How To Review Your Web Marketing And Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Efforts
Read this article and within under 4 minutes you will have a clear indication of:
- how effective your current website marketing is
- what is currently working with with your current website marketing efforts
- what should be changed and improved to deliver a higher return on investment
- if your current website marketing companies are doing a good job, or that you need a new website design or search engine optimization company
Download our worksheet to Review Your Web Marketing & Search Engine (SEO) Efforts now for free.
Sales
The most important thing that matters is how much your website is delivering in terms of sales for your business. If you are not getting sales or minimal sales from your website that means something is not working. If this is the case you need to dig deeper to see what is not working. If you are getting sales there is probably still some improvement areas that could significantly increase sales from your website. If you don't know how many sales are coming from your website you need to get this fixed and start tracking it. If you don't track it you will never know if it is effective or not. Do this by simply asking customers where they found out about you.
Contacts
If you are not getting sales it may be that the website is working but you are not turning contacts into sales. Keep track of how many contacts are coming in. If you are not getting any contacts then the problem lies either with the traffic your website is getting or conversion rate. If you are getting contacts (phone calls or emails) but no sales than it is most likely your sales process and sales closing rate that needs to be worked on.
Traffic
If you are getting high traffic but no contacts or sales then the problem is conversion. If you are getting low traffic then your problem is poor search engine optimization and traffic building efforts.
Conversion Rate
Even if you have great traffic, if you don't have good conversion your website is not going to be effective. Often increasing conversion is the largest opportunity for improvement to increase sales from a website. It is also often the most over looked and often not worked on at all. Don't miss this critical step when working to improve your website.
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Conversion
Review what websites are giving you the best conversion. In order to be able to do this you need to have a website analytics tool (such as Google analytics or Kiss Metrics) set up on your website to see what pages are generating either sales orders (if you have a e-commerce website) or capturing prospect information (like emails or phone numbers). Once you know what web pages are converting the best take a look at them to try and figure out why they are converting the best. Ask employees and friends why they think it works. Even better ask customers why that page worked and made them buy from you or give you their email.
Contacts
The same with contacts, determine which pages are getting you the most contacts by phone, email or SMS. Again having a website analytics tool can help with this but it is probably best just to ask customers why they contacted you. Once you know what web pages are the best at generating contacts take a look at them to try and figure out why they are working the best. Ask employees and friends why they think it works. Even better ask customers why that page worked and made them contact you.
Traffic
Take a look at your top three pages that generate traffic for your site and try and understand why they are working so well. Figure our where the traffic is coming from, why it is being found, etc. Then take a look at these pages to see if they are converting well or not. You want your top 3 traffic pages to be your best converting pages.
Rankings
Take a look at how your website is ranking. What keywords is it ranking in the top 3 spots for? Which keywords is it getting a lot of impressions for? Then list the keywords that are getting your website the most traffic. In order to do this, you will need to have your Google Webmaster Tools account linked to your Google Analytics account. Take a look at what pages are ranking for these keywords and why. Do a search for those keywords and see what the other competing search results are. Have a look at their websites to see if you can learn anything from what they are doing. Then write down why you think you are getting so much traffic for your top 3 keywords. From this exercise you will be sure to learn a thing or two about how to increase the rankings of your other pages.
What Needs To Change To Improve Results
There are two angles to approach this from, one you want to look at your top sales conversion and contact pages and make them be your top traffic pages. The other angle is to make your top traffic pages your best converting pages. In order to do this I would highly recommend using A/B page testing and heat map tracking. In summary for your top traffic pages work to make them convert more, for your top conversion pages work to make them get more traffic. List the things you think you should do, to do this. Finally take a look at your top ranking pages and try to increase their click through rates and make them move up the rankings even farther. Use what you have learned is working well to get your website to rank high in search engines on your other pages. Write down the top 5 things you have learned and the top 5 things you need to do based on what you think will have the greatest impact.
ROI
For one time website investments you should be looking for them to payback over the course of 3 years or less. The same holds true for monthly charges, except you should see a return on investment within the year. If your website design or search engine optimization company is not getting a higher return on investment than 25% from the amount you are spending with them annually as ongoing work on your website you should be looking for another provider. If you are spending $1,000 each year and not get that money back it does not make sense to continue to spend. If you are not getting a 25% return there are many other companies that will be able to get you at least that amount if not a lot more.
Traffic Increasing
You should be seeing an increase in website traffic each and every year. If you are not seeing an increase in traffic that means either your website is built on a poor software platform and needs to be rebuilt, or the company you are working with is not doing enough work or they are doing a poor job at search engine optimization. If your website company is not creating additional pages for you each week or encouraging you to create additional pages each week this is most likely your problem. If you are not seeing a nice increase in traffic you should be looking for a new company to help you with your website.
Conversions Improving
If the company you have helping you with your website design and/or search engine optimization never talks about conversion you have a serious problem. The company you are working with should be working to continually improve the conversion of contacts and sales you are getting from your website. If they are not, it is time to find a company that does.
Download our worksheet to Review Your Web Marketing & Search Engine (SEO) Efforts now for free.
My name is Chris R. Keller. I work at Profitworks Small Business Services helping various B2B small businesses in Waterloo and Kitchener Ontario generate new customers via our full marketing service solution. Feel free to connect with me on Google+ or if you are interested in getting new customers for your small businesses enter your email in the box provided below and click the "Send Me Insights How To Grow Sales!" button.
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