{"id":2362,"date":"2022-12-13T14:23:19","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T19:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/?p=2362"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:35:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T14:35:41","slug":"traffic-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/traffic-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Identify and Avoid the Traffic Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here\u2019s the trap many marketers (individual contributors and<\/em> leaders, often advised by expensive consultants and agencies) fall into when it comes to content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traffic has been growing, but most of the traffic is from a handful of pages ranking for high search volume keywords (I’m looking at you, glossary pages).\u00a0The strategy to drive traffic worked!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it turns out those pages don’t generate any leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Because the articles are usually basic, 101 articles about the industry. Maybe they\u2019re called \u201cWhat is [topic]?\u201d or \u201cHow to do [task].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those topics naturally have more search volume because there are more beginners than advanced practitioners in every industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But who reads that type of content? Entry-level professionals, beginners, inexperienced folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with producing content for that audience, but that group of people does not want a demo of your B2B software product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re not the target buyer or the decision maker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they probably aren’t even facing the challenges your product helps solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the traffic growth is nice to report to leadership. So leadership wants to maintain that low-purchase-intent traffic while also getting more leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the conclusion might be that it\u2019s a conversion rate optimization problem. Let\u2019s slap on a bunch of calls to action and pop-ups<\/a>.  But that won\u2019t work because those readers aren\u2019t the target buyers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding to the pressure, that handful of blog posts likely contributes 80% of the organic traffic to the blog or site. So a drop in a handful of keyword rankings would be detrimental to organic traffic reports. In those cases, there’s all of a sudden a huge spotlight focused on maintaining that low quality traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The marketing team is now stuck in a trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now they have to continue dedicating time, energy, and resources to maintain traffic to a piece of content that won\u2019t have any business impact. At the same time, they have to change their content strategy to focus on generating leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does any of this sound familiar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the trap that many marketing teams fall into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone had an innocent goal to grow organic traffic, came up with a list of tactics (do keyword research, write SEO articles), and started checking the boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publish more articles targeting high search volume keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woohoo! Traffic is growing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inevitably, someone asks, \u201cGreat! How many leads are we getting?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWait what? No, traffic was the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driven by this goal of growing organic traffic, marketers ended up writing content that speaks to the wrong person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uh oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do we avoid this trap? And, if you’re already in it, I\u2019ll share how to get out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to avoid the traffic trap<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before writing any content:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Define the business goal <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Define why it\u2019s important to help the business achieve it that goal<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Define why you believe content is the best path toward that goal<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Define the success metric(s)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. THEN, define the specifics for how you\u2019ll execute (type of audit to run, type of content to produce, what content to update, topics and keywords to write about, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Most people start with step 4 and 5 before defining the why<\/em> behind the content, i.e. the content strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So if you\u2019re already in this trap, what do you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s simple, but not easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You need to have some difficult conversations about what you (and potentially your team) are optimizing for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Someone (probably in leadership) needs to say, \u201cWe had a goal of growing traffic, which we did very well. We\u2019ve found that traffic isn\u2019t converting at a rate that will meaningfully contribute to our lead generation goal. We need to iterate on the strategy and success metric to make sure the content we produce moving forward drives both traffic and leads.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Simple, but not easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s where we help clients. We ask the often difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions. We help catalyze discussion and push back on a strategy that didn\u2019t give them the outcome they wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We help iterate on the strategy and get them back on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you’ve found yourself in the traffic trap, we can help. Get in touch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here\u2019s the trap many marketers (individual contributors and leaders, often…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-content-strategy"},"yoast_head":"\nHow to Identify and Avoid the Traffic Trap - Omniscient Digital<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/traffic-trap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Identify and Avoid the Traffic Trap\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s the trap many marketers (individual contributors and leaders, often advised by expensive consultants and agencies) fall into when it comes to\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/traffic-trap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Omniscient Digital\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-12-13T19:23:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-10T14:35:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Khim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@beomniscient_\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@beomniscient_\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"David Khim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/blog\\\/traffic-trap\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/blog\\\/traffic-trap\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"David Khim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c589a59253936063f61c1858dd52c115\"},\"headline\":\"How to Identify and Avoid the Traffic Trap\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-12-13T19:23:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-09-10T14:35:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/blog\\\/traffic-trap\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":720,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Content Strategy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/blog\\\/traffic-trap\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/beomniscient.com\\\/blog\\\/traffic-trap\\\/\",\"name\":\"How to Identify and Avoid the Traffic Trap - 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