The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
December 2006, Volume 5, Issue 12

A Little Love for SEO: Improving Visibility and Conversion with Natural Search Strategies

Special Article in Response to a Reader’s Query

Brian Kaminski, Managing Director, iProspect San Francisco

“…How do you have a naturally highly ranked page that will also look good and create sales? There seems to be a disconnect in the industry. You all talk about landing pages that convert but that's only for PPC. How do you design an optimized site page that can get a natural high ranking and convert sales?”

Imagine that you ignored roughly 75% of your potential customers. No sane marketer would even contemplate such a ridiculous notion. Right?

You tell me. Are you really maximizing your returns from natural search engine optimization (SEO)? Now before you answer, let’s get this out on the table: doing some keyword research, writing meta tags and asking a few sites for links to your site is not SEO. In fact, it is the equivalent of driving to the gym, sitting at your locker, watching everyone else work out, and then being jealous of how good they look.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

The most common reasons people cite for not taking SEO seriously enough or avoiding it altogether are: pay per click advertising (PPC) is easier, SEO is hard and takes time to produce results, and SEO only brings traffic, but not paying customers. Allow me to touch on each of these three below:

"Pay per click advertising is easier." I see the impact that PPC drives for clients on a daily basis; these programs are certainly easier to get going than SEO and provide much more in the way of instant gratification. However, PPC costs continue to rise and your ROI will decrease over time. Additionally, once you have established a strong SEO campaign, the incremental results are “free” and last indefinitely. Also, many PPC marketers find themselves in bidding wars between competitors. This is another reason that costs for PPC can increase substantially over a short period of time.

"SEO is hard and takes time to produce results." Experience has taught me that doing SEO right does require time and sweat, and although results take at least a few months to materialize, the incremental revenues it produces really help the bottom line and generally produce a higher overall ROI than PPC advertising. Better to get a head start on a sound SEO strategy to be ahead of the curve!

"SEO only brings traffic, not paying customers." Simply, you’re doing something wrong. It could be that you’re not targeting the appropriate keywords, or it could be that you’re not properly mapping keywords to the most relevant pages on your website. Read further to learn more.

Make Your Site Work for Natural Search

I could spend days talking to you about the incredible SEO results that our clients achieve every day, but I will spare you the details. Instead, I will offer you advice on how to make your site work from a search and conversion perspective, as well as a few thoughts on the importance of keyword mapping. First, it is important to understand that a good page for SEO can also be very user-friendly and drive conversions. Think about it for a second. A good SEO page has a consistent blend of a keyword theme in the URL, meta data, body content and internal and external links. Well, interestingly enough, having a consistent theme throughout the page and simplifying the page for a keyword will also help to improve conversion.

Check Your Keyword List

This is where the irony sets in. Most people who complain that SEO is not converting are not ranking on terms that can convert. To see if you fall into this category, compare the terms that you are purchasing in PPC to those you are ranking on in organic search. You will most likely be surprised at the difference in the quality of the terms. A lot of marketers compare their SEO campaign to their PPC campaign and find that the PPC campaign is converting much better. This is most often due to a poorly constructed SEO campaign—one that’s not targeting a robust list of relevant search terms that include competitive keywords. After all, it’s easier to rank prominently on two, three and four-word search terms that are less competitive. If you haven’t properly optimized your SEO campaign, you’ll see that the PPC campaign is performing better because you can simply buy top placement for your most competitive keywords. My experience has shown that clients performing well on key organic search terms see conversion rates similar to, and often greater than, PPC ads. So before you blame the method of delivery, make sure you are checking to see that what is delivered is consistent.

My best advice for avoiding conversion troubles from organic search is to focus the majority of your efforts on your most important keywords. These keywords are your most competitive and need the most attention to do well. Also, make sure to map your keywords to pages correctly. This will ensure that your users arrive at the right page and will play a huge role in netting conversions.

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: December 2006, Volume 5, Issue 12

A Little Love for SEO: Improving Visibility and Conversion with Natural Search Strategies

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
December 2006, Volume 5, Issue 12