Investment per conversion
From ranking on a search term to a closed deal, a conversion undergoes several stages. These stages are all as important as the investment for achieving a ranking. They are the real money making factors in search engine marketing.

$ ≈ # ≈ ☺ ≈ $

Investment per conversion can be seen as the formula above. It states that:

1. $ ≈ # The investment for ranking:
   What is needed to rank for a particular search term? This factor is mainly determined by the competition (both SEO and SEA).
2. # ≈ ☺ The chance of being clicked:
   Is my result relevant enough for that visitor? Getting many clicks on lower rankings can easily beat 1st positions.
3. ☺ ≈ $ The chance of a converting visitor:
   Do I offer the right service for the visitors desires and is there an easy navigation? Even small improvements in usability can double your conversions.
4. $ …≈… $ The investment and profit per conversion:
   What is a conversion worth and do the costs match? Having a bigger margin creates bigger budgets to outrank the competition.

The ≈ is used to state that there is uncertainty. It equals the chance of something resulting in a desired action. Your SEM knowledge can make that chance far easier to determine in advance.

Calculation example
To clarify how important conversion is I will give two Google Adwords examples taken from real websites. These are Dutch examples in the credit business. I’ve converted the costs-per-click using the current dollar to euro ratio, and simplified some figures for easier calculation. The biggest difference between Website A and B is that B uses its homepage as landing page and A creates specific landing pages for every single search term.

What can we conclude?

• Website A is willing to pay more per visitor, but they measure better if they convert. They know their real maximum.
• The percentage of people starting the order form is enormous, but the obvious button on a very relevant landing page (doorlopend krediet landing page) gives Website A an even better CTR from the landing page than Website B has from the homepage (their landing page) (70% vs 50%).
• The order form in Website B has 5 steps across 5 pages and they require you to fill in everything. Website B uses 3 steps on 1 page (loan request form) and requests any missing information using a call-center. This is more expensive, but converts at least just as good. Therefore a lower profit per lead.

This is a real example and I know these percentages seem extreme, but I assure you these differences are common in many industries.

Website A can do much better!

Website A seems to have everything well in order, but they can use search engine marketing even smarter. The credit industry is extremely competitive, but other less competitive industries might offer chances for loans. Do you see the relevance between a divorce and loan? Well, visitors sure do.

Website A created a section specifically about financial problems that arise with a divorce. You suddenly need a lawyer, an extra home, extra furniture and you might need to pay alimony. All costs that come very inconvenient during a period that is tough enough by itself. A loan might offer some comfort to get things in order.

After introducing this new section, Website A did multi-variate-testing on Ads and landing pages. Below we compare the original situation to the situation that was achieved after testing.

Compared to “doorlopend krediet” from the first example, “scheiding aanvragen” creates a far larger profit. The amount of searches for “scheiding aanvragen” is lower than “doorlopend krediet” and therefore both are needed to fill the demand for loan leads. But every less competitive industry we can associate with loans can be added to our audience. Combined these have a great potential and the profit is enormous “until other banks discover them”. So I’m not going into the details, but you should get my point. When you keep your Profit per conversion high and cost per conversion low, you can outbid any other company (especially from other industries).

Many webmasters have contacted me recently with the same problem. It’s an old problem that is still very important in all search engines. Their websites weren’t indexed entirely or perticular pages couldn’t even rank for the most unique text phrases although these pages were indexed. In this post I will give some pointers on effortlessly making pages more unique.

Large database driven websites all have the same problem. Sometimes search engines do not index them fully. But when they do, many pages still don’t rank in the search results. This is caused by the uniqueness of the content and seeming importance of those pages. Let’s take an average large database driven website with for instance jobs. These sites contain large amounts of job descriptions that are all formatted in the same way. While the content is somewhat unique, the shear amount causes part of that website to be seen as duplicate.

So how does this duplicate content filtering in for instance Google work?
Duplicate content filtering isn’t a black or white issue. It has multiple shades of grey, that in the worst case penalize an entire site and in the best case just effects the ranking of a page slightly. Because all forms of duplication across pages can effect your ranking, it is very important to know how to avoid duplicate content. To ensure perceived search result quality, removing duplicates is high on the agenda of every search engine.

Real focus on a search term is best given by dedicating an entire page to those search terms. This means creating and filling pages can become a huge task. Computer generated or scraped text is a very easy way to create pages, but that is where duplicate content filters often kick in. When you want to rank for combinations between “jobs in” and every city you can think of (for instance “jobs in amsterdam”), you probably generate many copies of the same page and replace the city spot wherever you can. And that is exactly what search engines want to combat.

Duplicate area’s
Many search engines see a page as part of a website and they can distinguish between the header, footer, menu, content block, etc. In fixed blocks duplication is very common, because the header and main menu are usually the same across an entire site. In the content block duplication is less common, so any duplication there is something search engines look at more closely. While duplicate area’s on the entire page should be limited, the percentage of duplicate text in the content block is extremely important.

The more inportant the page, the more duplication is condoned
If your homepage and a page just below it are near duplicates from each other, they can still rank on the part that makes them unique (even on more competitive terms). When the near duplicates are located further down the navigation and they recieve little linkjuice, the chances of them not ranking or even beïng omitted from the index are ever increasing. Linkjuice transfer is very important and optimizing it can fix many duplication issues.

The illustration above shows 2 navigational structures from the homepage. When the homepage gets an extra link on it, pages further down recieve less linkjuice. Less linkjuice means a higher chance of getting caught by duplicate content filters. Put pages higher in your navigation or acquire external links directly to them when you want to make sure they rank in spite of duplication.

Unique mashups
The “jobs in …” example will be easily detected if the city is the only inserted text. So how can you make such a thing work without having to write loads of text? You create unique mashups!

A mashup is a collection of different types of collected content. When you write small pieces of unique text per page and collect all other content in small pieces from many different sources, search engines will love your pages!

In the “jobs in …” example: Write a fifty word intro about “jobs” per city you want to focus on. Add a list of about 10 job descriptions per city from your database. Scrape a piece of city information from a cityguide. Scrape extra pieces of additional information from other sources and finally randomize the order of those content blocks. Try to collect a total of about 300 words. Search engines are smart enough to detect this technique, but the people who use it, have been ranking for ages. The linkjuice to those pages, the amount of used sources and amount of unique text you write determine if you rank on all cities.

Keep the good content above the fold
Unique text is very labour intensive and quality text cannot be automated. But where do you need quality text? Just get your visitor to click a button before they start reading the entire page content and they won’t notice the low quality Focus good usability and text quality on the top part of your page. People rarely scroll and read in detail if the function of the page is already clear and the navigation options are very obvious.

Lazy people can still score with automation, but I prefer using cheap copywriters!

Choosing a less competitive market and search terms with high traffic volumes can get you much cheaper traffic. But does that convert into sales? Here are a few examples how to get cheaper traffic for a better ROI.

1. Branding and creating awareness with search
2. Exposure is cheaper than clicks
3. Ensuring ROI with cheaper traffic
4. Profitting from high traffic search terms

Branding and creating awareness with search
Search engine marketing is normally “pull marketing”: Someone requests something and you offer it. But it can also be used as “push marketing”: Someone didn’t know he was looking for something until he came across your offer. Push marketing will probably convert less well into sales (or any other goal on your website), but for exposure/awareness purposes it can work even better than staying within your defined niche.

When there isn’t much awareness for the solutions you offer or when your audience doesn’t even know the problem it solves is relevant to them, you might need to try other (online) marketing solutions than search engines. Normally you could rent a bannerspace on somewhat relevant resources that target the same audience, but you can also get cheap exposure from search engines.

Exposure is cheaper than clicks
For instance in Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or MSN Adcenter; When you bid on a less relevant search term and you use a very specific proposition of the thing you offer, you won’t get the highest clickthrough-rate. But the traffic you recieve is relevant as long as you are honest in the adtext. You might pay more per click than other advertisers because of that lower CTR, but you don’t pay for the exposure, just for the clicks.

Example:
You offer logistic software for the transport business, then people might not search for your product often and they might even be unaware that they would need such a service. In that case try bidding on terms like “buying a truck” and then use an ad like “Buying a new truck? You might want to track what your drivers are doing. www.TruckTracker.com”. If that isn’t what someone was looking for, they might just haved spotted it and it made them think. So make sure you brand your message. Of course this is just one example, but it shows that search can be used as push marketing.

Ensuring ROI with cheaper traffic
Both paid and unpaid search listings suffer an ever increasing competition. This competition competes for just 21 spots (in Google 10 unpaid, 3 top ads and 8 paid results on the right) on the first page and the second page is rarely visited. Nowadays even the most specific long tails are targeted by all bigger players. The websites with the most revenue on that search term can outrank anyone in both the paid and unpaid (yes that too depends on effort and money) results and there is no place left for a highly relevant, smaller retailer. So how does the smaller retailer get his traffic? Or how do you maintain a high ROI without having to outbid everyone?

The trick in ROI is that effort equals money and wit can reduce the required effort. You have to be a good online salesman and you need to focus highly on usability, but turning less relevant volumes of traffic into conversions can reduce the cost per conversion enormously. This is best explained with an example. Let’s state the following:

You sell mortgages and loans nationwide and as you might guess; The competition is enormous and even though the revenues are high, traffic is expensive and thus your ROI is minimal. Long tails are targeted by all your competitors as well, so no cheap traffic there.
But what are the loans or mortgages used for? If you are used to the competition in the loan business, the competition in other businesses is peanuts and traffic is much cheaper. With loans, try focussing on terms related to buying a boat, refurbishing your house, buying a car, expensive holidays, new kitchens, buying a computer and many more, but make the traffic relevant.

Search term:
“buying boat”

Ad text:
“Buying a boat? Finance ready?”
Compare every loan provider
for tailored boat loans
www.loanCompare.com

Landing page:
And create a landing page tailored for boat financing with possibilities to get more information, but a clear button to request an estimate for their situation.

Where it says ad text, you can also say description in organic results, because even organic results can be steered in great detail. You can use this example for every slightly related topic. And making it relevant is easier than you might think. Cheap traffic is, irrelevant traffic turned into conversions.

Profitting from high traffic search terms
As you might have read in the previous topics: In paid search you don’t pay for exposure, just for clicks; Irrelevant traffic might be less competitive; And any traffic can lead to conversions when you make it relevant. These points are as true for normal searches as for very popular searches.

Take for instance news topics, popular people, government information or seemingly unexploitable topics. News (like war Afghanistan) gets high volumes of searches, but not many advertisers compete on related terms. Most popular people (like Clint Eastwood) get only a few ads for their name. Government information and social dilemmas (like unemployment) get little attention, although they are easily exploitable for commercial purposes.

• See your ad as free exposure and less as a cost per click based revenue maker.
• Brand the message and sometimes even prevent clicks.
• And make pages specifically for converting irrelevant traffic into sales.

Conclusion
Any traffic can be good traffic as long as you are clear about what your services are from the beginning. Prevent people from visiting your website or even contacting you with the wrong intentions. The costs of clicks, bandwith and your time can become your downfall if you don’t. These rules are as true for paid ads as for organic listings so read them as such.

I wish you much success in your business and try to give me feedback once you’ve tried it.

1. Your first ever search engine will be either the default one on your computer or the one someone advices you to use. If you remain satisfied with the results you’re not likely to switch. This is why all search engines want to become the default on new computers.
2. Unexperienced searchers are more likely to type full sentences in stead of only keywords. As people become more acquainted with search they will use only key-words and even start using phrase and negative query options.
3. Unexperienced searchers won’t know the difference between sponsored and organic search results and are more likely to click ads. As experience grows they will sometimes create an automatic ad filter and they won’t even notice the ads anymore.
4. Websites that sell something are more likely to use sponsored listings. And because people aren’t always searching to buy something the sponsored listings are deemed less relevant in most cases. Only when someone is looking to buy, they are more likely to look at and click on ads.
5. The decision phase someone is in determines what keywords they use and what they click. The Search Funnel (pdf) can be used to determine what keywords belong in which phase and shows you which steps need to be taken to end up with a buying customer. Down the AIDA funnel (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action). In which Action can be buying something.

   
   (Click for PDF)

   To get a buying customer someone needs to go through the entire decision making process. If you get your website visitor in the “attention” phase you need to offer him all the following steps and information without loosing him to a search engine which might be able to give him more information then your site does. The further down the search funnel you get your visitor, the more likely someone is willing to buy or take any other desired action. Maybe this article can help: Best landing page layout.

   Target keywords from all phases, but make sure you offer the desired information for that phase. Guide them to the desired action on your site, but in these steps offer answers to possible questions in every decision phase.

6. Most websites are written in only one writing style. They can for instance use commercial language, corporate language or informal language. They’re also written from a specific knowledge level with the presumption that the visitor has that same knowledge. Write your text from all different standpoints, all knowledge levels and every possible writing style that is suitable for your product or service. Just figure out a way to do it all in one website and target all possible search queries.
7. Organic and Sponsored search results are almost always placed in the format Title, Description and URL. Eye-tracking studies on the Google result pages show that it is not only important to be amongst the first five search results, but it is even more important to be have a relevant and attractive result. The second result can easily convert better then the first as long as it is more relevant to what the searcher was looking for or even more then he was looking for.

   
   (Click for full page)

   The different colors show how much time was focussed on a specific region of the page.
   The X-es show where the user clicked.
   The red lines show how far someone scrolled.

   As you can see people don’t scroll much, but that depends on the first five results. If they are exactly what the searcher was looking for, they will click those. If it was nothing like what they were looking for, they will click the search box to refine the search. If it was somewhat what they were looking for, they will scroll to see if there is something better in those results.

   People scan the results for what they were looking for. Having the keyword in your title and description makes them bold. Something bold ate the beginning or end of the line attracts extra attention.

   Make sure your result stands out of the crowd. Titles in search engines are your page titles, the descriptions (snippets) are either: 1. Your DMOZ or Yahoo directory description. 2. Your description metatag. 3. A specific piece of text from your page where the search phrase is situated. Test titles and descriptoins in payed search and reflect the successfull ones in your webpages.

8. The future of search is in personal search, custom result page layouts and vertical search. All of these result types make it harder to predict where and how your result will be shown. Make sure you end up in every relevant vertical search type. In a future post I will focus on influencing personal and vertical searches. It isn’t very important yet, but just realize that this is coming!

These are just a few of my findings. The article would become too long if I continued. Maybe I’ll focus more future posts on this subject.

Google Adwords quality scores
First let me tell you there are two distinct quality scores in use with Adwords. One influences your minimum bidprice and one influences your actual cost per click and ranking.

Minimum bid price
The minimum bid price is the cost per click you have to pay to have your ad appear. Even if there are no competitors, your keyword will be placed on hold if you bid less.

Minimum bid prices are mainly based on:

• The historic relevance of your (entire) site to a certain topic.
• The relevance of the used landing page to the used keyword.
• And the popularity of the keyword.

As you can see you can’t just bid on any keyword with any website and any page. You can, but you pay much more. Bidding on a new unrelated hype just to get large amounts of traffic is therefore much harder to do.

The relevance of both website and landing page isn’t only based on the text, but also on relevant links to them. A page that scores or could score organicly is therefore the best landing page and SEA (search engine advertising) needs good SEO (search engine optimization) now, more then ever.

Ranking quality score
A high ranking quality score gives you a higher ranking or lower actual cost-per-click than a competitor that has a lower quality score.

The ranking quality score is more based on coherence between keyword, ad text and landing page, than actual organic ranking. Both ad text and landing page need to include the keyword and related words. Ad text and landing page need to have simular content so the algorithm can detect if the promise you make in the ad is kept on the landing page and is not some trick to boost the click through rate.

Ranking quality score is mainly based on:

• Historic click-through-rate on the used keyword matching option.
• Historic click-through-rate on the used ad (title, description and landing page).
• Historic click-through-rate on your account, campaign and ad-group.
• Used matching options.
• Bounce rate (direct returns to Google after clicking the ad).
• Ad relevance to keyword.
• Landing page relevance to keyword.
• Coherence between ad and landing page.
• Not as important, but will be in the near future: Organic ranking of the landing page.

It is not as much that you need a good SEO to influence these factors, but you need a good copywriter with expertise in search. Your copywriter should know how to take all these factors in to account.

How to!
Here is one way to start a good ad campaign and paying as little as possible:

1. Define keywords that are relevant to your website or create relevant webcontent first (to lower minimum bid prices). Group them so one ad text and landing page can cover the entire group. This probably means small groups.
2. Search your own website for each keyword and optimize a high scoring page as the landing page for that keyword or small group of keywords. Do extra linkbuilding and wait for organic ranking first if the minimum bid price is too high.
3. Enter the keywords as exact match and broad/phrase match and supply as much negative keywords as you can think of. Make sure you’re able to measure the exact typed-in search phrases in your web analytics.
4. Create an ad text that is different from all the other ads ranking for those keywords. Click-through-rate is mainly based on: Offering what one searched (ad relevance), offering something seemingly better then the other ads (ad specs) and sticking out from the crowd (ad call-to-action and ad position).
5. Enter the landing page URL exactly as the page scoring in organic search. Without any URL differences you could use to recognise adwords visits.
6. Find out/guess what position other than the first one is highly visible with your ad text sticking out from the surrounding ads. Aim for this position when setting your maximum cost per click. Start bidding high, but when your historic click through rates increase you can lower your bid to keep the same ad position. Adwords also has a prefered position setting, so use this to automatically lower your CPC in time.
7. Set the daily budget high at first so you can do keyword research. If you don’t add all your ads at the same time and finetune before you add another, you can see what keyword potential is available and you get a representative percentage of searches to finetune the different matches.
8. Add the ad group and start by finetuning your search terms. Look at your web analytics and see what exact phrases are used within the broad/phrase match. Enter all of them as exact match, but use negative matches for the ones that are irrelevant for your website. If they are just irrelevant for that particular landing page, create a different ad group with a better landing page.
9. Then finetune your ad text. Enter two or three slightly different ad versions and see what ad text converts best measured in click-through-rate.
10. If one ad is chosen as the winner, reflect that ad text in your landing page. Preferably you should use the same title and description.
11. Once you have almost no clicks on your broad/phrase matches – because you use exact and negative matches that include everything contained in them – then you can activate a second ad group and repeat the whole process.

SEA requires SEO
By doing all the above you get high click-through-rates, high relevance to keep your visitors, low minimum bid prices and lower average cost per clicks. Most SEA agencies do only CPC bid management to increase the effect of your ad and lower the cost. It is about time they include ad and landing page relevance in their routine too.

Indicators of ad and landing page relevance are the same as indicators for organic relevance. Most search engines just don’t use all their organic spam filtering on quality scores because there isn’t that much landing page spam yet. As more sites start influencing relevance in the quality score artificially search engines are bound to add more spam filters and SEA pricing will become SEO work.

But is there a best default landing page layout?

After talking to many webdesigners, usability experts and search engine optimizers I’ve come to think there is. Here’s what all great landing pages have in common.

They all contain the following sections:

1. Stating the most likely question
   They start by stating the most likely question someone has after searching a perticular searchterm. This question is placed in the page title and in a header above the rest of the page content. The title makes sure the question ends up in the search results and the header makes sure the visitor recognizes that he landed on the right page.
2. A quick answer to the question
   By directly typing the quick answer under the header the visitor will have instant satisfaction and will feel good about your website. The quick answer can also be placed in the description metatag so it will most likely end up as the snippet under the title in search results. Use the searchterm at least once in the quick answer to make sure the snippet is picked and the term will show bold in the search results.
3. The link to your website
   Why is this content on your website? What links it to your products, services or information? Here you place the most desired action you want the visitor to take next! For instance link to your products that would fulfill the users wishes the most.
4. The long answer to the question
   In the long answer to the question you place keyword rich content including related searchterms. Whenever something on a related term might be unclear link to a page that explains that term better.
5. Related items
   If you haven’t done so in the long answer you should link to the top related pages at the bottom of your text. Most of these links should be within your website, but you can also link to other websites that have more information on the topic.

Click for entire page

They are easy to navigate:

1. Use a recognizable layout
   Users don’t want to think about finding the information. Place the information in the most obvious spot. Have a menu look like a menu. Underline your links. Make a header bigger and bolder then normal text. Read the book “Don’t make me think!” by Steve Krug. It’s a good way to start on usability!
2. Place important content “above the fold”
   With one view someone should see what the page is about. Even without scrolling someone should see the first three sections I previously mentioned. At the moment most people use the 1024 x 768 screen resolution and subtracting browser and menu bars, the average browser window only has a height of 580 pixels.
3. Accentuate prefered navigation
   Make it obvious what you want your visitor to do next. Use a giant button saying “Click here to …” (SEO-wise a “click here” in the anchor text sucks, so preferably make a good call to action without it).
   If you put the site in Chinese, would you still know where to navigate?
4. Don’t have too much navigation
   Don’t overload the user with navigational possibilities. Both SEO-wise and usabilty-wise too many links on a page is a bad thing. For instance don’t have your entire menu show, but just the subsection of the current page and some top sections to choose from. In the related items show only a top five. And always consider if a link is related enough to be on the page.
5. Use normal links
   Search engines only follow normal “>a href” links. If a link has to be on your page, but is totally unrelated, use the “rel=nofollow” attribute in the link. This way no linkpoints are given and no associations are made between the pages.

A good landing page entices a visitor to navigate onwards and preferably to the endgoal of your website. Always keep the end goal in mind when designing and writing text for your landing page!

Link Building Manual