SEO Tips Are Not The Only One Answer

When a client is not making money from their website, the first thing they do is run to you looking for SEO Tips. Quick solutions to drive more traffic to their website, but any astute advisor should always look a bit further than just how many visitors are landing on the page. The real number is what percentage of these visitors are turning into buyers. The conversion rate.
Here are some of the things you might assess:

1. Using Analytics (Presuming you have it installed), look at the average time visitors are spending on your website. I have seen websites that rank in the first five places in Google for highly searched keywords not return a single inquiry simply because the color of the website projected the wrong image. A simple color change increased conversion.
2. Does the website get the message to visitors quickly. Remember you have about 6 seconds to convince a new visitor that your website is worth their time. If it is a flash site, that 6 seconds may be just a load status bar.
3. Is it easy for people to contact you? Remember, there are many distractions online that can take away somebody who is ready to take action – someone may IM them, or an email they have been waiting for may arrive and they are distracted, then never come back to your website. I have seen a simple change on a website increase the conversion rate by 400%. That change was just putting a simple contact form on the top of the right hand column of every page.

Before you invest in a whole lot of SEO work for your site, ask yourself if you are really making the most of the traffic you’re currently getting. It is much cheaper to convert existing traffic than it is to generate new leads and you’ll cut down on the senseless link and article pollution on the internet. Keep a small, tidy internet footprint and make the most of what you have.