Friday, 6 May 2011

Search Engine Optimization Mini Course :: Part 5 ::


Welcome to part 5
Search Engine Optimization Mini-Course.

Part 5: How to Boost Your Conversion Rates

The focus of this series so far has been on how to get lots of traffic to your site by boosting your search engine rankings.
But there's more to creating a profitable website than just getting traffic... You also have to know how to turn this traffic into cash!
Now, I've seen websites that get phenomenal amounts of traffic each month (one in particular gets 30,000 visitors each month) but they're barely scraping by with just $100/month in earnings. I've seen other sites in the same market earning 50 times that amount, even though they get less traffic than the first site.
It's pretty obvious what's happening here.
The first site is clearly well-optimized for the search engines, but the creators have absolutely no idea how to turn this traffic into customers. The second site has a much better idea how to design for optimal conversions, despite receiving less traffic than the first site, and therefore earns much more money.
Let's break it down even further.
The amount of money you make comes down to this basic formula:
Profit = (Number of leads) x (conversion rate) x (average dollars per sale) x (number of sales)
For most of this series we've been talking about the first factor (people visiting your website are "leads"), but if you're missing the second factor then you're not going anywhere either!
So how do you convert your visitors into sales?
Here's my "conversion checklist" for an article page:

1) Your headline should be relevant to what the visitor is searching for.

When your visitor reaches your page, you need to let them know that they're in the right place! Remember that people have a short attention span on the internet, and you've got about one second to convince them that they should hang around and read your stuff before they hit the "back" button.
Matching the headline to the search term is the easiest way to do this. It doesn't need to be exactly the same... but if your visitor has arrived at your page through the search term "stop dog barking", then the first thing they read shouldn't be "Top dog training product reviews". It doesn't match what they searched for! Instead try something like "Learn how to stop your dog barking with these top dog training books".

2) Your content should be top-quality

The first thing that grabs a reader's attention is your headline. Next comes your actual article, review, or other content. If this content is poorly written, if it doesn't make sense, if there are spelling and grammatical errors, or if it's just not what your visitors are looking for, then they're going to turn around and click out of there. So make sure that your content is top-notch.

3) Include a response-pulling graphic on the top right.

Pictures on your page can do more than just make your page look pretty — they can also generate sales. At least for the first picture at the top right of your page, try putting in a graphic that offers the visitor a solution to their problem.
For example, you might be tempted to put this image into an article about German Shepherd training:


It looks good, and it's relevant to your article, but it's not helping you achieve your goal of getting your reader to visit the affiliate site you're promoting, sign up to your newsletter, or whatever other goal you're pursuing. Neither is it helping your reader get answers to their problems!
Here's an example of a response-pulling graphic. I would put this in an article on "German Shepherd training".


4) Include at least one link to an affiliate offer (or to your main sales page if you are a product owner) in the top fold of the website.

"The top fold" means the top area of the screen that people can see without having to scroll down the page. If you only included a link to your sales page or affiliate offer towards the bottom of your content, you miss out on all those visitors who never scroll to the bottom of your page. If you put it in the top fold, you're at least presenting it to everyone who visits that page.

5) Include another response pulling graphic, or adsense ads, below your menu bar in your left hand menu pane.

Once people have scrolled down past your navigation, you've got all this lovely space sitting empty. Put another response-pulling graphic in here, or some AdSense ads, if this is how you're earning money from this site.

6) Make it obvious what your visitor should do at the end of your article

So your reader reaches the bottom of your page... where should they go now? Help them make this decision by including another link to your affiliate offer (or to your main sales page if you're a product owner) and tell them exactly what they should do.
For instance, if they've just read your article about how to stop dogs chewing, you might want to include this "call to action" underneath:
What I want you to do now is visit SitStayFetch where you'll find the most comprehensive guide online to stopping all your dog's behaviour problems (including chewing, barking, digging, aggression and more).
Click HERE to visit SitStayFetch and stop your dog's behaviour problems for good.
Instead of this (or in additon to this), you might also choose to add some short reviews of different products, a newsletter signup box or some AdSense ads. Just make sure that it's clear what you want your reader to do: Don't bombard them with options — make it easy.


These tips mostly apply to article pages, but you can adapt them for sales pages, side-by-side review pages, product review pages and more.
The most important point of this is that it's simply not enough to provide good quality content. You also need to make this content convert.
This doesn't mean you need to go SELL SELL SELL and splash red text and highlighter all over your page. It's simply a matter of gently directing your visitors towards your money-making content wherever possible, while still giving them a good experience on your website.

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