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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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 [...]

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Making The Case For Native Mobile Landing Pages

Oct 31, 2012 at 12:45pm ET by Scott Brinker

At SMX East in October 2012, I presented on mobile landing pages at the popular iConvert session. Given the surge of interest in mobile marketing, and in particular, mobile landing pages, I thought it would be a good time to cover some of the key points from that presentation here. Slideshare: The Quest for Awesome Mobile Landing Pages from ion interactive Generally speaking, there are two ways to implement mobile landing pages: Use responsive design to have your pages adapt to the appropriate device. Implement native mobile pages that are explicitly designed for that purpose. [...]

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10 Tips To Optimize Conversions On Your Mobile Landing Pages

Oct 24, 2012 at 12:41pm ET by Paras Chopra

In my last article, I discussed How Location & Small Screen Size Impact Search Behavior On Mobile Devices, and the main conclusion was that the user behavior is significantly impacted. So, mobile SEO deserves a special treatment of its own. This, of course, means that once the user arrives from search to your landing pages, his/her behavior does not change suddenly. The same constraints of location and small screen size apply on landing pages, and that is why it is very important to take this aspect seriously if you get any significant or important mobile traffic. Do I Really Need Sep [...]

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Can You Really Increase Conversions By Decreasing Engagement?

Oct 17, 2012 at 9:23am ET by Brian Massey

Engagement is a magnetic "measure" of online effectiveness. You might call it an "engaging" metric. This is because it is a nice stand-in when real measures of sales, leads or subscriptions are too difficult to track or deliver disappointing results. "No, we didn't increase sales, but look at the engagement!" is the mantra. The definition of "engagement" changes from channel to channel. On a landing page, it may mean tracking how many visitors scroll the page, click on a form field, or watch a video. In social media, engagement can be measured by liking, commenting, following, connect [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

What Makes Paid Search Programs Successful From Search To Conversion?

Oct 10, 2012 at 9:42am ET by Benjamin Vigneron

At a high level, I believe it is fair to say that it has a lot to do with the ability to bid on the right keywords, serve very specific ads tailored to each geo/language/device, and redirect to the most appropriate landing page for each geo/language/device. It’s all about engineering a consistent conversion chain from search to conversion, which implies high resolution targeting. In an ideal world, search marketers should break down their paid search accounts by user intent, geo, language, device, and more… as long as they see some kind of gain targeting wise. That all makes sense [...]

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Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bold Test?

Oct 3, 2012 at 9:33am ET by Scott Brinker

"My team accepts that some experiments must fail in order for us to learn from them." In a recent study of Fortune 1000 marketers conducted by the Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, only about 50% of the respondents agreed with that statement. Think about that for a moment. In an age when it's never been easier, technically speaking, for marketers to test ad creatives and landing pages, what may be holding back half of them is a cultural resistance to trying something that may fail. If you've got something that is kind of working, do you want to take [...]

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How Location & Small Screen Size Impact Search Behavior On Mobile Devices

Sep 26, 2012 at 4:13pm ET by Paras Chopra

It is no news that mobile devices are rapidly taking over the Web! Latest estimates peg the share of mobile traffic from 10% to 20% of the total Web traffic. Popular websites like Quora and Facebook are claiming that about one quarter of their traffic comes from mobile devices (including tablets). With more and more people having their primary Web experience on mobile devices, this platform cannot be ignored. In fact, companies that innovate specifically for mobile devices are the ones who will have an early lead for the next couple of years. Eventually, every company will have to have a [...]

The E-commerce Product Video That Increases Revenue Per Visit

Sep 20, 2012 at 2:38pm ET by Brian Massey

Which video recipe will make your cash register ring more often and more loudly? It was the end of a 12-hour video shoot. We had heard the same song over and over, about 200 times. Our model had just finished dancing in 24 outfits, having completing over 150 identically executed squats as part of her routine. The rest of us were just tired from thinking about that. From one day of shooting, we would generate 120 different product videos to be tested on an e-commerce website. It was fully expected that these videos would provide a boost for the major fitness apparel manufacturer's onl [...]

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Two Easy Ways To Leverage The Search Funnel

Sep 12, 2012 at 11:27am ET by Benjamin Vigneron

If you’ve read my previous post about Multi-Touch Attribution & Conversion: Does It Matter?, you should now be aware of whether or not it is worth digging into the conversion funnel by looking at the average lag from impression/click to conversion and, more importantly, the average number of impressions/clicks involved in a conversion. In other terms, now that you are most likely finding that a great percentage of your conversions occur after more than 1 just impression or click, let’s focus on your paid search program and define some simple action items based off a higher resolutio [...]

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The Pocket-Sized Mad Scientist Of Conversion Optimization

Sep 5, 2012 at 10:33am ET by Scott Brinker

Regular readers of the Search & Conversion column know well one of my fellow contributors, Brian Massey. His columns are consistently some of the most educational and entertaining. The first time I met Brian was at a Pubcon session on landing pages, where he had donned a white lab coat, was engaging the audience — a hall packed with several hundred attendees — in impromptu experiments in conversion, and was whizzing balls and t-shirts at people. I don't remember if he was throwing them for right answers, wrong answers, or both. But it was a cross between a raucous Saturday Night Liv [...]

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How To Engage The ZMOT To Be Findable, Relevant & Trustworthy

Aug 29, 2012 at 12:26pm ET by Brad Neelan

As search engines continue on the path of rapid evolution, marketing is evolving in tandem as people search in different places at various times across different screens. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift where push messaging and mass consumption are evolving into a new paradigm of Relevance, Findability and Trust. It is an amazing time to be in search marketing as our ability to leverage the channel continues to advance, and our opportunities expand to become better marketers to the modern customer. Fine Tuning The Optics Of Search As search marketers, shifting dimensions of comple [...]

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3 Parts Of A Complete B2B Search Landing Page

Aug 22, 2012 at 11:59am ET by Brian Massey

The ellipsis, or "…" is a written construct that means "you fill in the missing part." In a quote, it means "something is missing here." The Chicago Manual of Style states, "Ellipsis points suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress, or uncertainty." Compare this to the period, or ".". A period says, "This thought is complete." It is the sign of a complete sentence. There is a subject, a predicate containing a verb and an object. All appropriate adjectives, adverbs and participles have been included. Nothing more is needed. Are you sendi [...]

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Multi-Touch Attribution & Conversion: Does It Matter?

Aug 16, 2012 at 1:18pm ET by Benjamin Vigneron

When it comes to multi-touch attribution, I recently realized that most advertisers have pretty much the same questions: How does one know whether it is worth digging into the conversion funnel? What are common patterns from a multi-touch standpoint? How can one actually leverage the conversion funnel? Based on my conversations, here are some answers and insights. Average Time Lag & Path Length From Impression/Click To Conversion Before digging into cross-channel conversion funnels (or even campaign to campaign traffic) we need to know how many clicks on average are associated [...]

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Framing Landing Pages In The Bigger Picture

Aug 8, 2012 at 12:28pm ET by Scott Brinker

It's wonderful that landing pages have become so widely known, at least in search marketing and conversion optimization circles. They're a well-honed tactic that everyone in our space understands. Want to improve your conversion rate on search campaigns? Direct your clickthroughs to targeted, contextually relevant landing pages. Works like a charm. But there are two reasons to step back and look at the bigger picture. First, the term landing page still gets interpreted literally as a single page. That cripples their creative potential. In some cases a single page is best, but in other [...]

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Use Open Graph To Get Video Thumbnails Into Your Search Results

Jul 25, 2012 at 1:21pm ET by Brian Massey

Joel Harvey is, among other things, the Video Scientist at Conversion Sciences. Over the past four years, he has developed video strategies for a large number of online retailers. We've found that video is great for drawing and converting qualified search traffic, so I asked Joel to tell us his tricks for getting video ranked on Google. He doesn't disappoint. Search marketers are always looking for strategies to give them an edge. Ever since Google first announced Universal Blended Search results in 2008, search marketers have been looking for ways to consistently use the blended results t [...]

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12 Navigation Ideas To Give Your Website ‘Story’ A Happy Ending

Jul 18, 2012 at 12:29pm ET by Stoney deGeyter

[caption id="attachment_126013" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Every visitor to your site is a story. Give that story a happy ending!"][/caption] Every good story has a beginning, middle and end. It starts with the set-up, moves into the conflict and wraps up with the resolution, or climax. In the story of online marketing, each visitor to your website follows the same pattern – a beginning (What brought them there?), a conflict (Will they find the information they are looking for?) and a climax (What will they decide to do?). However, unlike a good story, which relies on c [...]

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Have You Adopted Agile Marketing Yet?

Jul 11, 2012 at 12:39pm ET by Scott Brinker

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column that introduced agile marketing — a management approach that adapts agile software development methodologies to marketing projects. I suggested that adopting agile marketing management practices might be the single most important factor in building a successful, ongoing conversion optimization program. Two years later, I believe that's more true than ever. For all the advancements in conversion optimization tactics and technologies, it's the speed and flexibility of the marketing team that has the greatest impact on what can be accomplished. The [...]

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How To Get Management Excited About Conversion Optimization

Jun 27, 2012 at 1:32pm ET by Brian Massey

As search marketers, your job is to generate traffic. More traffic means more sales. As we become more wise to the math of conversion, we begin to realize that it may make sense to shift some attention away from the unending search for higher click-through rates and toward getting higher conversion rates on our sites. If you have gone to bat for adding some serious conversion optimization to your search campaigns, you know that it isn't an easy sell. We tell the powers-that-be how higher conversion rates effectively reduce the cost of the search marketing by lowering acquisition costs. W [...]

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A Look At Cross-Device Search & Conversion

Jun 20, 2012 at 1:32pm ET by Benjamin Vigneron

Mobile and Tablet strategy was a heavily discussed topic at SMX Seattle earlier this month. While there were no major revolutionary insights; I did feel that the many of the experts had important general consensuses regarding the non-PC space. Mobile search is exploding in volume and shows no signs of slowing down. As search marketers, we have no choice but to create online strategies that addresses both the strengths and limitations of Mobile advertising. Two Main Takeaways • It is best practice to break out your PPC program by device (mobile, tablet, desktop) allowing for higher resoluti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Death To The Cliché Landing Page

Jun 7, 2012 at 1:54pm ET by Scott Brinker

This week at SMX Advanced, I gave a talk titled Death to the Cliché Landing Page (link will open the deck on SlideShare.net). Since the slides are mostly visuals, I thought I'd offer a written narration for you here. Originally, this talk was simply Death to the Landing Page. But since that might have been a bit too much cognitive dissonance in a session about landing pages, I tweaked it to insert the word cliché. But why would I be calling for such an ignoble ending to the landing page as we know it, cliché or otherwise? Actually, I come from a background of loving landing pages. I'v [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

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