The Las Vegas Affiliate summit of last month saw some impressive speakers offering ideas at the cutting edge of SEO. One of the talks which impressed us most offered some intelligent suggestions about ways to increase your existing revenue, without actually getting more traffic. Here’s a brief synopsis of that, along with a few of our own thoughts.
Split Testing
(1) Split Testing is an essential part of SEO. Don’t let testing be a crutch. If you know something is wrong with your site, be proactive and fix it.
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer is a free option, integrated with Analytics.
All these three enable the creation and modification of simple landing pages to help understand user engagement and interaction with your site. Remember, any exit point is a potential leak. Use these tools to keep the traffic you already have, move things around a bit, analyse visitor activity.
Where do most people drop the ball?
People become married to their sites, but this doesn’t make them perfect! Site layout is crucial. Although site owners know their products, it doesn’t mean they know how people engage with their site. Let the data speak for itself.
- Increasing Conversion: Let your buyers buy as a guest. Don’t ever get in the way of a checkout process by pressing them for too much information, i.e preregistration.
- Make your return policy and shipping easy to find – don’t surprise them at the end.
- Test, test, test. What your competitors are doing isn’t always the right thing. Your demographic is unique
- Clean out the clutter, keep it simple. Don’t cram everything you sell into the store window. Step back and think about real shops and retail space –
- Navigation is a road map, not a puzzle. Think simply.
- A quick read. You have about three seconds to keep people’s information online. Allow the casual shopper to quickly scan through without having to invest a lot of time – bullet points work.
- Keep the checkout simple. At any point they can get bored. 3-5 pages maximum.
What effect does split testing have on SEO?
A lot of people are afraid to touch their site because it may effect their rankings. Google confirms that they’re fine with testing, so this not something to worry about.
Offpage Factors to increase Conversion Rate
(1) If you’re recognised as the authority its a whole lot easier to sell your product. Empower people and build trust and then the authority and expertise comes from there.
(2) Leverage your natural advantage, whatever it may be.
(3) Offer something exclusive; special data, access, coupons. Embrace your exclusivity.
(4) Providing better content is great for your readers, great for SEO. You can never do too much.
(5) Soft selling works. No one likes being beaten over the head for a sale.
(6) People come to affiliate sites for more information. Offer reviews and the answers to common questions to convince your visitors. Imagery, bullet points, videos etc.
(7) Gently lead them into the sales funnel. This can’t be reinforced enough.
(8) Touch points. Use social media, chat, blogs, newsletters etc to bring them back.
(9) If you have an option of establishing a long term relationship with your readers, do so. Customer service is the critical means to get this done. Be known for your stellar customer service. Overdeliver and amaze them.
(10) Say thank you.
(11) From time to time, hire a consultant to do a full review. As the site owner you may be too close. Working with an external expert can be incredibly helpful to show you things you might have missed.
