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$100 Free Advertising!
We’re happy to announce that Local Search Masters was recently certified as a Google Adwords Partner. One perk from this is free vouchers from Google good for $100 of clicks to anyone who would like to try Adwords. If you’ve never tried paid marketing with Local Search Masters we will fund an online account with $100 FOR FREE just to show you what we can do. This month we’re going to fund a limited number of accounts, so you need to act now to take advantage of this great offer. Please call our newest team member Calvin at 615-584-8436 or email Calvin@LocalSearchMasters.com to get started today.
So Google is Giving the Big Brands Some Extra Love
Well, it looks like all of those small companies that worked their asses off to earn the top SERPS for highly competitive keywords have been devastated by Google’s newest “update” to the algo. Aaron Wall at SEO Book created a great post about the new heavy emphasis on branding from Google. It seems that now you can “buy relevancy”. For once, the SEO community is not overreacting to subtle changes in the SEROS, because Matt Cutts has addressed this newest incarnation in the algorithm.
What Does This All Mean
Well, if you have been competing on highly competitive, generic keyword phrases, then you are going to lose a lot of revenue from search engine traffic (unless you are a household name). So it seems that paid links are prohibited by Google Spam Team law, but having a 9 figure marketing budget is the new “SEO trick of the day.” This isn’t good news for small players that have developed a great niche on the web. There is one caveat to the new change: Most long-tail keywords are not going to be effected by this change. Local search you ask? In the clear.
The fact of the matter is that most of the generic phrases that this change applies to tend to have a low conversion rate for most sites. These companies need to understand that their long-tail keyword visitors are much more likely to convert that these visitors that are typically at the top of the sales funnel. Will it affect the bottom line? Yes. There are always people that become aware of your company from very broad keywords and come back later to convert. Anyone that is feeling the pain from this blow needs to take a step back, take a deep breath, and then needs to establish a plan of action to regain their revenue using the same skills that pushed them past the big dogs the first time. If any of you guys need help developing a new strategy, LSM is here to help.
The Importance of Conversion Optimization
Do you know how much you spend on marketing to drive a conversion on your website? If you don’t, find out immediately. For our example today, let’s assume that you are paying $10 for each on site conversion (Aren’t word problems fun!)That number could be great for your company or it could be far higher than you can afford, according to your specific product. Now let us now assume that your website has a 1% conversion rate. That means that for every 1 sale, you need 100 visitors to your website and at $10 per conversion, you are paying roughly 10 cents for every visitor. This leads me to my question-does it make more sense to continue paying $10 for every sale or does it make more sense to increase your conversion rate?
If in the above example you were able to increase your conversion rate all the way up to 2%, that would decrease the cost of every conversion down to $5. That would mean that, with all other variables holding true, every visitor to your website would now be worth twice as much to your business. But how is this possible you ask? Stick around for the rest of the pos
Start With Your Web Analytics
At LSM, this is always our first step with new clients. Show us how your site is performing and we can show you how your site can perform better. The most important stat that we look for when we are developing the initial conversion optimization strategy is how many people that make it to the form/shopping cart that do not finish the process.
Create a Test
So the page with containing your lead form has an 80% exit percentage. This is where the magic begins. I look at your form and you have 25 required fields. I ask you why you have to have someone’s fax number and you, the client, didn’t even know that the fax number field was required. We sit down together with the form and determine that you only really need 5 fields of the original 25. We make the assumption that if we drastically decrease the number of fields on the lead form, more people will complete our desired task. We implement the new form, measure the results, and compare them with the prior numbers. Ladies and gentlemen, we have just conducted a conversion optimization test.
Applying the Method to the Rest of the Website
We have laid the foundations of basic A/B testing above. This process can be used on testing new background colors on the website, through testing different sized images on the homepage. The end result can be decreasing the bounce rate on the homepage, or it can for increasing the number of people that finish watching a video on your “how to” page. With the use of a product like Google Website Optimizer, anyone can create, implement, and measure their own tests on their site.
Before launching your next online marketing campaign, take a deep thought about whether it makes more sense to focus on increasing your conversion rate for the long-term success of your website.
