I am here at the Pay Per Conversion panel at Search Engine Strategies. Bret Crosby at Google is discussing the conversion process and the many mistakes web site owners make. From a marketing perspective we want to provide the products and/or services which our customers want. The search engine are no different, they want to provide the most relevant search results to the searcher. The issue comes into play where website owners and webmasters fail to optimize their marketing efforts to ensure the potential customer really finds what their looking for.
The example give is a search for “pink roses” and within the search engine result pages the first sponsored listing is “Pink Rose from $39.99”, once we clicked the link we were taken to a page that didn’t display pink roses at all. We discussed how by not showcasing what the searcher was looking for, so they lose the scent and will most likely go somewhere else resulting in a lost sale.
One thing that webmasters and business owners can do to help optimize their site is to have someone else, a third party really go through the website and surf through it. You are really able to understand potential issues, where they surf through, and where they don’t by conducting this test.
The panel starts to talk about the importance of having some type of analytics on your website to have the ability to understand where your visitors come from(Geographically), what the bounce rate is, where they surf to, what keywords were searched to find you.
They really want to stress the importance of landing page optimization. The landing page is the first page visitors come to when they access your website. If the landing page is not optimized to reflect the topic in which the searcher was looking for they will most likely leave the website. You can use your analytic data to better understand what searchers are doing once they arrive at your landing pages and understand which ones are preforming better. You can also use a feature called site overlay to really understand what sections of your web page have the most activity, and what sections are not really seen at all.
You should also have some type of site search function on your site which will allow your visitors to search for what they really want to find. This function will also allow you to see what the visitors that come to your site are looking for. Maybe there is a product, service, or informational piece that your not providing but your visitors really want to see. Using the site search feature will allow you to uncover this information.
