Internet Marketing Success

Internet Marketing Success by James S. Huggins

Why Are You Optimizing Your SIte?

Are you optimizing your site to increase traffic?

Or, are you optimizing your site to increase sales?

Do you think they are the same thing? If you do, you are wrong. Dead wrong.

Look at it this way: if you became #1 in Google, and had 10,000 visitors each day would you be happy? What if those 10,000 visitors didn't buy anything at all?

People involved in SEO often forget that SEO is not the goal.

SEO is a tool to use to increase the performance of your website. For some sites that might be purchases. For others it might be promoting a cause, raising public awareness of some issue. High rankings are not the ultimate goal; high rankings are one technique to get to the ultimate goal.

But, you ask, won't increasing traffic increase performance?

It should. But it doesn't have to.

In the process of SEO, you are making changes to your site. You are changing the language. You are changing the graphics. You are changing the navigation. You are changing page titles. You are restructuring the pages of your site to increase search engine ranking. But what will it do to overall performance (e.g., sales)?

While you are making these changes, you can improve performance (e.g., sales) or you can reduce it.

For most people, working to improve SEO means working to improve sales. Here are some simple things to keep in mind to improve the sales performance of your site:

Bad Navigation for Internet Marketing success

Some people doing SEO are tempted to use navigation to optimize each page. The result can be different navigation text on each page. This is a major issue. Buyers want consistency. Time --- their time --- is money. Make it difficult to get around on your site and they will get off your site.

Optimizing Product Name, Ignoring Descriptions

Yes, you have been diligent. The product name occurs in the title and alt tags and links and is repeated the exact number of times required for 6% "density". That is all good.

But when the visitor gets to the page will they really learn about the product. Will they know the sizes? The colors? What other items it requires? Does it take batteries? What size? Do you explain what it does? And what it doesn't do? And, how about how much it will cost to ship? Buyers want to know.

Remember how you learned in SEO that content is king? Guess what. Search engines are not the only ones who need content. Buyers need content too.

Pictures Too Small - Low Quality - Non Existent

Come on. Look how you buy. You want to see pictures. Front. Back. Top. Bottom. Different colors. High resolution.

Show the buyer what it looks like.

Be Sure Each Product Shows Price

Some sites do not show prices. Instead, they tell you that by just putting the item in the cart, you'll find out the price. Some even require you to call for pricing. Wrong! Can you imagine shopping at your grocery store and needing to take an item to the checkout or even scan it with a scanner to find out the price? No way. You want the price on the shelf.

Why do site owners do that? For some site owners, changing the pricing in the cart is easy, but changing the price on the web page is a bother. They have a web tool for the shopping cart, but would have to pay their webmaster to change the site. Or, maybe they can change the site but just don't want to bother.

Some don't have a cart and want to take orders on the phone? Why? Same reason. They don't want to (or can't) update their site with price changes and seasonal specials, so they skip it. Bad, bad, bad.

Bad Catalog Structure

Ask a man what aisle the Hershey's chocolate sauce is on. He doesn't have a clue. He figures it should be next to the ice cream! Years ago a grocery store actually did that. They put the Hershey's chocolate sauce next to the ice cream! Sales skyrocketed.

Your site is your product catalog. Users don't want to see your products just in silos. Users want to see related products together. For example, does your product use special batteries? When you buy that product, does the user then have to go find the battery? Or do you show the user the battery that goes with that product?

Unusable Shopping Carts

How difficult is it to use your cart? Can you change quantities? Change options (colors, sizes, etc.)? Can you figure out what you are buying before you have to buy it? On many sites, the visitor decides to buy, then gives up and abandons the site because the cart is too difficult to use. On other sites, visitors go through the entire process, but when they get to checkout, they abandon their cart. Again, the cart is getting in the way.

You are getting ready to spend hours in SEO. And you are going to do that to attract visitors to your site. But visitors are not your goal. Site performance (e.g., sales) is your goal. When you are making your SEO changes, don't sabotage your site performance.

Make your site, not only search engine friendly, but also sales friendly.

Internet Marketing Success

James S. Huggins of The Eclectic Power Company
Copyright © 2005 James S. Huggins All Rights Reserved

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