Search & Conversion helps website owners and search marketers guide the searcher from search engine results pages – both organic listings and search ads – to relevant landing pages and complete a desired conversion action, whether that means an e-commerce transaction, engage in a phone call, an email newsletter sign-up or filling out a lead gen form. Columnists provide tips for taking searcher intent through to the finish – with landing page testing and tuning tips, techniques for moving searchers through the conversion funnel and how to feed valuable conversion data back into search campaigns.

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Product Listing Ads: Five Tips That Increase Conversions

May 15, 2013 at 9:00am ET by Rick Backus

Google Shopping scored best in class in our latest rankings of comparison shopping engines. How can you get more revenue out of it? Read on for our five tips to increasing the conversion rate of your Product Listing Ads. 1. Please The Feed Your Google Shopping product data feed is the most important element of a healthy PLA campaign. It tells Google what information to use for your product ads and helps Google determine where your ads should appear in search results. It's better to err on the side of providing too much relevant information than not providing enough. Give Google as many cl [...]

How To Increase Lead Conversions With Visitor Engagement

May 9, 2013 at 9:00am ET by John Paul Mains

When the iPhone was first released, everyone marveled over its amazing simplicity and user experience. The world fell in love, and the mobile industry was changed overnight. Other phones, if they weren't smartphones, were suddenly viewed as cheap and not very useful. We have all experienced this same truth at the websites we visit. We inherently equate a great design with an upstanding company and a bad design with a company not quite as reputable or as good. [caption id="attachment_158424" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] Because of this reality, buil [...]

Five Ways To Flip Your Copywriting For Higher Conversion Rates

May 1, 2013 at 9:30am ET by Brian Massey

When faced with creating a conversion-focused SEO landing page, what should our copy focus on? There are so many things we can do -- so many directions we can go -- that it becomes hard to know what to choose. Do I go with statistics or stories? Facts or feelings? Data or discounts? If one of these is good, isn’t a mix of all of them better? Blending Content Types Doesn't Work We know we're blending when we start adding adjectives to our sentences. "Our solution is the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, colorful, highest-intensity, waterproof, process-oriented available on the mark [...]

How To Lose Wait On Your Website By Increasing Page Load Speeds

Apr 24, 2013 at 9:30am ET by Stoney deGeyter

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] Almost three years ago, Google announced that it had begun factoring site speed into their ranking algorithm. Since then, SEOs have debated how significant an effect page speed has on actual search engine rankings. While Google may be using it as a signal, it's clearly not an overwhelming signal. Still, regardless of the algorithmic weight page speed has on rankings, we do know that it has a significant impact on site conversions. Every second visitors have to wait for a page to load is a proven loss in sa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: SEO | Search & Conversion

4 Principles Of Marketing As A Science

Apr 18, 2013 at 12:48pm ET by Scott Brinker

What is the future of marketing? You can almost hear "Science!" as intoned by a popular 80's song by Thomas Dolby. Across our profession, more and more people are talking about marketing science, scientific marketing, marketing as a science (in contrast to an "art"), and so on. In our digitized and data-deluged world of modern marketing, these phrases resonate. "Yes, marketing is more of a science today." That just feels like a true statement, doesn't it? But what do we really mean by it? What makes an approach to marketing scientific? In what ways does it differ from marketing as an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion | Search Marketing | Stats

Agile Marketing Is The Perfect Management Framework For Big Testing

Mar 27, 2013 at 12:02pm ET by Scott Brinker

I've written about agile marketing several times in this column over the years. First, Agile Marketing For Conversion Optimization in 2010, and then, Have You Adopted Agile Marketing Yet? in 2012. Now it's 2013, and I'm back with this year's edition of my agile marketing stump speech. Why do I keep returning so doggedly to this topic? It's More About Talent Than Technology As far as I'm concerned, adopting agile marketing remains the single most valuable thing marketing teams can do to improve their conversion rates. I can't emphasize that enough. It beats "best practices" hands down. It' [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

How To Snag A Sale From A Simple ‘Contact Us’ Page

Mar 20, 2013 at 3:31pm ET by Stoney deGeyter

Getting website sales isn't all about product pages and shopping carts. Many business owners forget there is a whole conversion funnel every visitor goes through before choosing whether or not to make a purchase on your site. One of the most important aspects of that funnel is the "Contact Us" information and page on your site! Contact Us can have a powerful impact on a site's ability to generate sales and leads. Not only does it provide a way for potential customers to connect with you, it should also offer multiple contact options and ultimately deliver assurance that assistance is jus [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Why You Should Give Some Of Your PPC Spend To A Conversion Optimizer

Mar 6, 2013 at 12:27pm ET by Brian Massey

You may find the subject of this column a bit self-serving, since I am a conversion optimizer. Well, it is. But, I hope to provide some basic math that will support my claims. If you're spending money on a pay-per-click campaign or spending someone else’s money on a pay-per-click campaign, you should give some of your pay-per-click budget to a conversion optimizer. What We Know Pay-per-click data gives us things like: how much we spent, how many people saw our ad, how much revenue was generated, and how much those clicks cost. With this dataset, we can then calculate things like cost-pe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

A Guide To Understanding Big Testing & Massively Parallel Marketing

Feb 27, 2013 at 10:06am ET by Scott Brinker

Last month's column on Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data — encouraging marketing experimentation on a much broader scale than ever before — was well received. But one question came up several times in the comments: how do you enable many marketers in an organization to run experiments at the same time without interfering with each other? Massively Parallel Marketing The idea of empowering many marketers to engage in testing at the same time — not just a small subset — is a case of what I call massively parallel marketing. Massively parallel marketing is derived from [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

TEES Your Visitors For Higher Conversion Rates

Feb 6, 2013 at 12:32pm ET by Brian Massey

We model our online prospects with a number of different funnels, paths, flows and journeys. There is the classic AIDA sales funnel (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). There is the Brad Geddes search funnel (Awareness, Interest, Learn, Shop, Buy). Joseph Jaffe Flipped the Funnel. Dave Evans added the social cloud to the funnel. For me, it all boils down to ADD (Attention, Deficit, Disorder). We certainly don't need another model for generating persuasive website experience. But, I created one. I like this new model -- the TEES model -- because it encapsulates how I look at a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data

Jan 30, 2013 at 9:42am ET by Scott Brinker

Big data is a big topic these days, one that has made its way up to the C-suite. The CMO may not yet fully understand what big data is, exactly. But the CMO knows he or she needs a plan for how to use it. In fact, three of IDC's Top 10 predictions for CMOs in 2013 revolve around mastering this data explosion in marketing. In many ways, this attention on big data is a breakthrough moment for marketing. Sure, data has always been present in certain corners of the marketing department — especially with you astute search marketers and conversion optimization pros. But marketing management [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

11 Simple Conversion Strategies Many Product Pages Fail To Incorporate

Jan 23, 2013 at 2:21pm ET by Stoney deGeyter

Every e-commerce operation relies on the ability of its website to sell their products. Without the ability to have salespeople roaming the floor asking customers, May I help you?, businesses rely on the their website to sell, sell, sell. Many business owners rely on content to push the customer through the sales process. There is no doubt that the content of the site is strategically important to convincing the customer to buy. But beyond the content, there is the site itself. While the content may be getting the message across, does the site help or prohibit customers from moving forward [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Winning The Conversion But Losing The War

Jan 16, 2013 at 9:25am ET by David Rodnitzky

I’m writing this from a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (well, actually, about 500 yards from Cabo San Lucas). This is my first cruise, and it’s been an interesting experience. My expectation was that this would be an all-inclusive vacation on water; the reality has been somewhere between a crass timeshare sales pitch and a Las Vegas buffet. [caption id="attachment_144113" align="alignright" width="300"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] What, you ask, does this have to do with search engine marketing? A lot, actually. This trip has reminded me of something very impo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

If Your Landing Page Could Talk, What Would It Say?

Jan 9, 2013 at 1:18pm ET by Brian Massey

[caption id="attachment_144393" align="alignright" width="300"] How does your Landing Page see the world?[/caption] I am a landing page. My job is to greet you when you click on ads, email links and social media posts. You will find me by scanning a QR code. You come to me because you want something. You have requested my presence on your screen by taking a very specific action, and you expect a very specific result. I try not to let you down. I want you to know you are in the right place; that I have an answer for you. Your search has not been in vain. I want you to trust me [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

What Search & Conversion Articles Clicked With You?

Jan 2, 2013 at 12:57pm ET by Search Engine Land

As we jump headfirst into 2013, we're still spending some time looking back at what Search Engine Land readers enjoyed the most so that we can set the bar even higher in the coming year. In the Search & Conversion column, landing pages, persuasive content and searcher behavior take top priority. In case you missed any of these great reads, or are thinking about how you can focus on increasing conversions from the traffic you're already receiving, take a few minutes to scan through these best practices: Death To The Cliché Landing Page - Scott Brinker Landing Pages 3.0: How Con [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

A/B Testing From Search To Conversion

Dec 26, 2012 at 4:56pm ET by Benjamin Vigneron

As I mentioned in a previous post, search marketers should work on finding the middle ground between a high CTR (appealing ads) and a high conversion rate (qualified traffic). This process is trickier than it seems because of the inverse relationship between those two metrics. In this article, I’ll share a couple of thoughts which I hope you'll find helpful when testing multiple ad copy and landing pages for your PPC program. Get Your Campaign & Ad Group Ready Once you have a fairly mature keyword list, you should be able to easily identify those top cost keywords with a Quality Sco [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

The Value Proposition Test: What Is Your Page’s Caption?

Dec 19, 2012 at 9:27am ET by Brian Massey

There is nothing more important to your search success than your value proposition. Go ahead. Click away. I know you probably don't spend much of your time on such things. It's all keywords and copy, copy and keywords. Yet, keywords and ad copy only get you so far. For your visitors, these answer the question, why am I here? The value proposition answers the next question, why should I stay? In the context of a webpage, your value proposition will be effective if it has the following characteristics: 1. Easy to grasp 2. Relevant 3. Clearly presented I sometimes call t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Why Your Content Marketing Needs To Be More Active

Nov 28, 2012 at 12:46pm ET by Scott Brinker

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released their 2013 benchmarks on B2B content marketing. Reading it, you will be struck by two realizations: Content marketing is huge Content marketing desperately needs conversion optimization The "huge" part you probably already suspected from the deluge of blog posts out there on the subject. However, this report quantifies that scale, and it is impressive. Of the B2B marketers in North America who participated in this benchmark (N = 1,416), 91% of them now use content marketing; 54% of them plan to increase content ma [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

4 Anti-Science Marketing Attitudes That Keep Us In The Stone Ages

Nov 14, 2012 at 1:24pm ET by Brian Massey

Are we hiding from science? As I write this, we have all let our breath out having learned the outcome of a presidential election and countless congressional races. Now that the task of getting elected is behind us, it is time to examine a bastion of political debate: bashing science. Shawn Lawrence Otto writing in Scientific American (“America’s Science Problem,” November 2012) says that each of the political parties “...demands ideological conformity, even when contradicted by scientific evidence.” I see evidence that we are doing the same in our online marketing organizat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

A Look At Cross-Domain Search & Conversion

Nov 7, 2012 at 12:51pm ET by Benjamin Vigneron

If you are running multiple online marketing programs across multiple websites/domains, then you might have asked yourself the following questions. Are there any interactions between my websites? Are my customers likely to convert across multiple domains? Would those insights potentially alter my customers' LTV (life-time value) and my goals, as a result? Cross-Domain Clicks & Revenue Attribution This is the key -- you want to be able to allocate the end-revenue numbers back to every single touch-point across multiple websites, so you can adjust your marketing mix accordingly. For ins [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

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