Is Your SEO Focus Destroying Your Sales Conversions?
ShoeMoney
I get emails every day from people who rank in the search engines for their keywords but are not getting any leads from it. When I send them a list of like 20 things to do to improve their conversion they tell me “but could this affect my keyword ranking?”.Annoying…
ShoeMoney’s above comment reminded me a little of my own online story which engaged me to review the topic which I have split over two posts, this being the first, the second being Why Your Conversion Optimisation Is More Important Than Your SEO.
Once upon a time I too was guilty of being too focused on the traffic side of the revenue equation and the penny didn’t really drop for me until 2006 when I found the real secret lay in striking a balance between SEO and increasing ePV (earnings per visitor).
The “It’s So Simple It’s Stupid” Online Revenue Model
Producing online revenues in it’s simplest form is just a function of “visitors x ePV”. It seems so simple, yet the vast majority of people running websites online neglect one or the other.
Most businesses websites have a good product focus that’s complemented by good copy and prominent calls to action as a result of their experience with traditional marketing formats like print media, but still lack the know how to drive visitors to their site nor are they aware that they should be employing an internet marketing agency to help drive visitors to their site. Most have just bought into the “build it and they will come model” purported by their web designers who claim to offer well SEOed site design with Google doing the rest.
On the other side of the coin you have many passionate bloggers and hobby site owners who find their sites have outgrow their own ability to maintain on a part time basis as popularity follows their passion to produce quality content, products or services. In most cases if these hobby sites and blogs were better monetised it would justify a greater commitment from the webmaster, ultimately producing a better user experience for the visitors and everyone would win.
Finding the Balance Between SEO and Conversion Optimisation
When it comes to finding the balance between SEO and conversion optimisation eyeballs are more important than earnings in the beginning. However with the diminishing marginal returns of SEO coupled with the rising opportunity cost of neglecting on page conversion optimisation there comes a tipping point where a greater ROI can be achieved through focusing on extracting greater value from each visitors.
This turning point is different for different sites and different business models. For your typical blogger blogging about their passion monetizing their site primarily with Google AdSense the turning point comes around the 500 visitor/day mark when a serious analysis of revenue optimisation should be undertaken.
For a local business website the turning point occurs at much lower levels of traffic due to the higher margins of selling a tangible product or service. For many business websites a serious conversion optimisation review should be done when receiving in excess of 50 visitors/days. Additional consideration should also be given to businesses competing in auction based advertising markets, like Google AdWords, as they can better compete over the long run if their website produce higher rates of conversion than their competitors justifying a higher profitable max bid.
Evolution Of The New Internet Marketing Firm
There seems to be a large gap in the market within Australia (my local market) for firms that produce quality, usable web designs, that are well optimised for search engines yet still have a focus on conversion. Moving forward it is difficult to not see major SEO, PPC, web design, copy writing firm converging into one stop shops of online business presence given their mutualism.
It would seem that at this stage most small businesses continue to primarily gauge the success of their business website almost holistically on traffic and as such almost exclusively pursue methods of increasing search rankings. This is perfectly highlighted by the fact that there are over a 1,200,000 results when searching for “search engine optimisation” in Australia, but less than 15,000 results for either “conversion optimisation” or “landing page optimisation”. In the not too distant future the smart small business operators will not be solely looking for SEO services alone rather a more comprehensive internet marketing service.
The moral of the story is to know what you’re in the game of optimisation for; sales not traffic – Why Your Conversion Optimisation Is More Important Than Your SEO.