A cautionary tale of winning top search engine rankings and losing sales
Jupiter Research predicts online ad spending will reach and exceed 18 billion dollars by 2010. But how much of that traffic actually converts to sales? First page Google ranking is the ultimate quest of Internet marketing, but converting visitors into buyers is the Holy Grail.
Heavy site traffic and top search engine rankings don’t guarantee equally impressive sales. Too often, SEO firms suck businesses into the mindless pursuit of being number one on Google. Claiming bragging rights to those coveted spots are seductive, but being at the top doesn’t pay the bills.
There’s a dirty little secret in the SEO industry right now and knowing what it is and how to avoid it means the difference between having customers who look and ones who buy.
Before you hire an SEO firm or perform any optimization yourself, discover SEO’s dirty little secret first.
A case study on the damage SEO can do to your sales
An attorney hires an SEO firm to generate leads from his web site. The contract term is for 3 months at $1400 per month. Services include pay-per-click ads and Google AdWords. First page search engine results are guaranteed. The attorney expects leads to come pouring in within the first 3 days. No SEO site work or copywriting is performed or even suggested.
The first month netted ONE client out of 2,356 hits. Billing 5 hours at $200/hour resulted in a loss of $400 to get that one client. Click-through rates from the ads were respectable, but bounce rates were too. Statistics showed visitors spent less than 2 seconds on the landing page and rarely clicked further into the site. This trend continued throughout the 3 months.
$4200 goes down the drain. This case study is not unique in any way. There is no shortage of businesses spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on SEO firms and either don’t measure the ROI or are grossly disappointed in the results.
If a firm doesn’t divulge SEO’s dirty little secret, run- don’t walk, the other way
The SEO firm should have reviewed the web site copywriting and design before creating an SEO strategy, much less going full throttle with the campaign. Sure, the firm delivered in traffic, but failed miserably in the sales department. Sales are the bottom line for any business, not traffic. And here in lies the dirty little secret: SEO results only in traffic. But conversion optimization results in sales.
Business cannot live on traffic alone
Conversion optimization (CO) is the process by which your web site copy and site functionality removes barriers restricting visitors from completing your site’s goal- whether it’s purchasing, subscribing, filling out a contact form or downloading material. SEO brings visitors to your site, but CO compels them to act.
The attorney’s web site content was weak and bleak- a mere bullet point list of services. All that traffic hit the Internet highway in search of another attorney who proved he cared about their case, had the skills to win it and the experience to do so. This attorney quite possibly has these qualities and more, but visitors never gave him a chance.
Investing in a conversion optimization strategy first would have changed this case study drastically. After signing a $4200 SEO contract, the attorney opted to forego the extra expense. But in the end, a CO investment would have saved him thousands of dollars and who knows how many clients.
A bonus: conversion optimized web site copy would have improved his organic search results long after the PPC and AdWords campaigns ended.
4 steps to avoid the attorney’s fate
Step 1: Evaluate your web site’s analytics and statistics
Through your site host or a program like Google Analytics, you have access to everything visitor behavior-related. What page they land on, what page they leave from and how long they stay. This information tells exactly where to begin your conversion optimization strategy.
For example, a PPC ad delivers visitors to a landing page for a newsletter subscription. If the ad brings 100 visitors, 5 sign up and 95 click off in less than 2 seconds, you know exactly where to start- beef up the copywriting on the landing page. Bailing on the order form? Functionality is the issue.
Step 2: Think like a visitor, be the visitor
To optimize your site for conversions, you must see its usability from a visitor’s perspective and improve the functionality while streamlining the action process.
• Improve the navigation. The fewer clicks to get to the desired action, the better.
• Streamline the action process. Navigate the process regularly to check for error messages or snags.
• Test and double test the e-commerce system. Use a system that doesn’t bog down or scare away the buyer. Again, the fewer steps the better. And offer help along the way.
Step 3: Earn trust to earn business
Along with web site copy that doesn’t read like infomercial regurgitation, add other elements that promote and build trust.
• Use the latest secure encryption system and make certain your customers know you use it. Ordering pages must have https, not http. Simple icons and verbiage go a long way.
• Keep security certificates current. Many browsers display invalid/expired certificate warnings.
• Emphasize service guarantees and product warranties. Consider offering an extra protection layer that competitors don’t. Advertise this in PPC ads too.
• Review your content. Answer questions on-site that your CSRs typically field. FAQs work well for services. Offer spec sheets for products.
Step 4: Don’t ignore human nature
Impulse buys occur online just as they do in physical stores. Make it easy for customers to add on to a purchase. Amazon offers free shipping on orders over $25.00. Do people add an item to a $19.99 purchase to receive free shipping? You bet they do.
• Highlight other popular products, best sellers or “others who bought this product also purchased…”
• Introduce new products/services alongside established ones. “If you like this, you’ll love this.”
• Enhancements and other complementary products/services like batteries, cables, etc.
Conversion optimization is a journey, not a destination
Your site is consistently ranking in the top 10, sales are up 34% and your site is converting 4 out of every ten visitors into customers. Now that’s something to brag about.
Invest in a conversion optimization plan BEFORE an SEO strategy so that ranking at the top actually means something quantifiable to your business. Like SEO, conversion optimization is a continual process. Buyer behavior changes and web functionality evolves. All significantly impact your bottom line.
About the author: Brenda Galloway owns the Kansas City-based marketing communications firm, Write Essentials LLC, specializing in web and print copywriting that builds interest and increases conversion rates.
Want more ideas and tips to make your marketing copy work harder and be more persuasive? Then visit http://www.writeessentials.com to sign up for “The Write Idea” newsletter.
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Keyword Research – SEO Tips What You Need to Know
Posted in Uncategorized on December 12, 2009 by jimjimith
Keyword research is a vital step in any SEO campaign, yes its tedious work but very necessary and it will definitely help you achieve higher rankings in the search engines. If I could give you the top 3 SEO Tips in my bag of tricks, I would have to say #1 is Keyword Research.
Now everyone has there own formula’s and tricks for finding a niche keyword or phrase, and I have bought some tools out there myself, but it seems I always fall back to Google’s free Keyword tool, they have added some features that really make this tool easy to use and extremely helpful.
SEO Tips -
Finding a niche keyword or phrase starts with your interest. Make a list of your favorite products and services, if you are going to start promoting your website, its much easier to write articles and come up with content if you are interested in the product or service. A keyword tool provides you with the keywords or phrases that people are typing into the search engines. So for example in our tool we searched for “skateboards”, the tool would give us some data back on how many times that keyword or phrase was searched in one month.
Now you may notice the search on your keyword has resulted in millions of monthly searches, well that is where the niche part comes in, take that keyword “skateboards” and turn it into a phrase like “skateboard trucks” or “top skateboard decks” and you will notice the competition and monthly searches will drop drastically, but you want to still want to find words that generate traffic. I tend to leave alone any keywords with less than 500 monthly searches and up to 100, 000 searches, just depends on the competition.
Although instinct would tell you to go after the most popular keyword, but that is not always the best approach, it’s always easier to reach number one on the search engines if a keyword has less competition than to compete against millions of web pages.
Even though we did not go into great detail on this whole process, I hope it has enlightened you on the fact that this step can either make it or break it for you. Don’t spend months trying to get to number one only to find out that your keyword does not generate any traffic at all or you are up against the biggest competition.
Gannon Faul is an expert on web development and Search Engine Optimization and has been in the industry for over 15 years, check out SEO Tips and also more information on Keyword Research
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