Conversion Rate Web Marketing Blog 

Software Review: Advanced Web Ranking

If you’re anything like me you spend hours looking at Google to see where your website is ranked. Maybe you tune in every week to see that you’re still number one or maybe you are struggling your way up to the top.  Either way, as exciting as it is, it’s a major time drain!

By the time you manually type in each of your keywords and key phrases into each of the search engines and then scroll through the pages until you find where you rank you’ve wasted hours…

We all know that getting found in search engines is a critical component of the success or failure of your website. But, keeping track of where you rank can be a very tedious job indeed, especially if you are tracking multiple keywords and key phrases.

Some of our customers got smart about this and set up a spread sheet that keeps track of where they rank each time they check. They put the raw data in and the spread sheet presents it into graphs for an easier to read presentation.

Again, tracking rankings manually requires you to invest many, many hours each month and what we find is that it often falls by the wayside. To identify trends, it really needs to be done on a regular basis.

A Solution to Tracking Your Search Engine Visibility

Hopefully we have helped you see that manually tracking your website ranking is not a sustainable answer and it is unlikely that you are able to track in detail all of the different tasks required to get a good grasp on your ranking success or failures. So the question should be is there a solution?

Happily we can say there is. After trialling quite a number of software programs over the years we stumbled across a software program that we’ve been trialling. It does everything we need to track search engine ranking and it also includes a keyword research tool.

The program is called Advanced Website Ranking and has been developed by Caphyon. They also have link manager program that tracks your websites link popularity called Advanced Link Manager.

Below we’ve outlined the key features of the programs:

Advanced Web Ranking Overview

Target Keywords

• Keyword Research
• Keyword Analyser

Promote Your Site

• Search Engine Submission
• Find Link Partners

Analyse Your Site

• Check Ranking
• Link Popularity Analyser

Keyword Research

So what keywords should you target, what are your future clients searching for? Keyword research is the first job in Search Engine Optimisation you should be conducting. The end goal is to have your website ranking on the first page of Google for the keyword you are targeting.

Keyword Analyser

You need to be able to identify what your prospects are typing into the search engines to find your competitors. Things like keyword density, the prominence of the keywords, occurance of the keywords in the page. These are all important factors to know what you need to do to improve your website.

Search Engine Submission

A great strategy to increase the traffic to your website is to submit your website all of the important search engines. This allows the search engines to be notified of your website presence and for your website to be indexed. This will make it easier and faster for the spiders to find your site.

Check Ranking

You know you should be checking where your keywords are ranking, you know you should be doing this regularly even on a daily basis. If you’re not tracking the results of your rankings then you can’t expect to run a successful website.

Advance Web Ranking Program Features

Advanced Link Manager Overview

Analyse Your Websites Link Popularity

• Link Popularity Analyser
• Keep Track of Your Links

Find Link Partners

• Discover Potential Partners
• Find Information About Your Link Partners

Link Popularity Analyser

Following on from the section above on finding link partners, it’s great to know who is linking back to your site, what keywords they are using even track their evolution in time.

Keep Track of Your Links

How many inbound links to you have to your website? Knowing how many and who is linking to you should be part of your strategy, especially if you are paying for inbound links.

Discover Potential Partners

Generating inbound links from an external website back to your own website is another great strategy to increase the visitors to your site. Finding potential link partners is the challenge.

Find Valuable Information for Your Link Partners

The issue with link partners is finding good ones. Knowing valuable information such as the domain age or page rank is critical in deciding who to approach or keep as a link partner.

Advance Link Manager Program Features

Summary

Without a tool like Advanced Web Ranking Software the task of tracking your websites search engine visibility is like pulling teeth. Do yourself a favour and your websites success and invest in a software package that will save you lots of time and help you make money.

Final Word

Search Engine Optimisation is only part of the equation to running a successful website, you also need to work on optimising your site for converting those visitors into a lead.

No matter how many visitors you get to your site, if they’re not converting to a lead then all your Search Engine Optimisation work will be wasted.

Another example of a company that has made the mind shift from advertising to content marketing is Melbourne based Blockout Blinds. They will show you that creating great content is easy, and as the book title indicates it also gets you customers! It just takes time and effort.

Don’t be fooled though, great content rarely comes in the form of super-slick marketing agency style advertising. It’s much simpler than that… and it’s far more effective too.

Take this following video as an example. Blockout Blinds found that through mis-adventure customers often managed to derail the chain on their roller blinds. It’s any easy thing to fix, so they created the following video demonstration and an accompanying blog entry:

Roller Blinds: How to fix a broken chain

There are several benefits to creating and publishing your own content like this video:

• Customer service – Don’t underestimate how valuable content like this is to your clients
• Brand exposure – This simple video has been seen nearly 1000 times to date, but some of our customers home made videos have been seen 10’s of thousands of times within months of publishing
• Human contact – Before your customers pick up the phone and call, they will feel like they have already met you. Videos like this associate real people and faces with your company
• Establish your expertise – A simple piece of content like this one can help your customers to understand your hands on expertise in a way that advertising just can’t.

Creating this video took about 4 hours of work. The rewards of creating it will be reaped for years to come.

If you are marketing your business on the web, you need to read this book: Get Content, Get Customers.

The result of adopting content marketing for Blockout Blinds has been massive growth in website leads and most importantly sales. Bear in mind that Blockout Blinds did not have a website before 2008. Now their website is their biggest source of leads by far.

Following on from our post about the new book Get Content, Get Customers we wanted to show you some examples of customers who have made the mind shift from advertising to content marketing.

A great example of a new content marketer is Ace Mobile Mechanics.

Ace are a Victorian company offering auto electrical services, car servicing and car repairs. This year, they have focused on creating new, useful content for their website such as this page on “Starter Motors” or this one on “Voltage Regulators.”

Now those pages probably don’t mean much to you right now, but if your starter motor is playing up or your voltage regulator is on the blink, that information will help.

Putting content like this together not only provides information, it helps customers to find that information. Google’s webmaster resources tell us time and time again to focus on content for search engine rankings rather than techniques, and it does pay off. For Ace, it has paid off with a 21.2% increase in traffic so far this year, and that is continuing to grow.

Ace however are not prepared to just settle with that… They have taken content marketing even further by participating in a new blog website designed to help customers solve their own mechanical and car service problems – Car Service Tips

Ace Mobile Mechanics regularly contribute to the Car Service Tips site with posts such as:

• How to jump start your car
• How to check your brake fluid
• How to maintain your car’s battery

Creating content that is useful to your customers and prospects doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will require concerted effort from within your company.

“Effectively dealing with the infinite choices consumers have on the web involves a mind shift from old marketing where commercial messages are thrust on people. The messages that work best on the web are those that consumers choose. There’s a huge benefit to making this mind shift—it then becomes easy to create the kind of content that your customers are looking for.” – Brett Gilbertson from Get Content, Get Customers

When you change the way you think from Advertising to Content Marketing your marketing costs diminish, your conversion rates will go through the roof and you end up with better, more qualified customers who are easier to deal with.

In May this year McGraw Hill published the new book from Content Marketing Gurus Newt Barrett (Content Marketing Today) and Joe Pullizzi (Junta 42) – Get Content, Get Customers.

Content Marketing is something the we have been very passionate about for a long time now. With our years of experience in building, analysing and marketing websites, we find that very few web designers, developers and consultants are focused on content.

They spend too much time getting the look right and focusing on content management and Google rankings. Too little on content.

We are very grateful to Joe and Newt for writing Chapter 13 of their book about us and our customers. Chapter 13 starts out as follows:

“Content Marketing Pays Off on the Bottom Line in Australia

How Bitemark teaches small and medium sized businesses to reinvent their online presence to deliver dramatic increases in sales, leads, and profits.”

So why does content marketing does pay off for our customers?

Well to us, content marketing means using your website and email marketing campaigns to make customers comfortable enough to take the next step. The next step might be a contact or an online sale.

To make them comfortable enough you will need to use the right combination of information such as descriptions, details, features, locations, photos, specifications, prices, use cases and most importantly benefits, both emotional and logical. That’s what content is…

More and more, website tools and techniques are becoming throw away commodities. Content on the other hand is an asset that you can create, that will keep on giving back for years.

So do your website a favour a get a copy of  Get Content, Get Customers Here!

We’re going to look at a few example of Content Marketing Strategies from some of our customers in upcoming blogs.

In lead generation, data really puts things in perspective. In 2008 we found a trend with one of our customers that looked like this:

Web Leads up 75%

Sales from web leads up 29%

These numbers are going up, so what is the problem? The figures showed that the lead-to-sale conversion rate had dropped dramatically. That means that our customer was not being as effective at converting leads as they were at the start of the year.

Looking inwardly, we engage in marketing because we want to make more profit from our business. So we are either looking for more customers or better customers (higher profit).

For all the effort that you put into getting more website traffic or even website leads, you could be just spinning your wheels. Working harder but not really going anywhere.

The data from our customer above tells us that they were spinning their wheels. Sure, they were making more sales, but they had to spend more time with more leads to get those extra sales.

To demonstrate, look at the numbers below which are exaggerated to make the point:

Before: 10 leads = 5 sales

After: 20 leads = 5 sales

So because the leads have gone up, they are making more sales. But they have to spend much more time to get those extra sales.

Of course, if you didn’t know these numbers, you would be busier than you have ever been before, but you would not be making more profit. Nobody wants to work for nothing.

So at this point, there is a significant danger:

If this company spends all of their effort generating traffic, the numbers show that they are heading for trouble!

The real problem was occurring after the lead was generated, so extra traffic would just make the problem worse. Something needed to be done about the declining lead-to-sale conversion rate.

So why the drop in conversion rate? There are many possibilities including:

• Increased competition in the market (pricing, service, features and response time become important)
• The global economic conditions are causing people to hold off purchasing
• Staff are overwhelmed by a 75% increase in leads, and are being less effective with follow up, response times and general helpfulness
• Staff are not equipped to deal with the extra enquiries effectively (need more training)
• The extra leads are simply not right for the business, and are unlikely to buy (not qualified or bad traffic).

Any combination of factors could account for the drop in conversion rates. The important lesson is that because we closely monitor these trends, we are already 6 months into implementing a program designed discover the real factors and to turn these results around.

It’s really not hard to be able to see when this is happening in your business. All you need to know to be able to manage your lead generation website is the following pieces of data:

1. Visits – How many actual people visit your website (not hits or page views)
2. Enquiries – How many leads you get by email, phone or foot
3. Sales – How many of those leads turn into sales.

Once you have that basic data, you can begin to add to it so that you get a more detailed picture. Unfortunately what we find is that most Australian businesses are still in the dark about their websites because they do not have the numbers.

From the author: If you regularly advertise in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there is a good chance that your website could be generating more leads than it is. The reason is found in your website’s conversion rates.

In order to know how effective your website is, you must have your website KPIs (Visits, Enquiries, Sales). If you don’t have these at your fingertips right now, contact us now to find out how you can.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.

Kogan Technologies launched a cheeky PR campaign this week aiming to win their share of the Australian Government’s $40 billion economic stimulus package.

The Kevin37 campaign is named after the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and Kogan’s 37” LCD TV.

Let’s just say that the PR campaign was clever and effective! It has given this relatively unknown company a lot of publicity. The campaign has had coverage on TV, radio and in print.

Here is just a tiny snapshot of the types of articles that have appeared online:

• IT Wire
• Daily Telegraph
• Good Gear Guide
• PC Authority

However, you can’t walk into a Harvey Norman or JB Hi-Fi to buy a Kogan TV. Kogan is an entirely online seller, so how is Kogan planning to capitalise on this brilliant PR campaign?

While there is always room for improvement in ecommerce, we really like what Kogan have done. To make sure that PR turns into sales, Kogan have ensured that this campaign is easily referenced from their website. Here are just some of the conversion rate initiatives that they have taken:

1. The Kevin37 campaign gets a spot on the home page amongst the 4 screen rotating banner at the top.
   
2. Kevin37 is also featured in the news section of the home page. Unfortunately it is below the fold on 1024×768 screens, so a number of people miss it. But hey, it is there, and that is a good start.
   
3. Kevin37 is at the top of their products list (click the shop link on the top menu).
   
4. The Kevin37 campaign also gets a blog entry.

Importantly, Kogan has launched a Google Adwords campaign targeting searches related to Kevin37. It’s amazing how many people run marketing campaigns without ensuring that their website shows up in Google results for the key phrases that they use in their ads.

Kogan have a simple clean website with lots of good content. At the very least, they have generated lots of exposure for their brand and products. We’re sure that Kogan’s website has enough of the right elements to ensure that they will sell lots of Kevin37’s from this campaign.

Author: Brett Gilbertson

From the Author: If you run an ecommerce website then you might wonder, “How do I know if I’m getting as many orders as I could be?” The answer to that question is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your ecommerce website you need an ecommerce platform that is designed to maximise your conversion rates. That’s why we created eComMetrix®.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your eCommerce website.

OK, it’s time to come out of my Melbourne winter hibernation with this important question…

“Can you produce your website KPIs for me in 10 seconds?”

“What are they?” You wouldn’t be alone if you asked that.

We recently consulted with the lead generation department of very large Australian business. Interestingly they were unable to provide us with this information in a timely manner.

You might think, if a big corporation can’t pull this information together quickly, then how could you expect me to?

Well, as a small business, you actually have an huge advantage. Since there is likely to be only a few people involved in the collection of the information it is much easier to put it together. The smaller your business, the quicker it should be to do this.

So what KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) am I talking about? Well, three KPIs in fact.

1. Visits- How many visitors came to your website last month?
2. Leads – How many leads were generated via phone, drop in or contact forms?
3. Sales – How many leads turned into a sale?

These three KPIs will tell you exactly what to focus on in your website at any point in time. Without this information so much effort is wasted. We make it a rule not to make any recommendation on any website without this minimum of information.

So, it’s been more than 10 seconds now. There’s no excuses for not having this information at your fingertips. Go get it!

If you need help making it easier, contact us.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too !

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.

Since we reported on eBay’s recent move to force PayPal on all of its online auctions in Australia, you may have heard that eBay has compromised on the second part of its plan to eliminate all competition in the payment systems market.

Faced with the case that was building against the move at the Australian competition watchdog (ACCC), eBay pre-empted a negative response by withdrawing its proposal to eliminate all competition in payment systems.

It was unlikely to go well for eBay at the ACCC as objections flooded in from consumers and bodies like the Australian Federal Reserve Bank, Electronic Frontiers Foundation and others.

Of course, eBay is still forcing everyone to offer PayPal, and I wonder if eBay’s strategy was to distract you from that fact by creating a fuss around the threat to eliminate the competition. eBay can’t seriously have ever believed that they could pull a stunt like that.

Rather than doing their a PayPal business any favours eBay has galvanised dissatisfied users to educate the public on the perils of dealing with the monopoly. It has undoubtedly tarnished the eBay and PayPal brands as well as given competition the best opportunity it has ever had to gain a foothold.

eBay claimed that they should be able to offer PayPal exclusively since they say it is more secure than other payment methods. However, contrary to what eBay’s publicity machine have been pumping out, according to the ACCC (from this artcile by Alex Zaharov-Reutt on ITWire):

5.173 The evidence available does not support the view that PayPal is the most secure method of payment, or offers the best service for all transactions.

Simon Tsang of the Sydney Morning Herald compared eBay’s method of consumer “protection” to organised crime.

We can take this out of the whole eBay + PayPal debacle so far: If you’re operating on the Internet and you’re prepared to walk all over your customers, it will come back to bite you.

Was this whole episode simply smoke and mirrors from eBay to distract you from the fact that they are now forcing you to offer PayPal?

From the author: If you run an eCommerce website then you might wonder, “How do I know if I’m getting as many orders as I could be through my website?” The answer to that question is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your eCommerce website you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too !

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your eCommerce website.

Google Website Optimizer is an awesome tool that allows you to test different versions of your web pages to see which ones work better.

Here’s what the Google Website Optimizer home page says about it:

Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.

We’ve been using Google Website Optimizer in our Conversion Rate Optimisation program to find out what customers really want from websites.

Over time, we’ve come to understand this: Whether you use Google Website Optimizer to run a split test or a multivariate test, the results that you are going to get are only as good as your ideas.

Testing the colours of call to action buttons will only get you so far… You need to delve deeper to make this tool work for you. So where do you find the best ideas to test?

1. Know your customers – Spend time talking with them and understanding them.
2. Know your bottom line conversion stats – Visits, Enquiries and Sales or Visits for lead generation, Carts and Sales for e-commerce websites.
3. Delve into your web analytics to find problem areas and opportunities for improvement.
4. Know the outcomes that you would like to improve. Is it more sign-ups, downloads, lead contact forms, shopping carts, orders or sales?
5. Get the help of experienced testers.

Google Website Optimizer is a key tool that can help you to keep your conversion rates heading north. Of course, here in Australia, we would prefer to call it Google Website Optimiser. Perhaps that’s something that Google could test to see if it helps.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too !

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.

If you’re involved in marketing, then you’ll probably have heard about the ABC’s show about advertising, The Gruen Transfer. Last week, comedian and host Will Anderson asked the panel to talk about advertising that backfired on them.

According to Russel Howcroft, MD of Ad Agency George Patterson’s Y&R,

All advertising works, it’s just a matter of how much.

For many businesses marketing is one of the biggest expenses, and you don’t need to work for an ad agency to know that there is big money changing hands for good advertising… and bad advertising.

Maybe Russel Howcroft’s statement that all advertising works is true in an advertising agency sort of a way… but maybe not for long.

Marketing on the Internet has introduced many businesses to the concept that you can draw a direct line from good marketing to increased sales. It has introduced an unprecedented standard of tools, data and accountability.

Now, Google Analytics has launched a tool in the US that allows marketers to see what impact their TV ads have on their website traffic.

It may not be expected in advertising agencies, but In our opinion advertising has failed if it doesn’t generate a return on investment. Looks like Google Analytics is about to shake up the ad world.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too !

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.