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SEO is pointless if your website does not
convert
Getting listed on Google's first result page is great. It's
not so great when you find out that you get a lot of visitors
through your high search engine rankings but only a few customers.
Search engine optimization is pointless if your website does
not convert visitors into customers. You'll actually lose
a lot of money if you don't take the time to optimize the
conversion rate of your website.
Why is optimizing the conversion rate of your website important?
Suppose you sell a product for $50. If the conversion rate
of your website is 1% then 1 out of 100 website visitors will
buy your product. That means that you will sell 2 units if
200 people visit your website.
If you want to double your sales, you have to double the
number of visitors that come to your website. That's usually
quite difficult.
If you optimize your web pages so that you have a conversion
rate of 2% then you can double your sales without getting
more visitors. Increasing the conversion rate of a website
is usually easier than getting more customers.
What can you do to improve the conversion rate of your website?
There are several things that you can do to improve the conversion
rate of your website:
Drive traffic to the most relevant pages on your website
Your website visitors should come to the most relevant pages
on your website. If you advertise on Google AdWords for the
search term "buy blue suede shoes" then your landing
page should be a page about blue suede shoes and it should
be possible to buy these shoes right on the page. The same
applies for visitors that you get through your regular search
engine rankings.
Check your website statistics for your pages with a high bounce
rate
Analyze your website statistics to find pages on your site
that have a high bounce rate. If too many people leave your
website without fulfilling the desired task then you have
to improve your pages and make them more relevant to the user's
query. Also check your statistics to find "404 not found"
and other errors.
Add a call to action on all of your landing pages
Every landing page should contain a call to action. Chances
are that a website visitor will see only a single page of
your website. That's why all pages should contain a call to
action so that your website visitors know what to do.
Further information on how to improve the conversion rate
of your web pages can be found on pages 238-246 of our free
SEO eBook (zipped PDF file).
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