Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Alissa Ruehl, Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting at Apogee Search, to discuss the best strategies for increasing conversion rates.

SEO and PPC efforts can drive qualified traffic to your website, but in order to justify the time, effort, and expense, the site must be able to convert that traffic into either a lead or a sale. Alissa explains that different websites experience different obstacles, such as building trust, brand recognition, or simply experiencing high abandonment rates, and therefore require different solutions for improving conversion rates.

The best place to start analyzing your conversion rate is to look at entry pages with the highest traffic, such as home pages or high ranking landing pages. Alissa believes that these pages are extremely important in forming the right first impression with any visitor or potential customer to your site. If visitors are only spending a brief amount of time on these pages and you are experiencing a high bounce rate, consider using bullet points, bolded text, and more compelling headlines that grab every visitors’ attention and gets your message across in a clear and concise manner. If an individual is spending a great deal of time on your website then leaves without completing any sort of action, consider adding more calls to action to guide them into the conversion process.

Alissa states that lead form optimization is also an effective way to increase conversion rates on your website. In order to increase the amount of lead forms that are submitted with complete and accurate information and avoid abandonment, it is important to ensure that your forms are simple to complete, establish more trust with individuals, and only ask for information that is necessary and beneficial in obtaining a lead. Improving the conversion rate for eCommerce lead forms is slightly more involved. The amount of steps required in an eCommerce website can make conversion optimization seem daunting. Alissa separates problems with eCommerce purchases into three buckets:

1. Customer’s ability to find the product they want
2. Process of adding products to the cart
3. Process of purchasing the product once in the cart

Web analytics data can help you identify which of these steps is causing problems. These common problems can be resolved by working the individual into a pipeline, increasing the persuasion on the pages, inserting more calls to action, and discarding unnecessary requests for information that may deter an individual from completing the process.

In general, analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you pinpoint problems, while usability analyses, best practices lists, and case studies can help you identify possible solutions. However, replicating a method that may have worked for someone else is not guaranteed to work for you. Testing different solution ideas is crucial for ensuring an improvement in conversion rates.

Link: Best Practices for Product Search

Love: optimizing your universal search presence.  The natural search results aren’t the only results that deserve optimization attention.  Universal search requires a holistic approach to SEO where you need to also focus on optimizing for local, blogs, videos, images, and if you have an e-commerce website, product search which makes an appearance in the search results as shopping results.  Check out the Product Search for Webmasters video from Google on how you can go about optimizing for shopping results.  Also, you’ll need a Google Base account in order to get started with the optimization.

Link: Pagerank Sculpting

Love: focusing your efforts on more important things…I kid (sort of), the news from Google that Pagerank sculpting does not work as SEO’ers thought is important.  The Google man himself Matt Cutts explains it on his blog.  The basics:

• Your page has a Pagerank score of 8
• It has 4 outgoing links
• Left as is, each link passes along 2 points of Pagerank, 8 divided by 4
• Previously, if 2 of those links pointed at less important pages, “Contact Us” and “About Us” for example, some SEOs would nofollow those links
• In doing so, it was believed this allowed the other 2 links to pass along 4 points of Pagerank rather than 2
• Pagerank sculpted
• Now, nofollowing those important links does not pass Pagerank points in this simple way and requires Pagerank sculpting using a number of other techniques

Here is a SEOmoz post of the topic that also provides pros and cons from the SEO perspective.

Link: SocialMention

Love: simple and reliable tools that allow you to track your company and its keywords across multiple channels – blogs, microblogs (Twitter, FriendFeed), social bookmarks, comments (blog, forum or otherwise), news, video and more.  It’s extremely easy to get bogged down with tools just as it is with too much data.  Personally, I tend to stick with those that are simple, efficient and reliable and do not often switch unless the tools will allow me to provide even more actionable insight – Occam wins.  SocialMention is simple and reliable.  Not only are you provided with links to blogs, blog comments, Q&A sites, social bookmarks, and more, that mention your company or keywords, but SocialMention also provides data on sentiment (positive to negative mentions), reach (number of unique authors mentioning the entered keyword) and other metrics.

Link: 10 Ways to Make Your Site Accessible Using Web Standards

Love: making your website not only able to be found, but actually accessible to everyone. Think of the user.  Remain outwardly focused (just like phenomenal non-profits). Not everyone uses the same setup for surfing the internet, so you should ensure nearly all users are able to actually find information on your site once they’ve found you on the search engines.  There are a few pointers in this post that play a role in SEO:

• Supply proper meta tags – small piece of the pie, but a piece of the pie nonetheless
• Use accesible navigation – descriptive title and header tags provide keyword relevancy and help structure your site, which can help improve the ability of Google to provide Site InLinks
• Supply alternative content for images

Link: Bing Whitepaper for Webmasters and Publishers

Love: when you get information about search from the mouths of the leviathans.  This whiteapaper, distributed by Microsoft, details features of Bing, the layout of the search results page, the structure and details of the search results page and much more information.

BONUS Link Love Laughter Section: The Year The Media Died

For the past three years my parents have asked me what I want for Christmas and the answer was always the same – SXSW Gold Badge, Gold Badge, Gold Badge. I was a student then and couldn’t afford it on my own, but now that I’m gainfully employed (bless you, Apogee) I can buy my own badge this year. Fun!

However, just because I don’t need presents doesn’t mean Christmas just goes away, so again my folks issued the call for gift ideas for their decidedly geeky/crafty/quasi-pinko-hipster daughter, and I had to think of something. Not only what my folks could give me, but also how to get them a list specific enough to where my choices were unmistakable.

Being a slave to social media, I made my list this year with Delicious. The social bookmarking site scraped the very title tags from Amazon, Target and the like, making each item’s title descriptive enough to where my parents could easily find what they were looking for among the options I offered – however, some of them needed a little doctoring. For example, My Ben Folds shirt didn’t have title tags at all and selected items from the Wilco store were merely labeled “WILCO: STORE,” whereas Amazon had keyword-rich title tags, making it easy for me to remember what I linked to, and creating an opportunity for links with optimized anchor text. As items from e-commerce websites get sent around the Internet during seasons of high volume gift-giving, optimized title tags are a great way to get correctly-optimized links from a variety of sources. So label those pages carefully for holly jolly traffic even in “bah, humbug” recessions.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I recently spoke with Tanya Green, Paid Search Analyst at Apogee Search. She shared her insights about eCommerce paid search campaigns and even offered a few tips to help eCommerce sites get the most out of their online presence.

Tanya began with a brief explanation of the paid search process. Paid search ads appear above and to the right of natural search results on major search engines. Advertisers generate a list of keywords relevant to their website and then bid on those keywords. Advertisers only pay for the actual clicks they receive on their ads, hence the term often used “pay per click.”

ECommerce paid search campaigns measure success based on sales and revenue rather than leads generated. Most paid search campaigns are lead generation campaigns. This means that paid search strategists must design eCommerce campaigns using different tactics than the typical lead generation campaign.

SEO vs. Paid Search
Many newcomers to search engine marketing wonder whether SEO or paid search is right for them. Typically, it is best to utilize both natural search (SEO) and paid search campaigns to expand your exposure on the search engines. However, for eCommerce sites, paid search may be the most efficient option to immediately drive traffic, while natural search campaigns may take time to build SEO ranking.

Paid search can also produce valuable data on keywords that can help shape the natural search campaigns. This is important as SEO keywords are long-term time investments.

Tayna shared several tips for eCommerce sites:

• Have tightly themed ad groups. This helps keep ads consistent and relevant to the webpage.
• Use relevant keywords. Don’t bid on keywords that have nothing to do with your site. This can improve your quality score, which is used to determine how much an advertiser will have to pay to be ranked in a certain position. The higher the quality score, the lower the cost of a higher position.
• Have calls to action in your ad copy. If you have a current promotion, market it in your ad copy.
• Make your ad copy timely. If you have seasonal promotions or products that make good gifts for certain occasions, promote them at those times.
• Send shoppers to the specific product page (landing page) that they searched for rather than the homepage. Ensure consumers can make their purchase on that page without having to click around too much.
• Adjust bids according to the success rates of those keywords. Bid higher amounts for successful keywords and bid less for keywords that convert at lower rates.
• Use negative keywords to eliminate unqualified traffic. If there are words that are related to your industry but will not bring you qualified traffic, set these as negative keywords so you do not pay for clicks that have no chance of turning into a sale.

Forget about the endless rain, there is actually something different happening in Washington state. The State Attorney General’s office is suing Visible.net and Captures.com for false claims of results and poor customer service, among many other things.

Now you might think it odd, but I’m not surprised to see this sort of suit. The SEM industry is tainted by companies not delivering on the claims they make. If a company promises something it can’t deliver, the appropriate steps should be taken. In this particular situation the legal system will decide if that has occurred.

Some of the charges include:

• Misrepresentation – extremely tricky for SEMs since we are not the search engines, and accurately setting expectations about performance upfront with clients is difficult but critical
• Failure to deliver
• Unauthorized charges
• Poor customer service
• Various telephone solicitation charges

Visible.net, who also operates under the name WebMarketingSource.com, provides a variety of online marketing services, including a platform for eCommerce sites, SEO and website design. In just 3 years, the Better Business Bureau has received over 90 complaints about this company alone.

There are quite a few references to consumer protection throughout the lawsuit itself, and even more information about consumer protection on the WA state legislature site.

Visible has posted a response to the lawsuit on their blog, which counteracts the allegations. They claim to have many satisfied customers ready to discuss the situation with the AG office.

The state is seeking civil penalties and consumer restitution in addition to a court order halting the deceptive practices.

The Pessimist’s View
Over the past couple months, it has been quite depressing for eCommerce marketers to read the news – layoffs, recession, consumers cutting back spending, etc. Unless you live under a rock, all marketers have heard that “Consumers Aren’t Shopping Online, Either,” and online retail traffic is down week-over-week. This may be true in large, but the world of eCommerce is not coming to an end.

Be Optimistic!
Among all the negativity there are many articles that offer hope to search marketers. For example, today MediaPost released an article claiming “Search Adds Impact To Marketing Campaigns in Weak Economy.” MediaPost further explains, “four out of five online sessions begin at a search engine,” and “41% of people use search to navigate toward Web sites.” Furthermore, as the online advertising market continues to receive grim forecasts, search will remain the “bright spot.” The reasoning? Consumers are using search engines more now than ever to research products and prices online. Overall searches are up 25% year-over-year, so now it’s up to marketers to capitalize on the traffic, make sense of it, and act accordingly.

Still Skeptical?
In addition to the fact that search will survive this downturn, the outcome of the recent presidential election offers hope across the board. An article in AdAge states that the “Obama win could spur holiday sales,” as “8% of respondents said they are likely to increase holiday spending, thanks to the historic election of Sen. Obama to the White House. By contrast, only 5% said they would have increased spending if Sen. John McCain had been elected.”

Take Action!
During tough times we’re forced to take a hard look at our search campaigns and optimize them as much as possible. Below are some ways to boost sales through the 2008 holiday season:

• Run a free shipping promotion –72% of respondents in a comScore study said that if an eCommerce site took away free shipping, they would use another site. That’s huge!
• Utilize cause marketing (and promote it online!) – Consumers are willing to pay more for a brand if it supports a cause, recession or not.
• Test ad copy and landing pages – Experiment with placing different promotions or call to actions in ad copy or landing pages and use those that yield the highest conversion rates. For landing page tests try using Google Website Optimizer (GWO).
• Apply knowledge from search campaigns to the overall marketing plan – Do you find that sales are coming in during specific dayparts or from concentrated geographic areas? The accountability of search allows marketers to pinpoint success areas. Use it to concentrate traditional media efforts and eliminate waste.
• Stay informed – Utilize research to leverage marketing efforts. This Holiday Shopping Intentions presentation by Google provides insight as to when consumers will be researching online and when they will actually be purchasing this year. Paid search ads can be adjusted to speak to searcher’s stages in the buying cycle whether they are facilitating research, promoting the ease of your buying process or speaking to last minute shoppers.

Always Remember…
Online search reinforces in-store sales. An article in MediaPost claims that “the impact of online product research is greater on store sales than Web sales.” If possible, place a dynamically generated coupon on your Web site to better discern how online campaigns are generating in-store sales.

How much is a keyword in your URL worth? If money is no object, how does $185,000 sound? ICANN, the governing body of domain registration, has proposed this as the price for buying a new top-level domain (TLD). So instead of www.thehatstore.com being your website’s URL, that’s the cost to enable you (and conceivably any other haberdasher) to register www.thehatstore.hats, www.cowboy.hats, www.top.hats, and more.

Imagine the appeal of www.nike.shoes, www.ford.trucks, and its eventual impact on Google’s search algorithm as the trend begins to grow. If you can pay the steep entrance fee, you too can get in on the ground level of what may be an interesting new source of optimization. This is especially salient for those in the area of eCommerce, where a seller may specialize in a particular area of products, but have a multitude of different types of products. Therefore, instead of having one large, cluttered website for selling a vast array of candy, www.thecandystore.com could build or buy a scalable eCom model that is implemented across a series of websites, such as halloween.candy, easter.candy, hard.candy, chocolate.candy, and more.

What would this lend to an eCommerce business model? Each of these sites could improve their focus on a larger series of keywords for each sub-area of candy without diluting or convoluting the content of their website. Indexability and keyword salience are both major problems for these business models. Splitting the site on sensible points of cleavage would be a viable solution given the current state of search engines. The top-level domains would be even more informative to the semantic content of the site, just as it is assumed now that “.edu” domains are EDUcational and “.org” domains are ORGanizations.

In the future, it may be valuable for professional organizations in specific areas of selling, reselling, and services to pool together their resources to buy these top-level domains for the good of all of its clients, who may then have the opportunity to participate in the race for the best domain names within these top-level domains.

Anyone watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?  If you do, remember when Larry stole those flowers from the roadside memorial? So bad, and yet I found myself laughing the laugh of a rotund, middle-aged man watching America’s Funniest Home Videos (okay, so I still watch AFV, but I am neither rotund nor middle-aged).

Anyway, in a very interesting and disturbing development, spammers recently hijacked the Local Search 10-pack for keyword [flowers san diego ca] replacing authentic listings with “listings sport[ing] ‘Convenient Flowers’ and ‘Amazing Flowers’ and the links point[ing] to URLs which then redirected (via affiliate links) to national floral affiliate reseller companies.” 

You can check out the full story here on how the spammers accomplished the feat and what to do in case it happens to one of your clients, or your business. This is not the first time shady local search tactics have ocurred either; we noticed spammers at work for one of our client’s keywords:

• Represent your business exactly as it appears in real life. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
• List information that provides as direct a path to the business as you can. Given the choice, you may want to list individual location phone numbers over a central phone line, official website pages rather than a directory page, and as exact of an address as you can.
• Only include listings for businesses that you represent.
• Don’t participate in any behavior with the intention or result of listing your business more times than it exists. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title or address fields.

So, what does this mean? Perhaps local search is on its way toward providing the sort of relevant results with see with Google’s natural search engine. Also, with guidelines in place, it will become much easier for Google to go after spammers. Hopefully, flower theft is on the decline!

On April 24, 2008 a sizable army of Apogeeans – the Apogee Army of Altruism –set off for the southern most tip of Austin to volunteer at the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas (CAFB).

The eighteen or so of us arrived at CAFB and made our way to the holding area to sign in and place name tags on our chests. With that difficult part of the volunteering experience out of the way our guide and host Xavier gave an overview of CAFB’s operations. Brief overview: the Food Bank is, in essence, a distribution center. Food is not handed out on-site, but rather local charities and non-profit groups place food orders, drive to CAFB in trucks, cars and trailers, pick up their orders and then provide the direct service of feeding Central Texans from their charity or non-profit organization.

It’s time to head to the Product Recovery Room. We walk through two sets of doors and into a 60,000 square foot warehouse. The ceilings live way up in the sky. It holds approximately 1.5 million pounds of food – the CAFB ships around 2.5 million pounds per month. Finally, we reach two massive swinging doors that lead to the chilly Product Recovery. We’re ushered to the back corner of the recovery room. Look up. There’s a large instruction guide hanging from the wall. It contains all of the dos and don’ts – clean all cans and pass them down the conveyor belt, check adult and baby formula for specific date guidelines, et cetera – feel free to sing along with the radio blaring in the other corner.

After a bit of a rocky start, everyone got the hang of it and we soon started cleaning, categorizing, caching the food into boxes and stacking for delivery at The Flash speed. By the time Xavier told us students to put our pencil down, we had managed to process 10,276 pounds of food that equals 8,220 meals. Hopefully, we’ll surpass that benchmark on our next trip to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas!

Much has been made about yesterday’s forecast of the SEM Industry. Long story short: things are pretty good, or in the words of Larry David: “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.” According to Radar Research and SEMPO the SEM industry was projected to grow to an $11.6 billion industry in 2007, however that number grew to $12.2 billion by the end of Q4. These numbers had a domino effect on the 2011 forecast that was projected to be at $18.6 billion a year ago. Now North American SEM spending is projected to grow to $25.2 billion by 2011.

However the survey also shows that much of this increase is a backlash from marketers finding more search dollars by poaching budgets from print, website development, direct mail, and other traditional ad platforms. While this is an easy correlation to make given the current state of the US economy, it seems as though the enormity of advances in technology and services are given the short end of the stick due to the always-looming recession. Below are some more reasons why SEM will continue to grow, recession or no recession.

Social Media- Even though playing the social media card in the first hand is now a cliché, there’s no denying that next to Google, everyone has to be on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, and/or the next big thing. Businesses that have no clue how to operate social media pages are taking advantage of anything they can get their hands on. Even the AARP has tapped into Facebook and YouTube to help plant the seed of future membership http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6483871557

Goolge Innovation- New link reporting tools, personalized search, universal search, Google Health, Google News in Hindi etc., etc. Google’s innovation drives the search engine market and also forces other engines to play catch-up or innovate themselves. As much flack as I’ve given to MSN’s Live Search games there’s no doubt that they’ve helped the fledgling search engine’s numbers in the past year.

Proliferation of Industry Blogs- I can’t think of any other industry where knowledge is so firmly steeped in learning from your contemporaries. A novice can spend a week on industry blogs and be able to glean an adequate amount of information to start their own SEO or PPC campaign.

Advancements in Ad Platforms- Paid search platforms are constantly being updated in every search engine, and while the Radar Research report concluded that Google and Yahoo paid search spending decreased from a year ago, these updates will only continue to make paid search an easier, more viable solution for advertisers on a budget. Plus with Automatic Matching, Google is destined to up their Adwords profit, wink.

Advancements in Portal Platforms- I can Google from my Wii. Enough said. Wherever there is a signal there is Google, Yahoo, MSN, YouTube, Facebook or a combination of the five. With this kind of exposure advertisers, both big and small, are clearly noticing that the reach of the web is on a constant climb.

Etc. Etc. Etc… - There is an infinite list of reasons why SEM has risen to unprecedented proportions in the past year, and an economic hiccup is only one of them. While this report helps prove that our industry is in the clear for now, it still does not grasp the scale of innovation, adaptation, and proliferation that the SEM industry has accomplished within the past year to cause this major shift in ad spend.