Friday, August 28, 2009

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

Get more detail visit SEO Sydney..

The effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website

You've probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. This will have a major impact on the search engine landscape and there definitely will be effects on your website rankings and the number of visitors that your website will get.

The basic facts

Yahoo is going to give up their own search technology and use Microsoft's search technology instead. Bing.com will power the organic and the paid search results on Yahoo (except for premium ads on Yahoo).

Self-serve advertising (i.e. the AdWords competitor) will be managed by Microsoft's AdCenter. Microsoft will get access to Yahoo's search technology and can use it to improve its own search technology.

What does this mean for your website?

    1. You should optimize for Bing.com.

      Yahoo/Bing will have a search market share of at least 15% (that's the current market share of MSN and Yahoo combined - some statistics show a much higher market share).

      If you do not optimize some of your website pages for Bing, you'll lose a lot of visitors and sales.

      The optimizer works with the US version of Bing as well as with many country versions. Recent research has shown that Bing's traffic is more likely to convert.

    2. Yahoo's inbound link data will probably be lost.

      Yahoo is the search engine that currently returns the most inbound link data. When Yahoo drops its index, that data will probably be lost.

    3. A big PPC provider will be gone, an even bigger provider will appear.

      Microsoft will provide the search ads for Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo will close its own paid search offerings. That means that you will be able to manage your ads for both Yahoo and Bing in one user interface. It probably also means rising bid prices on Yahoo and Bing.

    4. Yahoo might close some of their websites.

      Yahoo might put its Internet directory into question as well as their alternative search applications SearchMonkey and SearchBOSS. Applications such as Yahoo Maps might also be reconsidered because Bing offers similar services.

    5. There will be two independent search result pages.

      Yahoo will have full control over the user interface of their search form. The ordering of the results, the layout and the whole search focus can be different from Bing. That means that you still might have to optimize your website for both search engines.
The deal still needs shareholder and legal approval. Yahoo and Microsoft hope that the changes will be in place by early 2010. If you want to participate from the change as soon as possible.

Get more detail!! Visit SEO Services..

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Search Engines Evolution

Search engines were not intelligent a few years ago. They were not able to give the most relevant results to the people who searched for specific information. They were called as the "meta search engines". But many things have changed now. Complex algorithms dependent on hundreds of factors are now deciding the best relevant pages to be shown to the searchers. Thus the strategy of a SEO professional must also change as these algorithms are tweaked constantly. Things to Remember About SEO·

Maintaining a natural link profile is very important since the search engines want to give more importance to the web pages which are not developing artificial links,
  • Diversifying the links is very important to see long term benefits,
  • Spreading your links in various domains is seen as a better practice than getting links from the same domain or same IP address,
  • Do not follow a single link building technique.
The following are the techniques you must follow to develop strong quality links:
Directory submissions - submit your sites to directories that have good amount of links to their main index pages,
Press release - this could lead to a viral link building campaign. There are also possibilities that your website will get hundreds of visitors through Google news,
Article submission - There are so many article sites which you need to use to develop links and to attract potential customers,
Social bookmarking - These are websites wherein the link of a webpage can be submitted to be listed in the appropriate category.

This is a nice way of getting links and to get traffic as these sites have a high page rank. Is Getting a Professional Service Better? SEO could be done by all webmasters. But it is a fact that you would either have no time or would not have confidence about your own SEO skills. Thus it is better to get help from a professional who would do the best quality job on your website and increase the sales of your product. Make sure that you are getting help from a person who has good experience in doing website optimization.

Visit SEO Services for more detail.