SEO, Internet Marketing, and other things I don't know much about…
Archive for October, 2009
SEO or CRO?
Oct 29th
First things first, what is CRO? CRO is (among other things) conversion rate optimisation. Put simply, this is taking an existing product or service for sale on the web, and improving the sale rate of the product, without a heavy focus on increasing traffic numbers. Although traffic may play a small part in CRO, the main focus is optimising the site itself to increase the amount of sales per visitor to the site. For example, XYZ.com may be receiving 1,000 hits per month and getting 10 sales (a sale rate of 1%). The job of a CRO would be to increase that percentage, not the number of hits.
Why post this on an SEO blog you ask? I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but sometimes traffic isn’t the issue, it’s saleability. Many SEO professionals can increase your traffic 10,000%, but will it increase sales?
Take a look at your current sale rate. Is it at what you think is a reasonable level? Anywhere between 0.5%-8% are good benchmark figures, with 1%-2% being good levels for a financial website for example, whereas retail websites can go as high as an 8% conversion rate. If you are somewhere in this conversion rate (5%-8% for retail, and slightly lower for most other services), then SEO is what you should be focusing on.
However, if have a conversion rate of 2% or lower, then maybe your first port of call should be optimising for conversion, not for traffic levels.
I am no conversion expert, but I have done some work with it in the past, and here are a few tips to help increase your conversion rate (yes, most of them are just common sense but remember a conversion is a different thing for each site, sometimes a conversion is simply a phone call, these are just simple points that should work on every website).
Direct the User
Don’t let the user aimlessly stumble about your website. Try to direct them to sales pages in the least clicks possible. Ideally you should be able to make a sale on the first page they land on. Have “Buy Now” buttons spread out so that one is always visible on the browser (but try and do it in a neat, attractive way).
Attractive Yet Simple
Having an attractive site is important. Think about when you buy something from a retail store, the look and feel of the store determines how much you are willing to pay, what you expect to find, how long you spend there etc. A website is no different. Make your website an inviting space for users where they can linger.
As with everything I seem to write there is a ‘but’. In this case it involves ensuring your website is attractive, while still maintaining it’s ease-of-use. Don’t overuse Flash or annoying animations, and make sure your images aren’t so large that they increase loading times substantially. Avoid clutter and superfluous information/images/text as this simply distracts the user from what they should be doing, buying!
Alter Your Pricing, Payment Options
By offering a range of payment and pricing options, you are making your product readily accessible to more markets. Not everybody has a credit card, not everybody trusts direct debit. Make sure you use PayPal as one of the options, as this tends to be one of the safest options for both you the seller and the buyer. Buyers tend to trust PayPal more than standard payment options.
Offer a Guarantee
By offering a guarantee of some sort, money-back is the most common, you can prove to the customer that you are so confident in your product you can guarantee they will be satisfied with it. How can they lose then? If they love your product (which they should) they simply completed the transaction that was expected, and if not they haven’t lost anything.
Be Open, Honest and Trustworthy
Don’t try and hide anything, or put extra charges behind a wall of tiny text and Terms and Conditions. Make the charges transparent, so the buyer isn’t hit with extra charges at the last minute (as there is no surer way of blowing a sale). If you have extra credit card charges, shipping costs etc, make sure the buyer knows about it early on.
Post some testimonials of happy buyers in the past, show that you are posting by courier and give them the reference number, give realistic time frames for delivery, anything to reassure the buyer.
I know these are all relatively obvious points, but I have used them all in the past to up the conversion rate of a number of sites. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or disagreements please comment!
SEO for Small Business
Oct 22nd
A question I’ve had a few times is whether SEO is worth doing for small businesses. The short answer is yes, although the strategies you will employ will differ from an e-commerce, or advertising orientated website. Generally a small-business website should be easier to SEO, but the targeting becomes very important. Every website should be optimised for the search engines, as even if it drives minimal traffic, it can increase profile and credibility.
While traffic for certain small businesses from the SERP’s may be small, conversion rates tend to be quite a bit higher than for more highly traffic keywords. For example, people searching for “hair salon Lane Cove” more than likely are looking for a hair salon where then can get a haircut sooner rather than later.
Select Your Keywords Carefully
The keywords you choose to optimise for are very important for small business. Generally, the users searching for more niche search terms are searching for very specific sites, and even if you rank for the term you will more than likely be skipped as users search for the specific results.
Brainstorm what you would search for if you were a prospective client searching for your business. For Green’s on Blenheim some keywords might be:
- “Green’s on Blenheim”
- “pizza North Ryde”
- “pizza Ryde”
- “North Ryde takeaway”
Your list should be longer than this. Once you have completed your list have a look at what ranks at the moment. Do they obviously use SEO? What are their titles? Where do they get their links from? Don’t forget to use Google’s Keyword Tool to find some good keywords…
I would recommend trying to rank for industry and geographic location (i.e. “pizza North Ryde” or “plumber Dubbo”), as this would result in a high level of conversions.
Keep the On-Site SEO Simple and Targetted
Obviously, as a business website, your site’s content can’t be 100% customised for SEO purposes. This need not affect rankings, since Google rewards totally unique content (which yours should be!)
- Make sure you have the main keywords in your titles once
- Do this for each page of your website so they all rank
- Ensure your site is easy to navigate
- Have a simple HTML navigation structure that is easy to use for users and for search engine spiders
- Don’t be too fancy
- Google can’t read Flash (for now), so best to keep to HTML as that is the best for SEO
Customise Your Off-Site
I would never deny the importance of links in SEO, but for small business SEO it is a lot more efficient and effective to customise your link gathering. Generally, competition will be lower for the keywords you have selected, thus a wide-ranging and all-encompassing link building campaign, while it may have it’s benefits, will be superfluous. Here’s a few tips for good off-site small business optimisation:
- Submit to all the relevant directories
- Yahoo Local and Google Local are perfect examples. A submission to Google Local can often result in an appearance above the search results in Google.
- Submit to industry relevant directories
- Try to gather links from sites that would genuinely link to you. That might be clients, suppliers, or even competition!
- Create and submit a Google sitemap using Google’s Webmaster Tools.
- Would it be worth creating a Twitter or Facebook account for your business? Often the answer is ‘no’, but if you think you have something interesting and relevant to share of actual value then this is a great way of gathering links and increasing profile.
Tracking and Maintenance
As I said in earlier posts, the importance of using Google Analytics effectively cannot be stressed enough. By monitoring traffic flow daily, and finding where it came from will allow you to fine-tune your SEO over time.
Also monitor how your site goes in the SERP’s. Track the results weekly to see what you begin to rank for, and what is dragging the chain. This way you will learn what deserve attention and focus, and what can be left by the wayside.
Using Twitter for SEO
Oct 15th
As much of a computer nerd as I may be, I avoided using Twitter for quite a while, and only started using it properly about three months ago. At first I didn’t see much point to a “micro-blogging” service, but the more I use it the more I’m beginning to understand why it’s used, and in turn how it can be used for SEO purposes.
Admittedly, any link posted on Twitter appears as “nofollow” and thus isn’t much good for passing any link juice or PageRank. However, we do know that Google still crawls “nofollow” links (doesn’t make much sense, does it) and so your links will still get followed and thus any updates you make to your website will get cached quicker. The main benefit is not SEO though, it is to drive direct traffic and increase credibility.
It would also seem that Google has an infatuation with Twitter, and Tweets tend to show up reasonably quickly in the SERP’s. There are a few tips when using Twitter that may help you out if you are Tweeting for SEO purposes:
Pick a Good Username
Your username will also become your Twitter URL (i.e. www.Twitter.com/mjwtaylor) so try and make it either something to do with your name or your business name. This will help your rankings in Google and ensure people know exactly what they have found when they come across your account. It will also ensure your account is found easily when searched for through Twitter itself.
Write an Effective Bio
Ensure you put in any critical information, keywords or key phrases in your bio as this is the most important part of your Twitter account and will be the core content Google sees. It also tells the reader what you are about and what they can expect to find in your Tweets.
Tweet About Things That Interest You
This might seem obvious, but make sure you don’t just Tweet about your website. Otherwise people won’t see any value in your Tweets. Sure if you have something on your site you want to promote, then post about it, but make sure you post about other things as well.
Tweet Regularly, but Not Too Regularly
Don’t overdo your Tweets. People will lose interest if you are Tweeting dozens of times everyday. At the same time, people will forget about you if you only post once a month. I like posting once a day or so, but in saying that, if you have something interesting to share then by all means share it!
Begin Your Tweet with Keywords
Google tends to take into account approximately the first 40 characters from a Tweet for SEO purposes (as it also shows “Twitter” and your username before showing the tweet itself, so don’t have a stupidly long username!). Make sure in this 42 characters you have included the keyword or key phrase (but in a way that makes sense).
Include Your Keyword
Be sure to include your keyword at least once in your Tweet, preferably more but not in a spammy way. Try to include “buzz words” if possible, which should get you some traffic through people searching for the “buzz” terms.
Shorten Your URL!
Most links from Twitter tend to be deep links which have a huge amount of characters in them. You don’t have the characters to waste in Twitter, so try using one of the many URL shorteners out there. My preference is a new service called Twilitics. It’s simple, easy to use and provides you with a simple tracking mechanism showing how many times your link has been clicked. Bit.ly is also a useful service.
Spread the Word
Make sure people know about your Twitter account. You can do this by adding your Twitter URL to your email signature, adding it to your website, or spreading it on your forum signatures.
Give it Some Link Love
Twitter accounts need link love too! Where possible send a couple of links pointing to your Twitter account to ensure Google finds it. The same theory applies to Twitter accounts as it does to normal websites: the better the quality of links you get to it, the better it will rank…
As always, if you have any questions leave me a comment and the same goes for if you think I have left out something important.
