Tag Archives: conversion optimization

10.02.13
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Are You SEO’ing Your Lead Gen Devices? Why Not?

No one will argue that content lead generation devices such as white papers, videos, webinars, etc. can be fantastic at generating industry relevant, top of the pipeline new leads for many organizations (obviously). Most companies content driving strategy includes using their social media following, sometimes press and perhaps their email marketing lists to move the message that their new lead gen device is available. In some cases, I’ve seen companies help co-market each other’s content in the form of emailing, social and blog posts.

In many cases, these content ideas have a downward sloping lead production curve. The campaigns come out blazing, several channels hit at once, heavy tweet schedules, email lists spaced out by a few days, etc. Then, the burst of new leads and re-engaged leads slowly dwindles, until the content has no other purpose but to be re-used lightly in drip campaigns or other short life campaigns.

A downward trending return on good content is really easy to avoid. Too many companies I know overlook the fact that a little SEO investment into a lead gen content piece, can go a really long way. Obviously, take the same opportunity research approach you take when evaluating any traditional hard lead, landing page, keyword opportunity. Where do you rank currently -> how much traffic currently – > how are conversions (from organic traffic) currently -> if those signs are positive then -> who ranks above you currently and how do they rank for the best keyword terms -> what work will it take to move in to a ranking that returns significantly higher results.

I always go in to content idea analysis with an organic SEO, keyword potential approach first. If I invest the time of one of my Subject Matter Expert’s, I want long term value, if it is indeed there for the taking. You can take this approach with anything in the content sphere, white papers, videos, webinars (turn webinars into accessible video with contact capture after the webinar) etc. First, plan the landing page out to include enough content to drive organic traffic and have all on-site SEO done correctly. Then build conversion optimization in to the landing page, include teaser vine videos, a snapshot of some of the white paper content, content quotes etc. Use some of your other web properties (micro / niche blogs, microsites) to assist the SEO on your landing page and to convert more traffic from those properties. Take some of the other steps you would follow to build inbound links. Also keep in mind, you don’t have to use your prime sources to build links for a piece of content like this, save those for hard-lead landing pages. With something like this, lower-end link building is usually sufficient.

But I Have So many Different Landing Pages for the Same Piece of Content…
Its not always the case that there is only one landing page for your content piece. In some cases, affiliate tracking url’s, session ID’s etc. can cause duplicate content issues with your content piece that may prevent it from performing to its SEO potential. I saw this recently with a client. In this case, be certain to establish a robots.txt rule to all other instances of the landing page other than the primary url. This may require a dev, but if you take the time to set it up properly initially, the results will be well worth it.

What to Expect
Obviously, as with all good SEO, the growth curve is generally slower and takes time. Do your on-site SEO work, do some initial off-site work, revisit in a couple of months, re-examine the ranking potential and do some more off-site work if its appropriate. As you can see from the Graph 1 below, we rolled out a somewhat niche content piece that we thought had some potential to reach a certain type of target customer in late March. We did on-site and off-site SEO in the next month and a half. In June, we moved the message to our social following. Obviously, the initial social push returned some solid results, but as the the next two months came, we did nothing else in the way of promotions. Graph 2 will show you the search traffic broken out of the overall traffic. The SEO worked, and now with steady rankings, we can expect a monthly lead flow from this content piece, without having to spend any marketing budget or human hours (this is a targeted piece, the conversion rate started out great and continues to increase). We can go ahead and move on to the next great content piece.

Growth Graphs

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07.31.13
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A Recent Mobile Optimization Data Set Example

It blows my mind that many fantastic websites and companies have yet to embrace mobile optimization. A couple of months ago I discussed (in this post) my recent studies on mobile conversion optimization. I had recently spent time learning and then putting to use the mobile optimization skills that I had learned on my company’s website. The results are in and they are more than I had initially hoped for.

Prior to the mobile responsive redesign (and yes, responsive is the only way to go – not a mobile subdomain) we had put some lead gen mechanisms in place that made mobile / tablet conversion, and desktop conversion for that matter, a touch more easy. So the 60 days post adding those lead gen mechanisms we saw an increase of about 20% across the board on both desktop and mobile / tablet. I was pleased, obviously.

Post Mobile Optimization
Here is where it gets good… We designed the site around the mobile experience first, and then adjusted the desktop user interface to meet those demands. Most mobile experts will tell you this is the way to come at your design, think mobile first, desktop on the backend.we were able to incorporate mobile best practices, without overthrowing the desktop side. In fact, in doing so, it appears as though we slightly improved the desktop experience, probably because of a ease of use factor.

In the first 60 days post mobile optimization we saw an increase in desktop conversion of around 30%, that’s excellent, especially considering desktop is still the majority of my traffic. BUT, on the mobile side of traffic, we saw an increase in conversion of 100%, it doubled! But thats not all…

Mobile Versus Tablet
Here is where it gets even sweeter!

The mobile conversions I was referring to above is a combination of mobile (primarily cell phone) traffic and tablet traffic. When you break down the numbers a little further, the picture gets a little prettier.

In the 60 days post mobile responsive redesign, we experienced a percent increase in tablet traffic of about 100% and a percent increase in mobile (again, primarily cell phone) of 425%, yes, 425%!! This increase brought mobile (cell phone) conversions up to almost the exact same percentage as tablet conversions. So obviously, the new, responsive design, combined with some of the mobile conversion best practices I had wanted to try, really worked on the much smaller screens of cell phone users. Getting a cell phone user to convert into a lead at this new rate was something I was really proud of.

Now, that alone sounds pretty great right? but wait, there is more… Mobile (cell phone) traffic is a number that is about 4X tablet traffic. So this increase in converting the mobile / cell phone user has meant huge things to our lead flow. So far the sales conversion side has been status quo as well, so all in all, great things came from this investment.

06.07.13
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Engaging and Converting the Mobile User

Obviously, mobile web visitors makes up a widely growing base of overall visitors for many websites in many fields. Over the course of the last 12 months or so I started to pay close attention to mobile traffic on my website. I was watching the analytics closely, looking for sources, looking for conversion trends, looking at multi-channel attribution conversion trends, looking at overall conversion. I found nothing too stunning to say the least, except for these things.

1) The traffic looked very similar to traditional, non-mobile traffic. Sources, keywords, channels, landing pages, paths, etc., all very similar.

2) The traffic converted into a lead at approximately 50% the rate of traditional, non-mobile traffic. – WHOA, OPPORTUNITY!!!!

Item number 1 above has much to do with the industry I’m in. I have read reports to the contrary in many fields, but the industry I operate in and the way I choose to acquire my traffic leads to a user with a little more cut and dry purpose.

Item #2 is clearly the piece that grabbed the heck out of my attention and made dig in, much much more. I love discoering new opportunities for more leads, it excites me. Clearly, we could stand to make that number significantly better.

I immediately started my research and reached out to friends who I thought knew a thing or two about mobile marketing. Turns out, mobile marketing is pretty stinkin new in the grand scheme of all things marketing channel related. There aren’t many that know a whole lot about it. A friend of mine from college, however, is an expert in the field, and a bit of a thought leader in the space. In fact, he was one of the creators of Google’s Mobile Marketing Playbook, his name is Mark Hendrix. Mark was extremely helpful [Thanks man!].

Through my research I found many things that looked similar but different about the user interface and conversion strategy.  The mobile user needs different mechanisms laid out slightly differently with different methods of access than the traditional user. Creating the user interface on the mobile side of your site requires you to segment the mobile users even further than norm. Obviously, I can’t get too in depth about this because my competitors may be reading, but engaging the mobile user requires more than just a mobile responsive website (some people choose the mobile subdomain for their website, that’s way lame these days).

Engaging the Mobile User
– Take a brand first and foremost approach.
– Engage with calls to action / lead gen assets that are more comfortable in a mobile environment.
– Tell the mobile user more with easy access videos that define your product and your brand.
– Reduce copy on the mobile side that appears on the desktop side.
– Make related blog posts more accessible and make sharing via mobile device front and center (especially Twitter).
– Make following your Twitter (the most mobile friendly major social platform) account way easier!

Converting the Mobile User
– Reconsider your lead gen assets conversion approach (I basically took a whole new, internal, simplified approach and am rolling it out to both mobile and non-mobile visitors). Since the mobile user is much more likely to be turned away by multi-step conversion mechanisms, simplify the process, remove the opt-in email or off site second steps. Again, you are talking about a new non-traditional approach to conversion on your lead gen assets, it may be more difficult to set up, but worth the conversions.
– Choose lead gen asset / CTA’s that both fit the segment of the viewer based on landing page qualifications and fit your mobile segment. Not all assets will apply in the same manner as they do to non-mobile traffic. Easy targeted white papers, infographics and high value quick download videos are great here.
– Present a lead gen asset / CTA at the start of your landing page and show the simplicity of accessing the asset. Presenting the asset at the start of your content, before the body, makes it more visible to the viewer and is likely the first impression it leaves. Ideally you have a mobile responsive site, so from a cell phone, the content of the landing page is viewed in a singular column (in most cases), give them 1) the header, 2) the lead gen asset and then 3) the body.

Mobile conversion is optimized when you present a clear lead gen asset / call to action immediately in the hot zone without scrolling and  you do so with simplicity. That process is obviously a little more complex for non-mobile traffic, more conversion optimization techniques like trust building etc. can be added to that equation. However, in mobile, you don’t often have that luxury in many cases. If you take that approach, even as the user scrolls, they will know where to find what they want. Since a mobile responsive site pushes everything in one column, your call to action may get lost at the very bottom and that simply won’t cut it (unless you are my competitor).

So there you have it, engage and convert mobile users requires a little different thinking. Until next time!

04.16.11
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SEO Lifecycle – When to Take Conversion Optimization Seriously

To be perfectly honest, I’ve never been a stickler for conversion optimization. A recent consultation I had tuned me in to it a bit more. I’ve been doing SEO since about late 2003 in a variety of verticals. I’ve always known that conversion optimization was an important piece of the lead gen pie, but I pretty much always felt like “getting more traffic” was where I wanted to put my time and monthly budgets.

I recently reached a point with one website where I wanted to make a more concerted effort to squeeze more leads from the traffic I was getting. This particular site has a heck of a lot of strength. An overall trusted site, many years old, grows every month significantly, we’ve always done things the right way (no questionable link building, lots of valued backlink growth etc.) and a ton of targeted, organic search traffic. The site converts (what I consider to be) pretty well. In the range of 2.5 – 3.5%.

I’ve sat through enough conversion opt webinars to know the basic best practices. But this month I sought the help of an expert to pick apart my site. The things I gained from this consultation were tremendous. Several points that I am looking to employ, some minor code changes and some dev work, that I think will gain me quite a bit.

My point here is that, as being a person with SEO as what I believe in for lead generation, I have too long neglected squeezing every last drop out of the fruit hanging on the tree. It always seemed to make more sense to just create more fruit (search traffic). As your site reaches a certain point, taking that time to dig really deep into your conversion practices is essential. I’ll share the results of my conversion improvement after I have the changes implemented and enough data to show the trends, but I am expecting a good uptick of at least .5%, maybe more. That’s a lot of leads, potentially.