SEO – A milestone … Not the Goal Line

October 3rd, 2008

by Arthur Cooper

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), professionally executed, accomplishes an important piece of a very valuable puzzle towards a truly successful and profitable website marketing strategy. Using strong research for the best keywords, insightful competitive research, onsite and offsite optimization using great content and careful management using sophisticated website statistics are key elements towards high organic rankings for targeted keywords relevant to your business. Being easily found for these highly popular and competitive keywords generates huge amounts of traffic to the website. Although all of this is a great accomplishment, page 1 Google rankings by itself doesn’t put a thin dime into your bank account. So we have reached an important milestone; but now what? How do we generate business from all of this traffic?

Believe it or not, we have to go back to square one, the website itself. What is the purpose of the site? What is it that you actually want the visitor to do? What is the act … the conversion act? Do you want the visitor to buy something from your e-commerce store or do you want them to pick up the phone and speak to a representative? Do you want them to fill out a lead form or subscribe to publication or service? Whatever the answer, you want the visitor to become a “conversion.” You want the visitor to act in a much defined way. How?

The answer comes with a process we now include in our definition of SEO … CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION. Conversion Optimization is the most gratifying part of Search Engine Marketing for our firm because it takes the ball over the goal line for our clients. Every conversion is a success, particularly when the one converting actually came from an organic search. The factors affecting conversion number in the thousands … literally. It can involve color, typeface, text placement, navigation, proper internal linking, and I can go on for hours but I will spare you … at least for now. However, it all starts by revealing to the visitor, in the first instant, that the site is what he was looking for; Then grabbing their attention visually with a clear textual and / or graphical message. From this point, the website needs to take the hand of the visitor and lead them through the precise steps of the process leading them to the desired result; we call this the “conversion funnel.”

The conversion funnel is landscaped with consistent and relevant “calls to action” that pave the way to a logical and favorable conclusion. This should be fostered by offering the following key benefits along the conversion funnel that apply to all products and services in one way or another:

Save or Make More Money
Save Time
Easy to Use / Convenience
Peace of Mind
Reliability / Confidence

Properly structured the conversion funnel consistently provides good reason to “read on” and to create a certain level of excitement about benefiting from the product or service.

The funnel needs to offer comfort factors such as guarantees or warranties or “money back guarantees.” Shopping carts have to be demonstrably secure in the transaction process. Confidence can be inspired by inclusion of customer comments or testimonials by existing clients. You need the reader to say to themselves … “hey, they did and didn’t regret it … they are happy with the decision and got exactly what the website is talking about.” Any form of proof inspires the “warm fuzzies” of peace of mind, reliability and confidence. These are all elements that make it reasonable and sensible for the visitor take the ultimate conversion step.

Make it easy to act … all along the funnel. Make sure your phone number, the lead form, or the shopping cart is just a click away.

And, believe it or not, if the conversion step is to fill out a lead form, you still have a long way to go before you can say that you are really successful from an ROI stand point. The question becomes what is being done with these leads?

1.   Who gets the lead?
2.   How quickly is the lead being followed up?
3.   Do you have a lead tracking system?
4.   Do you have a prospect tracking system?
5.   Do you have a defined sales process?
6.   Are you training your sales representatives?

So, if your site is about leads, your site also needs to be about sales management so that the fruits of website end up in your bank account.

Search Engine Marketing is clearly essential to any online business with a serious desire to succeed. However, conversions are the ultimate step. Rankings are a major milestone towards your goals.