Answer: Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
The process of Conversion Rate Optimisation for e-commerce websites focuses on converting a greater proportion of your visitors into customers. In other words, it is the process of improving your website’s ability to sell for a given marketing budget.

Getting Started with Conversion Rate Optimisation

The optimisation is performed by finding your website’s weak pages, making changes to them – guided by best-practices and customer research – and testing the new pages directly against the originals in a statistically-valid “A/B” experiment (or “multivariate”, in more complicated scenarios). The experiment is important, because it lets your customers “vote with their clicks”. Your visitors aren’t made aware of the experiment and your website continues functioning as normal, while our software counts the conversion rate for each version of the page and quietly determines the winning page.

As a greater proportion of visitors to your website convert into paying customers, the ROAS of your marketing campaigns and the ROI of your website both increase

Should Your Company be Doing CRO?

If you operate a website whose objective is to get visitors to perform a desired action (to “convert”), then you have a website eligible for conversion rate optimisation.

The desired action can be anything from buying a product, registering for a subscription service, downloading a report, or spending a certain amount of time on the page. All of these actions can be measured using industry-standard website analytics software, and once you start measuring your conversion rate, you can improve it.

A small improvement in your website’s conversion rate can result in a relatively large lift in your website’s ROI. For example, an improvement in your website conversion rate from 2% (good) to 3% (better) is equivalent to a 50% increase in ROI. Going from a 2%-conversion-rate to a 3%-conversion-rate would allow you to reduce your marketing budget by one third, while keeping sales at the same level. This budget can now be re-invested into other sales-generating initiatives such as SEM, PPC advertising or SEO.

Can CRO Really Generate 100% ROI Within 12 Months..?

So can conversion rate optimisation get you 100% ROI within 12 months? Let’s do the math here in Monopoly money.

Say it costs your Monopoly website 500 Monopoly dollars to run a conversion optimisation project. Your current conversion rate is 1% on 100,000 monthly visitors and your customer lifetime value is $1.

To get 100% ROI on your 500 Monopoly dollars within 12 months, the conversion optimisation project needs to raise your conversion rate to an achievable 1.08%, as you can see in the table below:

In our experience, this is an achievable goal for many New Zealand websites.

If you are ready to increase your website’s conversion rate, please contact us for a no-obligation chat.

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Last month Google officially announced that their latest search engine architecture is fully up and running in all of their data centres. The code name for this update is “Caffeine” and Google first mentioned it publically back in August 2009. We also know that one of the data centres went live with Caffeine back in December 2009. Here’s an excerpt from Google’s latest post on the subject:

Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before…With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

We’ve covered the caffeine update previously when it was first announced, including some commentary on how it may impact on SEO.

So what are the main things that a website owner should understand about Google Caffeine?

• It is now understood that Caffeine is not a change to Google’s ranking algorithm per se, so any changes to where your site comes up for a search are not directly related to the Caffeine update. However, it should be noted that Google is constantly making changes to their ranking algorithms and these other changes can affect your results.
• The Caffeine changes allow Google to store much more information to enable it to index more of the web than ever before.
• When you publish new content onto your website, Google’s crawlers will still find the new content at much the same rate as they did before, but now they will be able to incorporate the new content into search results much faster. Your customers should be able to find your new website content faster than ever before!
• As new content will be indexed more quickly than before, this may result in more volatility of search results compared to the old, more batch oriented updates.

Yes, Caffeine Provides Index Freshness

Within minutes of posting this blog entry, Google has already indexed the main blog page update. This is likely due to a combination of the Wordpress auto-ping, as well as Caffeine.

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Google announced 26th April that Rich Snippets will go international.

Rich Snippets allow website owners to more effectively share particular information including reviews, people, businesses and organisations, events, and more recently recipes in structured format right on the search results pages.

For example a search for “Avatar” returns “Rating 8.4/10 from 229,718 users” for the imdb.com search results listing as per the image below:

Rich Snippets give searchers a convenient summary of information related to their search query, by marking up the results page with highly relevant, specific information and thus helping searchers make a more informed click. Ultimately this means that rich snippets will help capture better qualified search traffic by drawing in the users with more relevant information.

RV Guha, one of Google’s engineers involved in the rich snippets project, states:

From our experiments, it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it’s really good for them. They get more traffic. It’s good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it’s good for the web.

Increased relevancy means increased organic search click-through rates. Rich snippets is definitely something to add to your company’s SEO toolbox. Contact us to find out how First Rate can help with your organisations search engine optimisation objectives.

Below we’ll outline and discuss the particular benefits of using rich snippets. The five types of rich snippets introduced below can be marked up in Google’s search results:

• Reviews
• People
• Businesses and Organisations
• Events
• Recipes

Rich Snippets: Product Reviews

Product reviews displayed on a search results page can be used to display snippets of useful information such as ratings, count, votes, item being reviewed, short summaries of the review, author of the review and the date of the review – all known as properties.

Review information can be marked up in two different ways being either individual reviews or aggregate reviews. To recognise these properties, and for rich snippet integration to be successful, the content must be marked up using microdata, microformats or an RDFa markup.

The more information the rich snippet can provide, the more easier it becomes for the user to decide whether the information being displayed is relevant to what they are searching for. For example, if your site provides review information such as ratings and descriptions, if it is marked up in the body of the webpage correctly, this information can complement your listing on the search results page by encouraging users to pay more attention to your listing.

The image below shows an example of an individual review by GameSpot.com of the much anticipated and popular PlayStation 3 game – God of War III:

Search query: God of War 3 review
Properties of this individual review include: rating indicated by stars, reviewer (GameSpot), and date the item (8^th March 2010) was reviewed.

Search query: Avatar movie review
Properties in this aggregated review include: rating indicated by stars and as a percentage and count by total number of reviews.

Rich Snippets: People

Rich snippets can also be used to enhance a search result listings for people. Such properties can include: name, job title, person’s role, link to a particular URL, name of organisation in which the person is associated with, location of the person and even an image link. Below is an example of a person’s rich snippet, First Rate’s own Samuel Stadler.

Search query: Samuel Stadler
Properties displayed in this snippet include location, job title, and organisation.

Rich Snippets: Businesses and Organisations

Business and Organisation rich snippets allow properties such as the name of the business/organisation, link to homepage, location (address), geographical co-ordinates using longitude and latitude, and a telephone number for businesses and organisations.

In case you are wondering whether this type of rich snippet information is going to affect your Google Local Business Listing, it’s important to note rich snippet data does not replace or affect other channels of information provided to Google, so your Google Business Listing should not be affected.

Rich Snippets: Events

Events are another format of Rich Snippets that can surface structured data in the search results pages. The events format allows webmasters to display links to events including the date/s and location/s. Event rich snippets can be beneficial to the user displaying specific events they may be interested in.

Event rich snippets allow properties such as the name of the event, link to event details page, location of event, description of event, start date and time of event, end date and time of event, duration of event, type of event (concert, exhibition, festival, seminar etc…), geographical co-ordinates using longitude and latitude, and a link to a photo or image of the event.

Rich Snippets: Recipes

Most recently, recipes have been added as a format of rich snippets. This means that for sites with recipe content, marking up these recipes could show in the search results pages like the example below.

Recipe rich snippets allow properties such as the name of the dish, type of dish (entrée, main desert, etc…), image of dish prepared, date the recipe was published, short summary describing dish, review of dish, preparation time, cook time, total time, nutritional information, instructions, serving quantity of dish, specific ingredients, and the author of the recipe.

Search query: Crepes with Salted Butter Caramel Recipe
Properties displayed in this rich snippet include an image of the dish prepared, number of dish reviews and the total cook time.

While Google continues to roll out rich snippets internationally it’s likely we’re going to see more of them in our daily searches on Google. Rich snippets can be particularly useful for e-commerce, review, and topic specific sites (i.e. cooking sites). If you have a site that you think would benefit from rich snippets it’s time you considered marking up your web pages.

Google Rich Snippets Tips

Here are a few are important areas to note when using snippets:

1. Ensure the marked-up structured data is representative of the main content of the page.
2. Ensure your marked up data is correct and not misleading.
3. Ensure your marked up content is not hidden from the user (“Hidden div’s — don’t do it!”).
4. Test your mark ups using the rich snippets testing tool
5. Once you’ve tested and confirmed your mark up is being extracted correctly, fill out the rich snippets form to submit it to Google to help speed up the process.
6. Simply marking up your web pages won’t guarantee your snippets will show in the search results pages, but as long as your pages are marked up correctly your rich snippets have a good chance of being displayed.

One last important thing to note: No matter how well your pages are marked up, Rich Snippets may not show for sites that have too few pages (or very few pages with marked-up structured data) and may thus not be picked up by Google’s Rich Snippets System.

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When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I have to tell you – marketing managers make a lot of mistakes.

I can easily count 20 of them. Of these, there is one mistake that I see over and over again. When this mistake is committed, it can destroy the business value of any SEO project. The mistake I am referring to occurs within SEO Keyword Research.  I call it the High Search Volume Addiction (HSVA).

What is HSVA?

HSVA is the addiction to selecting SEO keywords that show high search demand today, to the exclusion of other key selection factors.

Now I want to make this clear – I get HSVA. I really do. In these busy times, researching and selecting keywords based on search demand alone, is compelling. Especially considering that many keyword selection tools are free, e.g. the Google Keyword Tool.

So you’ve just used a keyword tool, and discovered 3 keywords that produce the highest search volume in their category.  You’re feeling pretty good about investing your SEO dollars in these keywords. All good?

Maybe.

The truth is, search volume is just 1 of 3 factors to consider. You have to cross-check search demand with two other key research and selection tools: trend analysis, and conversion analysis.

Trend Analysis

Trend analysis is an underused tool in SEO keyword research. Trend analysis can help you determine whether or not the ‘high search volume’ keyword you have chosen to spend thousands of SEO dollars on, is a declining rollercoaster ride. In other words, trend analysis can help you determine whether your targeted keyword has retained, or increased, its search demand over the past three to four years.

Take a look at the keyword ‘bicycles’ below.  Based on its decreasing search demand since 2004, would you want to spend thousands in SEO fees to be #1 for this keyword?  Or would you rather focus your investment on another keyword that has proven its staying power?

• Source: Google Trends (Australia), 18 February 2010

Have a look at another related keyword, ‘bikes’. This one appears to have maintained its search demand over the same period:

• Source: Google Trends (Australia), 18 February 2010

Based on this trend analysis, which keyword would you choose?

We have one more step to go, before you make your final selection.

Conversion Analysis

I always marvel at how some marketing managers fail to grasp that SEO is just like paid search; the only difference is that instead of paying per click, you pay per month – the agency fee, that is.

Once you start thinking of SEO like SEM, you start to treat your keyword research with a lot more vigour.

Let me explain. Assume you took over as head of SEM for a large company, and then discovered that one of your search managers was bidding on 3 keywords that produced 40,000 clickthroughs between them at a cost of $40,000 – but with 0 conversions. What would you do? Would you be horrified? Would you consider firing that person?

If you answered yes to the above, I want to ask you: Why?

Probably because your search manager focused on search volume, but ignored Conversion. If an SEM keyword is clearly not converting, then why continue bidding on it and waste the company’s marketing budget? By the same logic, why would you invest your SEO dollars in keywords that show poor conversion history?

Whenever you conduct SEO keyword research, make sure you use your SEM conversion data to identify those keywords that show the highest conversion rate. Then cross-check these high-converting keywords against the keywords that have been identified through your previous search volume analysis and trend analysis.

This process should produce a list of SEO keywords that will generate the highest level of search volume (today and in the future) and conversion volume.

To summarise, the key tools to use for your SEO keyword research are search volume analysis, trend analysis, and conversion Analysis.

The above process might seem straightforward. Yet, when it comes time to conduct SEO keyword research, few marketing managers (or agencies for that matter), take the time to use these selection factors. This is probably due to the amount of research introduced by such a framework.

Those who do, ensure the success of their keyword selections, and SEO project in general.

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In the online marketing world, and with SEO in particular, there’s a lot of accepted wisdom – ideas which people have picked up but often are untested.

One thing I’m passionate about is challenging accepted wisdom and establishing the truth. This allows us to focus efforts on tactics with maximum effectiveness for our clients, and also satisfies my insatiable intellectual curiosity As a result, I am constantly running experiments on various sites (with the owners informed consent of course!).

A few months ago I asked: do free directories still work? With SEO, I always think back to the value to the user, which is how Google thinks. Given many free directories are of low value and the barrier to entry for creating a free directory and submitting a site to a directory is low, I had wondered if Google had completely discounted them and everyone was wasting their time submitting to them.

To test this theory, I worked with a leading shopping cart comparison site. The site had no link building program during the test period, so the results are clean. I had discovered a desirable keyword not being targetted by this site – the site wasn’t ranking for it. I modified the homepage title tag to incorporate this phrase, and after a few weeks to settle in was ranking steadily at 15.

I then submitted the site to about 300 free directories, using the phrase and minor variants of it as anchor text. Not wanting to look too spammy, these submissions happened over about 2 months.

So what was the result?

Turns out this is one for accepted wisdom – free directory submissions do work. On completion of the submission, after some fluctuations, the ranking settled at spot 5 and has been steady for a few weeks. I also saw an increase in ranking for some long tail terms, leading me to believe the overall page rank of the site increased.

I do still believe that at some point in the future, Google is likely to discount free directories – this is pure speculation and I have no data or  inside information to support that. The site is also ranked at spot 5 in Google Caffeine, suggesting any discounting of free directories is still a long way off. Until then, First Rate will continue to recommend this tactic to our clients.

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Christmas is a boom time for retailers and not even the dim economic outlook will be able to hold back the hoards of shoppers as the Christmas deadline approaches. So you may ask, where does the internet fit into a retailers marketing strategy?As we know, people use the internet to research goods before finally buying online or in many cases offline. So when is the best time to start and ramp up your online marketing activities?

As we can see from Google Search Insights the serious demand starts to pick up in October and accelerates right up until two weeks before Christmas where it levels off before coming to an abrupt stop as you would expect. This means that November often has the highest overall traffic volume for Christmas gifts.

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Search Engine Rankings and Online Marketing Success

The major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) regularly index websites and rank these according to their relevance and popularity to a specific topic. Being at the top of the first results page ensures maximum visibility and can attract a large number of visitors.

Search engine rankings are therefore a good measure to determine the online marketing success of a website. Traffic volume, website conversion rate and total revenue generated from search and associated ROI are other (important metrics for online success).

Credit Card Industry – Search Engine Rankings Analysis

First Rate has investigated the Ranking Based Reach ™ (RBR™) in Chart 1, of the main competitors in the Australian credit card industry against the top 20 industry keywords.

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As expected early last week, Microsoft announced the “New Live Search”. Todd, Oilman, posted live coverage, as did Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land of the Searchification event at Microsoft. Here is what Microsoft explained is new:

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