Conversion Optimization: Is Your Website Traffic Dodging Too Many Potholes?
When it comes to Internet marketing, successful web sites are those that receive significant traffic and are able to move their visitors to action – whether that action is online or offline. Businesses need to capitalize on potential sales from their online traffic. While search engine optimization (SEO) assists in improving the quality and volume of traffic to a site, web sites have to meet the needs of their audience or the traffic will be meaningless.
It is important to realize that search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion optimization are not the same thing. Rather, conversion optimization can be used to expose the effectiveness of an SEO strategy. Elixir Interactive Search Strategist David Shapiro explains that conversion optimization “helps quantify the value of the work done on the SEO side.” Ensuring a web site ranks well for relevant keywords is part of the SEO process; however, ranking for the right keywords can be even more beneficial and that information is also found through the conversion optimization process. “Keywords are important, but optimizing for keywords that don’t convert will not move the bottom line, which is ultimately what we as SEOs are being paid to do,” says Shapiro. “All SEO engagements should pay attention to how keywords are converting or where visitors fall off in the conversion cycle, otherwise all the rankings and increases in traffic may not help with the bottom line.”
The importance of keywords is also shifting in response to the application of universal search, where search engines blend news, videos, local and book search results into the web results. As a result of this change, keywords are only part of how to increase sales and revenue from the web. Shapiro gives further insight, “Keywords won’t necessarily become less important, but it’s becoming more important to create different content types to help rank for certain keywords. You’ll want to have videos, blog posts, and news items when applicable all related to your most valuable keywords so you increase the chances that your content will rank well.”
Conversion optimization does not require web sites to get a lot more traffic to increase sales. The key to successful conversion optimization is to convert more of the existing traffic. “It’s a better long term investment to fix the holes in your conversion process than it is to keep driving more traffic through to the broken process,” says Shapiro. “By increasing the value of traffic, you are able to extract larger profits from the same number of visitors, and when you increase the number of visitors to a refined conversion process the results can be significant.” Sometimes the key to improving the bottom line is as easy as improving processes to make things simpler and easier for the consumer. Convenience and ease are always appreciated, even in a rough economy.
About Elixir Interactive:
Elixir Interactive is a digital marketing agency that focuses on search and social media. They specialize in helping companies understand how their customers think and interact online and then use that information to develop highly targeted marketing programs using SEO, Paid Search and Social Media.
