Search Engine Marketing Done Right

Part 4: Close the Deal

In his series Search Engine Marketing Done Right, Steve Winkler takes a look at how to turn visitors into buying customers.

You are not alone if you’re experiencing moderate levels of traffic that do not always equate to the sales that you expect. Therefore, spend some time, review these tips and make changes to your website to get those deals closed.

All too often we come across websites that simply confuse the visitor. Perhaps you can relate to me on this; whether it’s a homegrown website selling kewpie dolls or a niche retailer of obscure and seldom desired products, if it doesn’t make sense, I’m not buying.

While I do understand that many people who sell online are constrained by tight budgets, low cost does not have to mean low quality. However, whether you have an unlimited budget or you are working on a website that deviates from the norm will most likely offend customers and kill sales.

There are more than just a small handful of sites that have not grasped the innate need for logical and easy to use retail layouts. We consumers are restless; impatient bunches who are displeased when we’re not serviced quickly and with enthusiasm.

Websites that make us navigate through unorganized or poorly organized shopping carts will not get our money. Unlike the world of brick and mortar retail, the Internet is only now beginning to adopt standards to layout, form and function.

Industry standards for conversion rates are often in the range of .5% to 2% of all traffic. If you get quality traffic but don’t have an interactive, easy to use layout and navigation, your sales will suffer. Use these tips and techniques to increase your conversion rate to an acceptable level.

The Side Door

Growing up, I remember that we rarely ever used the front door of the house. While it was our formal entrance, Mother would channel us through the garage or the side door as a matter of purpose. Our front door was a mere formality, reserved for the guests, salespeople, the postal carriers and neighbors.

For our family, it was simply more functional to enter through entrances other than the front door. The side door of our house led right to the kitchen and den, our common family gathering spots. Our side entrance, while not as elegant served to be a more direct route to the rooms of our house that were more commonly used.

Sears stores are the first thing that come to mind when I think of Brick and Mortar stores with a good concept of effectively channeling traffic through their stores. When I need to go to the men’s wear department I enter through the closest entrance, when I need to browse their selection of tools, I enter through a separate entrance.

Multiple entrances to a retail store enable you to separate your patrons from one another and more importantly, give people options for where they go and how they buy.

The side door strategy of online marketing is simple. You have a unique opportunity to direct potential customers directly to their destination. By limiting the thought processes of navigation your can effectively and easily increase your conversion rates from your current rate of conversion.

Modern search engine marketing/optimization (SEM/SEO) techniques are finally beginning to incorporate attention to sales within more comprehensive programs. A good SEM campaign will optimize the customer experience by routing them as close to the final destination as possible.

Step 1. Site architecture

Conceptualize your website as nothing more than a brick and mortar store. For this to work, think of a department store attached to a mall, one that has a main entrance but also entrances on all sides and on multiple floors. Each entrance places your guest strategically in a department of your store.

A patron familiar with a brick and mortar store may purposely enter the house wares section of the store rather than the Men’s department if their intention is to purchase a set of bake ware.

To set this up in your online store, use the following guidelines:

• Analyze your current structure including your shopping cart to see if you can easily departmentalize your products
• Assign your products to category-specific departments
• Organize your products within those departments in a format similar to your competition
• Make sure you provide a clear path of navigation to the rest of the site in case your customer wants to visit another department.

Step 2. Keyword Placement

Your keyword selection and placement and Meta tag content should be nothing more than a reflection of the content on the page. This is the empirical purpose of Meta tags and keyword selection. You can do a step better and perform traditional organic SEO by modifying your content to support specific keywords. Good SEO in an SEM program will modify a good site to make it visible to the search engines.

Depending on your catalog of products and the size of your shopping cart, you can easily come up with hundreds of terms that you would like to gain traffic on. If you do not want to fail miserably you must prioritize your keyword list.

As a rule of thumb, narrow the focus of each page to the 10 to 25 most important terms. A narrow per-page focus such as this will ensure that you can effectively support multiple terms without changing the general look and feel of your website.

You should maintain a steady level of content consistent with the keyword list on each page to maximize your keyword ranking.

Failsafe Keyword Placement:

Step 3. Link Placement

Your link strategy is important and not all links are created equal. Your link program will see great returns if you focus your attention on attracting the proper reciprocal links.

A whole book can be written on proper link strategy, so for the sake of brevity consult a link building professional on whom you should be linking with, and why you should be linking with certain websites and directories over others.

For the purpose of this information the links I refer to are reciprocal links with supportive websites external to your own. Internal linking is every bit as important for your overall link strategy.

Where you place your links on your website is becoming ever increasingly more important as a good link can support specific information. Depending on the diversity of your products link placement can gain exposure and bolster the credibility of the information that it respectively points to.

Deep link placement can be cumbersome in a deep, dynamic site but the rewards of proper link placement can reap tremendous rewards in page separation. You should make it a point to link well with industry directories, manufacturers, complimentary retailers and consumer and industry news organizations.

That’s about it! You’re done! Once these items are incorporated into your site, you will have effectively tackled the most overlooked portions of closing the deal.

This empirical strategy is easily customizable and easy to incorporate into your SEM/SEO strategy. SEM/SEO isn’t easy and while some major providers make it look and seem simple to achieve results, time is the single factor that cannot be avoided. Expect that your SEM/SEO will consume a good part of your time. Also do not hesitate to call an expert for tips and advice specific to issues that may arise.

You may also want to take a look at other installments in this series:
Part 1: The Order of Operations
Part 2: How Many Clicks does it Take?
Part 3: Synergestic Search Engine Marketing

See also the Pandia Search Engine Marketing Tutorial.

Steve Winkler is the Business Development Manager of the www.KeywordRanking.com team of Search Engine and marketing professionals.

Steve Winkler has experience in demographic based marketing, interactive marketing programs and business efficiency consultation. Click here for more information, a free ranking report or a free in depth consultation. He can also be reached via email: swinkler@keywordranking.com

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