Paid Clicks Convert Higher

It’s a difficult decision for every Web professional where should we put our budget, time and resources? Paid traffic or natural/organic SEO for traffic? While there are advantages and disadvantages to both types of campaign, Google and Compete believe that paid clicks are more likely to convert in the online retail space.

It should come as no surprise that the role of SEO and advertising is vital in e-commerce. The findings from a joint study (available through a Webinar here) reveal that while both branded and non-brand clicks were important to ROI, paid clicks are more likely to convert than natural clicks. One retail study they were involved with stated that in 7 out of 8 categories tested (the exception was home furnishings) paid clicks were 50% more likely to convert than organic clicks.

The study aimed to quantify the value of search clicks in driving online and in-store sales. Google and Compete documented shoppers search behavior to understand non-converting clicks by monitoring clicks to leading retails websites (e.g. Ann Taylor, Zappos, Buy.com, Ikea, Walmart to name a few) and tracking consumer purchase activity 60 days after the of initial click. Some interesting findings from the study include:

• Up to 33% of all visitors to retail sites come from search
• Up to 55% of paid traffic comes from non-branded clicks
• Up to 49% of purchasers using search click on non-branded search terms
• 32% of mass merchants purchases occur more than 2 weeks after the initial search referral  (30% purchase same-session, but 70% purchase later)
• Up to 43% of online shoppers purchase in-store

SOURCE: Website Magazine

Creating an effective landing page

When it comes to converting a click into a lead or sale, the importance of the quality of your landing pages can’t be overestimated. Your landings should tell the people who arrive there you and your offers can be trusted and the quality of the offer is guaranteed, ideally in a single glance.

Be specific
The more specific a landing talks about a certain offer, the more chance there is people will make use of that particular offer. Don’t direct people to a homepage of a website where they have to start looking for the offer themselves. Bring the people as close to an offer as you can.

Make a good first impression
Take a look around at other landing pages and you’ll notice some look better than others. Some look cheap, but on the other hand: something can be too slick as well.  Every offer needs a different approach, but your landing should ooze quality, and an attractive graphical presentation is an important part of that. If you’re not capable of creating something yourself you’re not completely satisfied with, find someone who can do it for you.

Make a page scenario
Some landing pages look like they are trying to attract attention on ten different spots at the same time. Try to create a natural and logical flow into your lay-out, so people simply start at the top and end at the bottom of the page.  Like this they won’t miss any information you’re trying to get across because something at the bottom made them skip ahead.

Test different designs
One of the ground rules of landing pages is that except for using the word ‘FREE’, nothing is certain when it comes to conversions. So don’t just make one landing. Make several, trying outing different images, texts and lay-outs, and trying all of them out consecutively. Keep track of which ones work best. After a while you’ll learn which type of landings work better for which type of offers.

Add testimonials
Try to find positive feedback on the offer from a legitimate source. Ideally your offer has been featured on TV, or on a well known website. If so, include this in your landing page so people will trust the offer more easily. If you find independent websites recommending your offer, copy their content on your landing page and mention the source, but don’t  place links to the recommending sites. A good landing page is a one way street. Don’t give people the chance to get distracted from your offer.

Call To Action
Your landings should make very clear what exactly is expected of your visitors. And don’t try to make something look better than it really is. Honesty about a product or service works better than cheap marketing talk. If you tell people exactly what they’ll get and what they have to do for it, the chance people will recommend your offer to other people will also increase.

Create Trust
The more anonymous an offer is, the less people will be inclined to make use of it. Try to include as much contact information as possible in your landing pages. If you’re marketing for a well-known brand, don’t hesitate to mention this brand. If you add information that will allow people afterwards to comment on the transaction to a real person or company, they will feel more confident to take action.

Optimize your AdSense Earning

In order to optimize your AdSense earnings, it helps to understand them.  Page impressions, click-through rate, cost per click – they all work together to affect your income.

The AdSense Calculator lets you examine the interplay.

Just fill each of the fields, and it’ll return estimates of your daily, monthly, and yearly earnings and clicks; for making projects (or for deciding whether or not to use AdSense), this can be quite helpful.

Adsense Calculator Tool © SEO Chat™ Page Impressions Daily Page Impressions Click Through Rate Click Through Rate (%) Cost Per Click Cost per click ($) Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

Most Popular Keywords – What are people looking for

What are all of the millions and millions of people in the world searching for? Some of the major search engines provide a way to glimpse into the web’s query stream to discover the most popular search keywords or topics. Use these links to research what keywords are most popular.

• AOL Hot Searches – Top current queries, or see those in the last hour, last day and within particular categories.
• Ask IQ – See top searches at Ask.
• Dogpile SearchSpy – Choose to see either a filtered or non-filtered sample of top, real-time search terms from this popular meta search service. Sister site MetaCrawler offers a similar MetaCrawler MetaSpy service.
• Google Trends – Allows you to tap into Google’s database of searches, to determine what’s popular. View the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on. Compare multiple terms, as well. See our review: Google Trends: Peer Into Google’s Database Of Searches.
• Google Zeitgeist – What people are searching for at Google and its associated specialty services in a variety of categories. There are versions for various countries, as well.
• Lycos 50 – Long-standing service showing top searches at Lycos each week.
• Yahoo Buzz Index – Shows you what’s hot and what’s not in terms of search topics at Yahoo.
• dWoz Search Phrase Lists – Great directory of services like those above, for search engines large and small, across the web
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Enter a term or terms, the use the drop-down box to see the popularity of terms and popularity over time.
• Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool – Formerly called the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool before that, this free service is primarily designed to help advertisers who wish to select terms to target with ads on the Yahoo network. But you can use it to see how popular particular terms are.
• Researching Keywords – For Search Engine Watch members, this provides an annotated rundown on key tools useful for search marketers needing to perform search research for their campaigns.
• Search Term Research and Search Behavior – These categories of Search Engine Watch’s Search Topics area compile articles on the subject of how people search from across the web and stretching back to 1997. Available only to Search Engine Watch members.

Combine your keywords to increase your effectiveness

Do you have multiple keyword lists that you are trying to use to optimize your website (SEO) or for your online campaigns (PPC, SEM)? We suggest you take the two lists and combine them to make your efforts even more relevent and targeted.

There is a tool available to help you do this quick and easy. The Search Combination Tool takes your key or main phrases with your secondary keywords. Try it, you’ll like it – and all the time you save!