece of content ranks for multiple terms, you can can bring in 30x+ the traffic.

But it’s not just about any content. It’s about creating the right content. Content that:

• Captures user intent. By identifying and analyzing user intent for relevant keywords, you can create content that aligns with what users are searching for, increasing the likelihood of ranking higher in search results.

• Is “helpful” and offers a satisfying user experience. Helpful content goes beyond mere word count and focuses on delivering substantial value to users. It should be actionable, comprehensive, and offer unique insights to engage and inform your audience.

• Demonstrates a high level of E-E-A-T. Building authority and trust are critical for organic visibility. Your content should showcase your expertise, reliability, and trustworthiness, positioning you as a credible source of information in your industry.

To achieve top rankings in search results and grow your traffic, we must do each of these three things. 

Capture User Intent

Search intent refers to the purpose behind a user’s query when they enter a search term into a search engine. 

By categorizing search intent into navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional queries, you can tailor your content to meet the specific needs of your target audience.

You can also use Semrush to discover search intent for any query.

Create Helpful Content

What is helpful content? According to Erika, that is the million-dollar question.

While Google says they want to present helpful, reliable information that is primarily created to benefit people, helpful is really subjective.

It is dependent on the keyword itself. 

You have to analyze that keyword to determine what would be ‘helpful’. Does the content you are creating add value? Would bookmark it or recommend it to a friend?

Helpful content should include these four elements:

1. Comprehensive. Cover sub topics and questions to provide a comprehensive resource.

2. Actionable. Create actionable content to help readers really solve their problem.

3. Value-adding. Don’t just repeat what’s already out there.

4. User experience. Take good care of readability, syntax, visuals and overall experience on your pages.

When creating content for a specific keyword, it’s also important to move beyond simply looking at who ranks and replicating what’s there. With AI content and SGE coming into play, the space is getting so much noisier and Google has to be much more selective. Unless your content brings value, you won’t stand out.

Build Relevance and Authority

In another study, Semrush monitored 20,000 domains for over a year. What they found is that more than half of the domains that had no backlinks never made it to the top 10. 

Why? Because backlinks are still important when it comes to relevance. 

This means your content must also include promotion. It’s not just about publishing that content. It’s about having a plan, about how to make it authoritative, and how to earn trust. 

To do this, look at what content and topics your target audience is talking about and cover that from a new angle or use data to prove or disprove a popular point. 

Look at what journalists are interested in and what are they talking about. 

And of course, look at your competitor backlinks, analyze what they’re doing, and think about how to create a fresher version, or add a different angle. 

How To Turn Your Traffic into Sales with AI

Once you have traffic, it’s time to turn it into sales. Easier said than done right?

We are seeing a number of problems in the B2C lead generation landscape.

Costs are rising, the landscape has become super competitive, and ad remarketing and marketing attribution are nearly dead due to changes in iOS and Chrome, etc.

The biggest problem?

You spent all that time and money to create the helpful content outlined above but you don’t know who is visiting your site or have a way to reach them!

That’s where the Customers.ai Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel comes in. Using proprietary advanced data partnerships and identity resolution technology, we can identify anonymous visitors to your site in real-time.

Installing the pixel is easy and you can start getting visitor data in 90 seconds!

To install the Website Visitor ID X-Ray Pixel, sign up (for FREE!), go to your dashboard, and navigate to My Automations. 

Select + New Automation and get your pixel. We have easy install options for Google Tag Manager, WordPress, and Shopify, or you can install the pixel manually.

Once you have the pixel on your site, you can:

• Superpower your abandoned cart recovery or high intent visitor recovery

• Capture leads from 20% of your clicks

• Leverage cheaper campaign objectives

• Land and expand to adjacent marketing channels

• Superpower your LLA and retargeting 

Let’s look at a few of these. 

Superpower Your Abandoned Cart Recovery

Given that almost 70% of people leave their carts, abandoned cart recovery is an important tool for marketers. 

Unfortunately, abandoned cart recovery only reaches 3% of your site visitors, leaving a lot of money on the table. 

With website visitor identification and integration with your existing automated cart recovery workflows, you can reach more people than ever before.

Leverage Cheaper Campaign Objectives

If you are running ads, you know conversion-focused campaigns are much more expensive than click or awareness campaigns. 

But we want that user data right? We want names, emails, phone numbers, etc.

You can get that with X-ray. 

Run cheaper traffic campaigns and then capture their contact data directly on your site. Now, not only do you have first-party data, you can create segments, personalize creative, and put people directly into your automated campaigns.

Expand Your Retargeting Audiences

With Click IDs out the door and privacy a bigger issue than ever before, retargeting audiences are shrinking.

Our tool allows you to capture emails and then pass them directly into your retargeting campaigns.

The result? Expanded audiences, warm leads, and better ROI!

Increase Traffic and Conversions in the Age of AI

Things are changing fast and it can be hard to keep up. 

Whether you are responsible for content strategy, content creation, traffic generation, or lead generation, it’s imperative you stay ahead of the game.

We are so thankful for the insights and tips provided by Erika and hope they give you an extra page in your 2024 marketing playbook. 

We are also unbelievably excited about the Semrush integration. The combination of these two powerful tools will help marketers take performance to the next level and we can’t wait to see what you do with it.

If you missed the webinar, you can catch the replay here. It’s full of details and more tips and will definitely set you up for success in the new year. Go check it out and if you want to learn more about how Semrush and Customers.ai can help you superpower your marketing campaigns, get in touch with us!

Important Next Steps

• See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
• Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
• Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.