What's the best SEO practice to get conversion rate up?

[blackrino]

If you want to get conversion rate up what is the best method to do so?

[Damien-Anderson]

I would say a few things:

• Spend time defining your keyword phrases

• Keep your page focused on a single theme

• Leverage PPC and use Google Web Optimizer to get the best conversion rate you can

• Develop valuable relationship links to your page

[GOYMedia48]

One way is to pay professionals like www.conversion-rate-experts.com at least £5k per month and they will sort you out!  BUT at the very least go check out their excellent site for free tips and reading resources.

Technically SEO has no part in conversion, SEO drives traffic and if you do it well, targeted informed buyer type traffic.  How your online business converts is down to many factors.  The best thing you can do is test test test and keep on testing until you get results.  Something may be so simple to change and boost conversion rates by 400% over night (and be prepared to lose any ideas on what works for you - Joe public are a strange bunch)

Get over to CRE and good luck!

[Entrusteddev]

In my personal experience the one thing I found that makes conversions shoot up is when Delivery Information (delivery cost in particular is readily available) or even better when delivery is free.

And as Richard says above, checkout is a simple process, but in additon to that - the checkout process does NOT require registration to the site.

[CharlesMontgomery]

Look at google analytics for your keywords. Look at the keywords that have high bounce rates. Then, look at the pages of your site that have the highest bounce rate. Look for ways to improve conversions by finding out if the keyword with a high bounce rate is bringing traffic to the wrong page. For instance, you could have your homepage ranked, where a product page in that same rank would actually convert better. You have to be careful with this, but it is worth a look if your bounce rates are extremely high for certain keywords.

Take a look at the pages with low bounce rates and compare them to the pages with high bounce rates. Look at these pages as a consumer. Why are some pages converting and other are not? By analyzing what is working, you can make changes to the pages with high bounce rates and increase conversions.

Google analytics will tell you what you need to know!

[uMoR]

My suggestion is this: first of all you need to track your SEO acquisition cost, see this link:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2010/12/best-downloadable-custom-web-analytics-reports.html

The second thing is to look at the data: if your ROI for SEO acquisition is positive my suggestion is to take advantage of all of the traffic that you can. In other words, SEO traffic is free and you can't know which is the impact that being listed for many many keyword could have on your overall conversion, so take it all.

The usual scenario is that on e-commerce website, informational keyword doesn't convert directly (ex. "laptop", "best laptop", "laptop performance"), instead of transactional keyword that converts (ex. "acer aspire xxx buy online" ...).

What people don't see, in my view, is that is quite impossible to track the benefit of having your brand exposed trough the overall search funnel (awareness, interest, learn, shop, buy).

So my suggestion is, since your SEO ROI is positive, to take the most traffic that you can, both from specific keyword and from general keyword giving the best content that you can to your visitor. Make sure to follow the rule that the visitor position and what they find on your website must be aligned. I think that visitor are asking for something trough they're search query, you need to provide the best answer possible to them in order to give the best experience possible and you have to make it the most easier for them to have this experience (in other words: if your website usability is a sh*t and users don't understand how to take action on your website, it's less likely that they will take the desired action on your website instead of having a good website usability and good content :).

What are your visitor looking for ? What do they wants ? I mean, if a visitor search for "acer laptop performance", what do they expect to find on your landing page ? How can you provide this to your visitor ?

I think that this will improve your SEO conversion rate, your brand loyalty, authority, trust etc.

Then you could implement a few other strategy to improve CR specifically. My suggestion is to engage with people, in some way. The best thing that you can do, IMHO, is to create a communication channel between you and your visitors. It could be trough an email marketing strategy, it could be trough your blog, twitter, facebook etc etc, it doesn't matter.

I think that this rule, in general, is so f*cking important in our work: if people don't (or can't remember) that you exists, why do you expect that they are gonna buy from you ?

I mean, let's say that you catch up a visitor that is searching for an informational keyword like "acer inspire review". And this visitor land on your landing page. We can suppose that in that specific moment the visitor is not ready to buy (looking for information) BUT it could be ready in the future. We cannot know when.

So two things happens: the first one is that if the content you provide is good, you create a positive experience in the visitor mind (I get from this site what I'm searching for), the second one is that you had a point of contact with a potential client.

And I think that you have to leverage this possibility. If you engage, if you create a communication channel, you can communicate with the visitors saying that "you are alive". This process will surely improve the possibility that the visitor will buy from you when ready: the visitor knows that you exsist and when is ready to buy.. You're simplifying the visitor experience.

Why ?
Because if the visitor wants to buy a specific produtct, and has had a good experience on your website, and you offer what the is looking for, the only action that he should take is visit your website / click your email link and buy instead of spending hours searching for another online store from which to buy.

etc. etc. :))

[blackrino]

very good advise. I like that!

[Getz.pro]

To improve your CRO (conversion rate optimization), consider a Click here and save more! which puts the item in the shopping cart at maybe a slight discount. 1 or 2 percent or whatever your sale price is.

Also, make checkout VERY easy and quick. As few screens as possible. I hate 3-4 pages just to purchase something. About as annoying as the physical store

[blackrino]

Yeah I have that set up already and we are doing long tail keywords. We get almost 50k/month so there's a lot of keywords to be searched.

[dunklea]

Sounds to me like you haven't researched and targeted the right keywords. In my experience, long tail keywords convert better than high volume keywords. The trick is to target A LOT of long tail keywords to keep your volume and sales up.

I would setup a Google Adwords account and start testing there to see which keywords convert the best, and then target those same keywords in organic search. This way you can quickly get relevant feedback.

[blackrino]

That helps a lot! Thanks!

[goodnewscowboy]

Hi Alexa:

While strictly speaking, SEO is a separate discipline from CO (conversion optimization) it is possible to use  CO in conjunction with SEO.

Via your analytics, determine which terms are converting better or worse. When you get a handle on the jigher converting terms, start doing keyword research with those termsreplacing your targeted keywords in your SEO campaign with them.

To use  Montanna's example, you may find that the term "golf clubs" doesn't convert well, but instead the term "TX-90 does.

[MontanaFlynn83]

Target good keywords!  For example, if I were selling golf clubs I wouldn't spend all my time optimizing for the term "Golf" or even "Golf Clubs" I would spend time going after keywords like "TX-90 Golf Club" or "Cheap golf clubs".

[DonnieCooper]

Use Google's Website Optimizer, and study conversion-rate-experts.

[blackrino]

We're trying to increase sales.

[Getz.pro]

What are you converting? To email sign ups? Sales? Contacting the company? First define that, then make sure that is in their face all the time!

I put our email sign up form in the footer and our sign ups have grown. I have a 'Email Us' in the header. Phone numbers everywhere.

People might not know what you want them to do once they are done reading the page. Make sure you tell them what the next step is.

If it is a landing page, try taking all other content off the page except for the exact message they linked there to read and the next step; your conversion.

Cheers,

[blackrino]

Well I've been increasing traffic, but the conversion rate has stayed relatively the same if not gone down. I only do White Hat SEO tactics, but I wasn't sure if there was a better way to do SEO for product sites verses a non product site.

[EndeR-]

Are you trying to find the best ways to increase your conversion rate ? Or are you asking what are the most SEO friendly to increase conversion rate?

I don't think there are best SEO ways to do that, except not to use forbidden types of cloacking. Using Google Website Optimizer is SEO friendly for instance.