You are probably already aware of the importance of your visitor's behaviors in building a successful website. After all, you can have the best design and layout and all of the keywords, alt tags, and meta tags set upright, and if your traffic is not converting then it's all for show. Therefore, in addition to having a well-developed website, it is crucial that you have an effective conversion strategy for turning your web hits into solid results. The following four steps can be used to help you develop this kind of conversion strategy and get tangible results.
Conversion Strategy #1: Content Relevancy
The first step to increasing your conversion rate is getting the right message in front of the right people. This is because it's easier to fulfill an existing need than it is to create a new one. Getting the right message in front of the right people is all about the relevancy of your content. This can be accomplished by finding out what keywords your visitors are using to find the content on your website. This will give you an idea of what people are expecting when they come to your site.
Using this information, you can work on making the content of your website more relevant by basing it on the keywords which people are typing into the search engines. Building your marketing message in this way will ensure that people will arrive at your site and find what they were expecting to find. If this happens, people are more likely to spend more time on your site and actually pay attention to your offers.
For example, if your site is about dog training and you find that people are finding your site by typing in dog training for aggression, begin to make your content and offers relevant to dog training for aggression.
Conversion Strategy #2: Focused Intent
The intent of your website needs to be specifically focused on getting your visitors to take a progressive set of actions. This approach is better known as the marketing funnel and it is the key to getting your visitors to take the desired action when they get to your site.
For example, the objective of your home page should be to get make your visitor sign up for free membership to your website. Make sure that you are offering them something immediate in exchange for signing up; this can be a free report or ebook which they can download as soon as they sign up for your site. Then send them to another page and have another action which that page is designed to make them take.
Each action moves them closer to becoming a long-term customers and each step must also be focused on getting them to take the next step in your marketing funnel. It is also vital that each step offers a limited supply of options so that it will be easier for them to make a decision. This focused intent will increase customer conversion rate and the profitability of your website.
Conversion Strategy #3: Consumption Strategies
One of the most commonly neglected strategies for increasing conversion is a consumption strategy. A consumption strategy is something that ensures that your visitors will use the resources and products which you are offering them. If customers use your resources, they'll be more likely to come back to your site and take the next step in your marketing funnel.
This will increase qualified traffic to your website because it will increase your number of loyal customers. The more loyal your customers are, the more time they'll spend on your site and the more likely they'll be to take the next step in your marketing funnel.
Consumption strategies would include any of the following:
An invitation at the end of your ebook for your customers to come back to your website and make an evaluation based on how they plan to use the content of the ebook.
A free bonus that comes with your products inviting your customer to a member forum.
An invitation to a webinar based on the content of your ebook which in turn invites your customer to sign up for a paid membership to your website.
As you can see, each one of these strategies is designed to lead your customers back to your website and to get them to take a new action. The more actions you get your customers to take, the more loyalty you will build and the more qualified traffic you will drive to your site. Over time, this will increase the conversion rate of your site and thus increase the value of your site with the search engines.
Once you have relevant content, a focused intent, and a strong consumption strategy there is one more dimension to increasing your website's conversion rates.
Conversion Strategy #4: Test, Measure, Repeat
SEO is just like any other kind of marketing in that it requires dedication to consistent vigilance and improvement in the above conversion strategies. This can be accomplished by following these steps:
Test your approach
Create the first step in your marketing funnel, put it out there, and see what kinds of results you get. This will allow you to apply the next step in improving your conversion strategy.
Measure your results
Using advanced SEO measurement techniques, find out what is working and what is not working so that you can focus your strategy according to what is getting results.
Repeat
Test your new approach and continue to look for what is working and what is not. The more you do this the more relevant and focused your site will become and the greater your conversion rates will become as a result.
So work your way through these conversion strategies one at a time. With enough patience and consistency, this approach can make your site one of the most relevant and valuable sites in your niche.
