Today’s Marketing tip: Increase site conversion rate like a PPC Marketer

Posted on | September 28, 2009 | 3 Comments

Every morning I find some great information on marketing. This morning I decided to share with you what I have found.

Natasha Vincent, from SBI! eLearning Coordinator and an SBIer, wrote an article called “Think Like A PPC Marketer,
Without Spending Your Money”.

Pay-per-click (PPC) Marketers use keywords to attract qualified visitors to a page optimized to convert those visitors into buyers. They continue to test and tweak these pages for optimal results. Marketers choosing organic methods should use the same strategies for their content pages.

Here is some information that I gathered from her article, combined with some of my own knowledge and experience that can help increase your site conversion rate.

Let’s start with analyzing the behaviors of the searchers.

There are three different types of searchers as based on the PDF www.sigir.org/forum/F2002/broder.pdf “A Taxonomy of Web Search” written by Andrei Broder:

Navigational: The searcher is looking for a specific site or brand. The keywords this searcher may use will be a company/website name, or a brand name, such as “Apple”, “Dell”, or “Macbook”.

Informational: The searcher is looking for information on a topic. The keywords this searcher may use will be generic search terms, such as “laptop computer” or “desktop computer”.

Transactional: The searcher is looking to perform a transaction, such as a purchase. The keywords this searcher may use will be “cheap laptop computer”, “where to buy a laptop computer”, or “best laptop computer”.

Now, most PPC Marketers focus on the Transactional searcher. This is because they need to focus on the searcher most likely to convert into profits to get a good return on their PPC costs. However, when focusing on other methods, such as organic searches, we will need to focus on all three types of searchers in order to increase site conversion rate.

Here are some tips on converting all three types of searchers into buyers:

• Optimize all pages for your brand name and company name. This is a given, but often forgotten task.
• Have pages that you optimized for Informational searchers, link to pages that are for Transactional searchers. Place these links strategically in the content, with a call to action.
• Keep in mind that some information that the Informational and Transactional searchers are looking for may be the same. This type of information may include product specifics, product comparison charts, product features, and more. Survey your visitors to find out exactly what information they are searching for so that you can better serve them with your content.
• Be sure to provide all the information and calls to actions necessary to move the visitor smoothly into the next level of their buying process. Outline a sales cycle to help determine the levels.
• Make the buying process, or in some cases sign-up process, easy and smooth for the visitor.
• Track, test, update, track, test, update. Look at the keywords the visitors are using to find you, where they are coming from, your bounce rate, and your conversion rates.

Here is a list of keywords that Natasha recommended for Transactional searchers:

Advice
Best
Cheap
Cheapest
Choose
Consultation
Eliminate
Exclusive
Fast
Fastest
Find
Finish
First
Fix
Get rid of
Help
Hints
Hints and tips
How can I
How do I
How much
How to
How to do it
Lose
Luxury
Need
New
Official
Only
Original
Quick
Quickest
Recommend
Remove
Repair
Review
Reviewed
Start
Suggest
Tips
Top 10
Top 3
Top 5
Wanted
What can I
When can I
Where can
Where can I
Which
Which is

In addition, she recommends this tool to research a keyword’s commercial intent: http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

Knowing your customer is half the battle to increase site conversion rate.

Trackbacks

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