3 Vital Secrets to Smart Search Engine Optimization
Last week my team and I went over each and every of our 100+ clients and we came to a disturbing conclusion. Some of the clients who had indicated the greatest need of traffic also happen to have some of the most difficult web sites that we've ever tried to use.
The reality is that all of our clients are looking to increase their sales revenue, but rather than focus their effort on increasing their ROI, many have simply dumped more money into receiving more visitors to their sites. If a company is only receiving 1 order for every 200 visitors, then the apparent logic is to simply get more visitors to get more orders.
Three of the best-kept search engine optimization secrets
These may be some of the best-kept search engine optimization secrets that the world's largest corporations would never tell you. Does this sound like hype? Well it isn't. The truth is that the most successful online businesses do not rely solely on their keyword placement.
Most professional search engine optimization experts will tell you that a successful online business must have top listings. This alone is a fallacy. Combine top listings with the three techniques revealed here and this can mean a huge increase of business for you.
SECRET #1 - Direct traffic to appropriate pages
Advertising and Marketing has just as much to do with psychology as it does with fulfilling the needs of your customers.
The phrase that your potential customers type into a search engine is the phrase that is part of the conversation going on inside their head. In order to successfully sell to this person, your web site must answer the questions that they are asking inside their head. You are more likely to get the sale if the customer does not have to search again for their need once they visit your site.
Some search engine optimization services may simply target a dozen or less keywords because you believe that you will receive the most traffic from those generic keyword phrases. Many times it has more to do with the pride of the SEO and the assumed value that the web site owner perceives than it has to do with actual sales and lead generation results. This can often lead to disappointment if the SEO service is unable to achieve results for those limited keywords, or it is equally frustrating if those limited narrowly focused keywords do not actually pull results for you.
In order to answer the questions in the conversation going on inside your potential customer's head, you must not only land them on a page relevant to what they're looking for, but you must be able to target multiple variations of each keyword phrase they may type into the search engines. For search engine optimization to be effective, it must rely on more than the usual SEO tactics. You must use good marketing and usability skills as well.
Fact: Most users back out of the first page that they see if that page does not answer the question to the conversation in their head.
Analysis: If you're paying per click and sending people to your home page or a splash page, you could be paying a great deal for expensive keywords without receiving as many sales as you should.
SECRET #2 - Web site usability design
Once again, for best results the page they visit must answer all of their questions as soon as they enter your site. A typical transaction can easily have at least 100 questions from within the conversation that the person has in their head. At every step in the process, if your site leaves any doubt, you may have just lost the transaction, whether that is their willingness to enter lead information, or an actual purchase of a product.
Typical conversations can start with questions such as:
1: Does this site have what I 'm looking for?
2: Is this a real business?
3: Can I trust this business?
4: Is this the best product and service for the best price?
5: Will I regret this transaction?
6: Can I afford not to do this?
7: What do I do now?
Anything that interrupts or disturbs this process can cause the person to immediately back out of your site. It can be something as simple as having to scroll left to right, to something as complex as how to operate your shopping cart.
FACT: Transactions are often lost at the moment the potential customer is pulling their credit card out of their wallet. We have an unpublished secret we use to help prevent this.
SECRET #3 - Emotional Appeal
There are also influences that professional advertisers put into the message to help stimulate answers to these questions. For instance, if someone is visiting a site to buy a dog leash, are they simply looking for a dog leash? No, they're looking out for the safety and best interest of the pet they love.
This works with every single product and service. Everything has emotional value, whether it is the ability to earn more money in less time so that you can create more free time to spend with your children, to being able to achieve the goal of owning your favorite Harley, taking a vacation, or simply putting food on the table. Everything from apple sauce just like grandma used to make, to yellow highlighters you need in order to learn more, study better, graduate college, and achieve your goals. Everything has emotional value.
When you are evaluating your site for keyword phrases. You must go beyond the mentality of a retailer and start thinking as a customer. Most SEO's will come with keywords such as pet leash, pet leashes, and discount pet leashes. But when you think about your site from the perspective of a customer, you can come up with ideas for not only great keyword phrases, but for great content for your site. Such as pet safety, techniques for pet safety, pet training techniques. At this point you've taken the customer beyond the search for a leash, you've opened yourself up to them as a valuable resource to fulfill what they're actually trying to accomplish, and they will be more than happy to buy that leash too.
Fact: Hallmark sells a piece of paper with a picture on it just like their competitors. Hallmark's emotional appeal in advertising suggests that everybody looks at the back of the card to see if someone loves him or her enough to buy a Hallmark.
Which caused you to pick up the phone? A: Sprint 10 cents a minute or B: Reach out and touch someone, AT&T.
What does all of this have to do with search engine optimization?
The entire purpose of search engine optimization is to bring more traffic to your web site. But what's the point in having traffic if nobody buys? One of our clients in Vail, Colorado lamented that another SEO completely destroyed their site. "Now it's harder to navigate than ever, and everything is confusing. What's the point in increasing your traffic by 20% if you lose 40% of your conversion?" he said.
It's not just about the optimization of your keywords, but the optimization of the source of those keywords. Smart search engine optimization must fulfill not only the goal of the end-user, but it must be intelligently designed to fulfill the goal of the site receiving the traffic.
Tony D. Baker is a marketing consultant and public speaker for Smart Search Engine Optimization (SmartSEO.com)
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