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How Bass Fishing Taught Me More About Conversions

Published
by
Michelle
on June 20, 2009
in SEO and Search Engine Optimization
. 0 Comments

Today I was watching a Bass Fishing Tournament on television, and I heard them spout off a tiring statistic. This angler had cast his line 204 times and actually caught only 2 fish. WHAAAAAA? He had a conversion ratio of 1%. 200 casts to get 2 fish in the boat?

He picked the location to fish, he chose the bait and equipment, the rhythm of the cast and retrieve, and still only 2 fish for 200 casts. Was he where the fish were? According to the broadcaster he had tried in 3 different parts of the lake, and at the end of the day, and more than 400 casts, only 4 fish in the boat.

Nothing he tried seemed to work - simply the fish weren’t biting.

Is that how it feels on your website? Do you put sample orders through just to make sure “its working”?

It got me to thinking, what can you do when the fish aren’t biting or in your case when customers aren’t checking out on your eCommerce website?

Assuming the customers exist and can find your website, let’s look at some real basics.

Are you selling things people want to buy? (Is your bait tasty?)

Is it easy to find what they want? (Is it the right bait?)

Are your descriptions / content relevant and helpful ? (Are your hooks sharpened?)

Is it clear what they should do next? (Does that bait look real?)

Is the shopping cart easy to understand? (Are you steady cranking with an appropriate tease?)

Do you look trustworthy on the credit card page? (Are you setting the hook or yanking out of their mouth?)

Is everything pointing them to FINALIZE order? (Applying just the right pressure to get them to the boat?)

If you do it right, often enough you’ll put them in the boat!

Not sure what may be wrong ? Hire someone to buy something from your website - someone who has NEVER been to your site before - and then watch them. Visually watch where they struggle. Chances are if it is a struggle for them, it is a struggle for many other customers too.

Want to learn more about conversion and analytics? Stay tuned, we’ll be blogging about analytics more, soon.

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Think Locally, Act Googlely

Published
by
Michelle
on April 21, 2009
in SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Videos and Website Traffic
. 3 Comments

Local search is booming, period.A few years ago we didn’t really go to the web to find brick and mortar businesses, but WE DO NOW. With searches like “restaurant Nix Boatyard in St. Augustine” actually delivers in the first spot, my favorite restaurant in St. Augustine Florida - The Creekside Dinery, but sometimes the name just escapes me.

I know that it has happened to you, too. Is there a time that you just couldn’t remember the business name, or perhaps you didn’t know the business name, but you are searching for a business type in a very specific area of your town? Guess what? Your potential customers ARE doing the same thing, too.

Let’s take that one step further, Jacksonville Florida is a large city, in fact the largest city in land area in the contiguous United States. We don’t have tiny towns one next to another like in many other parts of the U.S. We really don’t even have “suburbs” as much anymore. Verbally it is often referred to as the Metro Jacksonville Area or the First Coast made up of 5 counties. Well if you haven’t visited us before our First Coast is nearly 70 miles from the North to the South and 50 miles from the East to the West. Bottom line — it’s HUGE.

For special occasions I will make the 47 mile trek to St. Augustine to enjoy an Oak Plank Oven Grilled Steak at The Creekside Dinery in St. Augustine, but that is not my usual place to eat - and I bet your customers are the same way.

Years ago I served time (read: held a job) in the marketing department for a commercial real estate firm and learned some pretty interesting facts. Most traditional retail business measure the demographics in 1, 3, and 5 mile radius loops around their location. Small retailers (including restaurants) will draw the majority of their customers from people who work and live within that range. Big box retailers and national restaurant franchises draw from a larger area, however a concentration of their business is still very likely within a 10 mile radius. That’s probably no surprise to you - but did you tell your web designer?

When you are laying out your website, do you include neighborhoods, towns, nearby places to be included? If not you may be missing the boat. If you have a mobile business, is your service area limited to a section of town? Include that on your website.

Help your customers find you when they are looking by including “clues.” The search “italian restaurant jacksonville, fl” turns very different results than “italian restaurant san marco jacksonville, fl” even on the Google map. In the past I have discussed the idea that you can include a ZIP code in the Google search and get VERY TARGETED results.

Some creative ways to include neighborhood information:

On your Find Us page include directions from nearby areas where you may attract business. In Jacksonville it may be:

  • From Jacksonville Beach …
  • From Atlantic Beach …
  • From Arlington …
  • From Orange Park..

Or how about including a nearby thoroughfare or large neighborhood?

  • Conveniently located near Queens Harbor Country Club just off Beach Blvd

What about the nearby towns - this is especially great when you have many small townships close together

  • Proudly serving our customers in Green Cove Springs, Penny Farms and Middleburg for more than 20 years.

And this isn’t just for RESTAURANTS, either. It can work for the Hardware Store, the Florist or any other kind of brick and mortar business that attracts customers to their location. And even mobile businesses that work a specific area:

  • Our mobile detailers serve Downtown Jacksonville, The Southbank and San Marco

Even for me, in SEO consulting, I am not actually limited to a geographic area, but certainly clients really like that I am nearby and I will be working harder to let folks know that I am available in the small towns around Jacksonville, too. If you search Google for SEO Orange Park (which is the next closest town) we show up in the Google Local Results - not because our office is in Orange Park (yet) but because no other SEO companies are in the Google Local listings with addresses in Orange Park.

Google Local results are really local — unless you are geographically close to me, the results you see typing in SEO Orange Park are not the same results I see - not on the Google Map and not on the Organic SERPS and not in the Pay Per Click. Yes, even Pay Per Click can be localized. (More on that later).

If you do not have enough customers beating down the door to your local business (and are there really ever enough?) you really should think about how you can leverage the Google Local and Google Map to draw more traffic in. And oh, by the way, Yahoo and MSN have local search now, too. So don’t forget them as part of your efforts.

I purchased this online quick training on how to get your business on the Google Map in 4 hours. The information is solid, the presentation could be laid out better, and I will be updating my next client listings  based on several tips in the training.

How do you know if you need a “Local” presence for your website, here is a really simple test.

  • Are the products and services you provide useful or usable for customers in your area?
  • Do you have a cash register / service log to ring up walk-in transactions?
  • Do you deliver, install, or provide mobile service customers in your area?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions. You may want to seriously consider making your website more “Local”

What companies may not benefit from “Local” … Companies that don’t offer any walk in services and never have direct in-person contact with clients may not need Local. For instance Amazon.com - they serve an international office and don’t need local visitors.

What about B2B? Well you probably do still need to think about local. While you are selling to a Business, it is still a person that is researching to find the products and services you offer.

The old saying seems most appropriate now … Think Globally - Act Locally.

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How Do Search Engines Work?

Published
by
Michelle
on June 24, 2008
in SEO and Search Engine Optimization
. 1 Comment

Have you ever really wondered how search engines work - really?

When you’ve been doing something for a long time, sometimes it is easy to forget that your personal knowledge is not necessarily common knowledge. As strange as it may seem I am still surprised when folks tell me they don’t really understand how websites get to the top of search engines. Each time I get the question, “how do search engines work?” I am still awestruck. Not because they don’t know, and never to defame the character or intellect of a client or friend, but I am just surprised. It seems like old information, like how does the light in the refrigerator turn on when you open the door.

So I thought I would de-mystify the basics of how search engines work, and in a little less tech way than the usual professional SEO person would. And if that’s OK with you – it’s something like this.
Take yourself back to 2nd grade, back when you began taking reading comprehension tests. I know it may hurt to think back that far, but would you try for me? On the standardized tests (at least in Florida) you would be given a story to read, maybe only a few sentences, and you had to answer an important multiple choice question: What is the main idea of this paragraph or story?

Believe it or not, search engines work in kind of the same way, with some other visual cues added in. A search engine visits a web PAGE (not web site) and applies a formula (a.k.a. algorithm) to determine the main idea and sub ideas of a web page and grades (scores) the page based on the main idea (theme) and lists it in their catalog (index). But this is where it get’s a little more fun . . . in the case of Google and some other search engines – they also consider what other folks say the web page is about, too, and calculate that into the page’s grades. Then imagine a collective grading system, where your “main idea” of the paragraph story is also compared to the “main idea” of that others chose on their test – and whichever “main ideas” are chosen the most, that’s how the web page is cataloged.

Sounds simple right, well, in some ways it is. So lets talk about those visual cues mentioned earlier. Each cue has some scoring factor assigned to it, contributing its value to the overall score. Let’s go back to the elementary school example of reading comprehension – except now, you get to write your own paragraphs.
You are now the storyteller, and your only goal is to help the reader understand the story as clearly as possible. Before you write a 3 – 4 paragraph story, you probably would already have a theme. Sticking with 2nd grade writing – let’s say that the short story is about a little boy named Tommy who gets a Red Bike as a birthday present. I have put the visual search engine cues in bold here to help define them in SEO terms.

If you wanted others to read the story (content) you would include a Title (also called title in search engine terms), so they know what the story is about. You may even add a headline or subtitle (header tags) to add dramatic effect. When you get to an exciting part of the story, you may use BOLD (strong tags) letters. And in the course of the story you would probably repeat things like, new bicycle, red bicycle, and the fact that it’s Tommy’s birthday (keywords and keyword density). So after you write your story, you then have to tell folks where to find it. Maybe you would even get your friends to tell their friends where to find it (back links), so that folks wanting to read a story about a red bicycle can find your story more easily.

So a search engine reads your Title, and the content of the page to calculate the keyword density, and theme. It also looks for bolding and header tags to see what the writer thinks is important, and then checks around to see if other folks agree to the web page findings by reviewing the keywords being used to link back to the site.

If you’ve written your story well, the search engine now understands that it’s about red bicycles for birthday presents, and if you’re friend’s links include a mixture of words around the same theme, the search engine will catalog your web page on that topic.

The tricky part is how to make that cataloged story (web page) appear in the first page of the search engine when someone types in red bicycle for birthday or red bicycle for Tommy. Its tricky because there is competition for your keywords. Hard to imagine, but it’s true, other people want their websites to have higher placement (rank) in the search engines for the same keywords as you. So Google and the other search engines apply their formula (algorithm) to assign the theme and assign your grade (rank) in comparison to the competition. And your website is listed (ranked) accordingly. Sort of like when your teacher posted grades on the board and ranked the list by highest score in descending order. The 100’s at the top, followed by the 90’s, then the 80’s etc.

So really that’s it – well the heart of it. According to the different online SEO experts, the search engines may use as many as 100 different factors in calculating the search engine rankings, but remembering your audience is the key factor. If you write your stories (web content) with the primary focus on making it easier to understand, and allow yourself to think into the mind and heart of the human who’s searching for you, you will begin to get better results and more humans visiting you from the search engines.

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Human Search Optimization

Published
by
Michelle
on June 20, 2008
in Human Search Optimization and SEO
. 2 Comments

I spent some time this week on a conference call explaining the concept of Human Search Optimization. The crowd was great, and very supportive of the idea. Human Search Optimization isn’t really that new of a concept, but defining it as a phrase is. After all marketers have been trying to appear where humans are searching for years. And search has been going on long before there were ever search engines, we just used to call it research (I wonder if that’s because we had to search, and search again to get the information we were seeking).

20 years ago when you wanted to find out something you had to do research. You would look at the paper, open a phone book, ask a friend, go to a library, ask your parents. Most of these things required human interaction - human research. And great marketers were where you could find them. Particularly in the form of Yellow Pages and Print Ads — it was so much easier to find customers then.

The Yellow Pages (which I now use for a monitor riser) have been neatly divided into distinct categories - Humans cannot get lost in there - as long that human knows the major category of the item they are searching for. Back to the 3 ft pool cue example from a prior post - if you know you need a pool stick, you just go to the yellow pages and look up pool. Oops that’s only swimming pool stuff, but there is a nice little note that says, Pool Tables - See Billiards. Easy enough, I would just flip over to the billiards section, and then if NONE of the ads say 3 foot pool cue, I would find the one closest to me by address, and pick up the phone and start calling different pool — ah Billiards Stores. And the Billiard Store that can answer the phone and answer my questions and is the closest to me, may just win my business. Not that hard right, but the Billiard Store that had the ad showing they were closest to me got my attention first, and that is Human Search Optimization. On my website Human Search Optimization.com I have defined it as

Human Search Optimization is understanding the independent thought processes of humans and implementing marketing methods to maximize the likelihood of being found when they search for what you offer.

Makes sense right? But now that Search Engines are a part of the RESEARCH methods, it is being sure that you are thinking like your customers you have to really get inside their head. Someone searching for a short pool cue may start with any of a number of searches.

Pool stick for small space
Home size pool cue
short pool stick
shooting pool in small spaces
3 foot pool stick
36″ pool stick

Some folks have called this idea Long Tail search, in some instances it is, in other instances it really is about cross-sectioning the brain of the human and understanding their needs and being there when they search. Developing your website to match the minds of the searcher. It would seem to be hard, but really it’s not that difficult.

Being where they can find you. Period. And still as of this writing, I have a top position for 3 foot pool cue in google.

So does that mean you have to write LOTS more copy for your website? Well maybe, or maybe not. It just means you have to think harder, work harder and be smarter than your competition. All 1,000,000 of them if you want a top placement.

You don’t think there’s a disconnect between what you offer and what folks are searching for? Then read this …

Case in point, a friend of mine recently called a deli to order some potato salad, the person answering the phone asked her - “how much do you want” … my friend replied “2 pounds” … and the reply from the deli was “we don’t sell it by the pound, we have a 8 ounce and 16 ounce containers. ” to which my friend replied, “I’ll take 2 - 16 ounce containers”, and was promptly reminded that would be 32 ounces. Sound funny right, to read that and think there was that much of a disconnect? But really look at your marketing material, your website, are you designing it for the masses, or to satisfy your own cravings?

Human Search Optimization is about them, it’s not about you. After all, aren’t you the one selling what they want?

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