Everywhere you look in the world of Internet marketing, you’re going to be seeing the term search engine optimization. You’ll probably see it more frequently alphabetised as SEO. Hopefully, you’ve been using those SEO tactics for your website. Regardless of what other marketing techniques you want to use, SEO is crucial to the success of your website. If you’re not focussing enough on it, then you could find yourself far away from the first page of a Google search result. And beyond those first two or three pages, people aren’t really going to look.
So you already know how important SEO is. But what SEO does is get users looking at your website. If it’s good SEO (see: effective, white-hat SEO) then you’re going to get the right users looking at your website. (i.e. people who are going to be interested in your product or service.) But at the end of the day, you can get thousands of hits a day in your first few weeks and still not see great results in your finances. That’s because you need to combine good SEO with good CRO: conversion rate optimization.
What is conversion rate optimization? More details are available elsewhere, but for now, I’ll give you the very brief version. Your conversion rate is the rate at which users on your websites are turned from visitors into customers. It’s turning those visits into cash. Sure, you could be getting a bit of revenue by advertising on your website and exposing those ads to all those visitors you’re gaining through SEO. But your visitors aren’t there to see more adverts. They’re there to see what quality product or service you’re providing.
This brings us to the first piece of practical advice. Don’t flood your users with adverts on your website. Isn’t it enough that they followed a marketing technique to get to your website in the first place? You business website should, ideally, not have websites for anything other than your own products.
And speaking of which, you need to make sure your best products are on display. When someone visits your website, they should see some amazing deals. They should be able to see the best that your business has to offer right off the bat. Don’t leave them to find it out for themselves. Give them a hand. Do you have a product or service that’s critically-acclaimed, that you’re really proud of? Put it right there on the first page.
On the subject of critical acclaim, you should feature testimonials from reliable sources. One of the most effective ways to turn a user into a buyer of your product is to feature reassurance from someone else. Some companies are happy to put up something like “Really happy with product thanks from Jane Doe, California”. That’s not going to cut it. Get detailed testimonials from customers, or quote positive reviews from professionals. Make sure it’s visible from the off.
Of course, your users aren’t going to see any of this if your website is loading slowly or looks confusing. Make sure the overall user experience is flawless. How long does your website take to load? If it takes more than a few seconds, you could be in trouble. Is the use of your website confusing? Make it simpler.
Combine SEO and CRO to get the best results from your business website.
