Michael Nguyen, whose Social Patterns blog often has cool stuff, wrote an entry last week that made me wonder about som continuing myths in SEO:
Before optimization a site is converting about 3% of its traffic. After optimization, it’s converting about 2% of its traffic but I’ve increased the traffic to the site by 50%. Not bad right? I only lost about 1% conversion, but I’ve increased traffic by a whopping 50%.
I think Michael's using this as an example, and I seriously hope that he's never lost conversions after "optimizing", but this isn't a one-time issue. Many of the inquiries for new business that I field have a component of fear related to the optimization process possibly making a site less attractive to visitors, more spammy-looking (there must be a better adjective to describe that) and less conversion-prone in general.
My goal when working with any site is to improve not only traffic, but also conversion rates. The two are inextricably tied together. How is it that SEO can make a site less user-friendly when our primary work is making the site attractive to visitors, potential linkers and search engines? These groups all have the same desire - high quality content, descriptive title tags and text & a usable experience.
What am I missing? Are there really elements of SEO that make a site less conversion-friendly?
Michael followed up on this blog entry with a great addendum. I love his original post as well. He wrote:
"I’d start off focusing on a web site’s usability and user experience, long before I’d allocate funds for marketing. You should too.
Why?
First, improving your user experience/usability augments the effectiveness of your marketing campaign."
Heck yeah. And not because this is what I'm about. Have you ever recommended a site you found and couldn't use?
I WAS an SEO and saw what the lack of a usable web site was doing. I could no longer take their money and watch my efforts not pay off because their websites, well, sucked.
There are more and more SEO/M's who have a usability specialist working on the site along with them. A small number. That's a shame. Because the value to their client, in the long run, is priceless.
Rand,
I’m glad my entry generated some conversation because I think many starting SEOs and lower quality SEOs tend to forget how important usability and good user experience is to the bottom line.
Scott emphasized the most common reason why SEO can have a negative effect on conversions. Implementing lower quality SEO – keyword spam, bad design, doorway pages, nonsense text, hidden text, etc – all detract from how effective a website is at converting the visitor.
I see this happening a lot with new SEOs, particularly people running an ecommerce stores. They pick up a few simple, yet helpful tips – keyword rich title, keyword rich content. They experience a rise in their rankings and are real happy with their SEO efforts. But they don’t know better and in the process of optimizing their site, they’ve altered their marketing content on their product pages. This affects their conversions and overall they are in worse position than they started.
For the SEOs that are well versed in usability, design, copywriting, marketing - I don’t see them running into this mistake often. Even still, we need to keep in mind that our changes may affect conversions negatively even if we don’t think they will.
In my entry I was using a hypothetical example, but I think it’s a good thing to continually monitor. I see plenty of SEO firms focusing primarily on rankings and never really consider conversions.
This is a very interesting conversation. Having started on the web analytics side of marketing, my mantra to my clients is Acquire, Convert, Retain. Without all three elements you do not have a viable business model. Any SEO who is satisfied with only traffic acquisition is not worth hiring IMO. The individual or firm that can assist customers with all three of these elements will never lack for work.
Couldn't agree more with the holistic view.
What SEO elements could detract from conversion? One consideration might be googles apparent emphasis on perceived 'commercial' phrases in terms of filters and natural competition.
For example: 'property pluto' Vs 'webcam pluto' if your site aims to sell property on Pluto.
webcam pluto is likely to rank higher, remain on topic and contribute to demographic targets whilst converting less than the commercially targeted 'property pluto'.
"more spammy-looking (there must be a better adjective to describe that)"
What about SEOiled?
I agree with the comments. In general the problem is that SEO's who spam may get temporary increased traffic, but are not doing things strategically, nor looking at the big picture of building a better user experience. By studying the stats in more depth you can discern how long ppl are staying on the site, the home page and just bouncing etc. This is important and should have been done before the SEO campaign begun. It can also be that the SEO is focusing entirely on the wrong keywords. That can cause a bad conversion ratio as well.
Perhaps SEO Education is more important than we thought. I love the perspective Rand brings to the table and the old school SEO idea that ultimately the web user is #1.
Agreed, Kim
I tend towards usability as I SEO myself. The more I copyright, the more I think about usability, as even high traffic, good worded page can't provide enough conversions..just as anything taken out of the scope can not. However, the primary focus should be put on the site's usability - aimed at the user - providing him with the best web experience..along with the services.
I agree - in my experience the culprit has been a bunch of junky, spammy, keyword-stuffed copy.
Not too long ago we cleaned up an "SEO" job by one of the really big SEO companies (you could probably guess who i'm talking about). The client paid tens of thousands of dollars for crap.
They shoved this junky text all throughout the client's e-commerce website. It worked initially when they did it (ranking wise), but the rankings fell quickly, and so did conversion rates.
I'm sure we've all had our fair share of clean-up jobs.
Rand, I think you hit the nail.
Is it a bunch of junky, spammy text? Keyword-stuffed copy? Destruction of page design so that text is all inside one table or div tag?
I think that's pretty much it. Any or all of the above would turn me off from a purchase.
Its throwing the user experience out the window and instead focusing on what some SEOs think pleases the SE's. Trying to trick the SE's instead of building usability.
Before optimization a site is converting about 3% of its traffic. After optimization, it’s converting about 2% of its traffic but I’ve increased the traffic to the site by 50%. Not bad right? I only lost about 1% conversion, but I’ve increased traffic by a whopping 50%.
lol... do the math on this folks... this person paid for SEO that yielded zip... smoke.... nuthin'... just increased the bandwidth expense. Well... maybe big traffic braggin' rights.
This sounds like a traffic swap through keyword change. A small amount of high quality traffic for a larger amount of lesser qualified traffic. Either that or their optimization involved such a dramatic change in the look of the site that conversions were compromized.
My SEO would have been build new pages to grab that low conversion KW traffic. Hold on to the current buying traffic - and improve the site to yield a high conversion rate yet.
Bottom line. You can't focus on traffic. You need to be greedy and want the traffic AND the conversions. If you have the ability to get more traffic that's great, if you need help with the conversion rate stuff then I think that some outsourcing of that work and some detailed traffic flow through the site analysis would have a higher yield.
"How is it that SEO can make a site less user-friendly when our primary work is making the site attractive to visitors, potential linkers and search engines?"
I think that a lot of people associate traffic with conversions. The belief is that the more traffic, the more potential to make a sale. The problem is that many shady SEO's (so called SEO's) prey on the business owners that believe in the traffic = revenue theory. Because of this I think that SEO is looked upon by many as a shady industry. Full of deception on both the user and the search engine level.
Also, until recently it was so much easier to spam your way up to the top, either by links or content.
In your definition of SEO, there is nothing but a positive outcome for the website. By others definitions, SEO is not defined by the definition you know it to be.
Personally I agree completely that SEO has a positive effect on a website in every way if don't properly. The solution is to create a clear definition of SEO across the board.
EGOL,
That was Michael's original assertion. I probably should have quoted more:
Some quick math shows that I haven’t done anything to help the site’s overall goal. 100 visitors x 3% conversion = 3 visitors converting 150 visitors x 2% conversion = 3 visitors converting Quite often, small changes will affect the conversion rate of a page - a couple more footer links, some content rewording, or a revised title. All your efforts could easily sabotage your returns.
He came to the same conclusion - I'm just left wondering why SEO elements would take away from conversion rate...?
"I'm just left wondering why SEO elements would take away from conversion rate...?"
Rand, I think it comes down to SEO quality of service.
High Quality SEO Service - Quality SEO takes a holistic approach to SEO. By really improving the site, we can improve rankings now and in the long-term. Make the website good, and the search engines will know it.
Lesser Quality SEO - Lesser quality SEO simply focuses on getting the rankings now. Make the website appear good to the search engines, and they will rank it as such now. We’ll worry about tomorrow… tomorrow.
Those who espouse "high quality" SEO focus more on the long-term than the short-term, while “Lesser quality SEO” focus on the short-term. I’m sure reasonable arguments can be made for both.
Bottom line…
At times, “Lesser quality” SEO may produce quicker results, but in the process may hurt conversion rates… because its aim is making the website appear good to the search engines, not actually making it good.
Scott - OK, I can get behind that idea. I'm just wondering what it is specifically that SEOs do to a page that makes it "worse" in terms of conversions. Is it a bunch of junky, spammy text? Keyword-stuffed copy? Destruction of page design so that text is all inside one table or div tag? That's what I'm not getting.
You bet! As SEOs we target high-traffic terms related to our business that we think will convert. But! these terms are often broad or general in application like [adjective widget] which is something someone doing research would look for, not someone who is ready to make a purchase!
Specific search quiries are usually the poeple ready to buy. If the search phrase [fast red widgets with ultrasonic green bars] is entered, that's someone who has done their homework and is now looking for someone to fill their order.
This all breaks down to the "long tail" searches. SEW has an article here and there was a discussion at SR this morning here.
Keep in mind that not all high-traffic terms are convertable. The idea at that point is to build a site that is a resource and will have the viewer coming back so they make the purchase through you when they are ready (adds a bit to the concept of first impressions, don't you think?).