Last week I studied keyword traffic for local search results related to various types of Dallas web services. I noticed a significant gap between the number of people looking for marketing services and those looking specifically for web design/development services. By significant, I mean more than 600 daily search difference. So why are so many more people looking for internet marketing than web design or development? I’ll offer my best guess below.
First, the short answer: companies understand that internet marketing is a continuous, month to month effort. But many executives think of web design and development as a once every 5-10 year ordeal. In short, too many people think that applying general best practices to their website look and feel is good enough. The rest of the burden falls upon the internet marketer to send the right kind and right amount of traffic to the website.
As I mentioned above, I have since seen a surge in organic searches for internet marketing services, while design and devleopment searches have dropped off (at least for Dallas-specific services).
Topping the list of popular searches were eight terms related to internet marketing. Now, it’s possible that the average searcher has matured to understand that an agency providing internet marketing is more than likely going to offer some sort of design and development services. If that’s the case, then all we’re seeing is a growth in our understanding of how to search for what we REALLY want. In truth, many companies want one agency. One set of meetings and contacts. One set of relationships to maintain. One agency to deliver quality design, development, email marketing, search marketing, social media marketing, reputation management, and perhaps even some online media buys. Find an agency that excels at even most of those services, and you’ve found a real gem.
Call me pessimistic (or realistic), but I’m willing to wager that the average searcher hasn’t evolved quite that far yet. In fact, I’m fairly certain that the majority of searches for internet marketing are performed either by people looking for search and social media marketing type services (or some type of marketing they don’t yet know the name for), or by the owners of those firms doing routine checks to see how they stack up against the competition.
So let’s follow step by step through the time line, from where you likely began in online marketing and where you are today:
STEP 1: You designed your websites to look super fancy in Flash
STEP 2: Marketing gurus told you Flash was bad for site structure and search engine friendliness.
STEP 3: So you spent another chunk of money to have your website converted to indexable HTML. Now Google can find your deeper web pages and knows what they’re about.
STEP 4: But you still found that you weren’t ranking well for terms you thought you should.
STEP 5: So you look for an internet marketing firm.
STEP 6: Your firm gives you the speech about what it will take to make your site competitive given your industry and target audience.
STEP 7: And off you go on the euphoric pursuit of top rankings.
If your marketing firm is doing their job right, they’ve allotted time each month to review your web analytics to determine the effectiveness or lack thereof. I’m guessing many other firms have those ducks in a row. But the differentiating factor may come in the type of analysis given to those analytics, and whether they make solid recommendations both for optimization and for user experience.
What does that mean? What different ways can you approach web analytics?
It means sometimes the problem isn’t how many visitors reach your landing page or contact form. Sometimes the problem is that 9o+% of those visitors abandon the site without performing the desired action. Optimization could account for some of that, if the keywords you’ve targeted do not mean the same to your visitor as they do to you. But you also need to look at your site: the design, the functionality, the overall experience. Yes, we can continue link building to increase your page’s search rankings, but if 90% of those visitors bounce right back out, your site is not delivering the goods.
But what do you do when you rank well and still don’t reach reasonable sales/conversion goals? You know you’re getting good traffic. What’s wrong with this equation?
You need multi-dimensional thinking to manage a company website. One solution does not solve all problems. You know that in theory, but sometimes the real world comes equipped with blind spots. If your goal is to receive 300 leads submitted through a contact form per month, you can approach it one of four ways:
- Work harder to draw more traffic to that page
- Test multiple versions of that page to see what users respond to best
- Survey visitors to find out what they liked and what they would change
- All of the above
By only pursuing more traffic, whether by organic, PPC, or social media, you CAN choose to play a numbers game, whereby you accept a high percentage of dropoff/loss in exchange for a steady and reliable percentage of conversions. OR you can look to improve your percentage of conversions by analyzing and testing the site itself. Do you just want to flood the site knowing that more people will stick if you send more traffic? Or would you rather most of your visitors get what they actually need?
It’s impossible to see your company’s website in the same way a total stranger would. You can’t erase your history or bias. You have context they don’t have. You have experience on the site they don’t have. You may even speak the lingo they don’t speak. This is why usability testing plays such an important role in overall success. A/B and multivariate testing inform us of the most effective techniques for a specific website or page, rather than just applying standard best practices across the board and assuming that user experience can be forever checked off the list.
My intention was to write about landing pages and goal pages, but this post is a necessary preliminary in order to set the stage. The moral of the story here is that “more traffic” is a necessary goal, but not the be-all end-all in web marketing. Just as focusing on customer retention can save millions in ad revenue versus turn and burn and constantly pursuing new customers, helping visitors already on the site to find their objective should be goal #1. Because ultimately, if you can’t be efficient with what you already have, you will only be wasteful with whatever new you acquire. And who can really afford to be wasteful, especially in this economy?
Daniel Dessinger
Search Marketing Specialist
MarketNet, Inc.
